The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.—The proclamation which was to have
conciliated the friends of the negro in Europe has
failed to command respect in America. It was jus-
tified by its authors only as a military measure, and
even as a military measure it is beginning to be con-
demned by public opinion in the North. No sooner
was wholesale emancipation proclaimed as a prin-
ciple than it estranged the Democrats, and it has
now ceased to rally the Republicans themselves. In
place of it has at length been substituted an older,
more genuine, and more honestsentiment—a demand
for the Union at, any price, whatever be the effect of
its restoration on the destinies of the stave, It is
thus that we interpret the rapid spread of the
Union Leagues," mentioned by our New York
correspondent. Whether their aim be to neutralise
the influence of the Democrats, or to reunite the
fragmentsof the Republiean party, their significance
is the same. From the new platform the doctrine
of Abolition is to be excluded, for the sufficient
reason that it has been tried as a political engine
and found wanting For the zealots who forced the
experiment upon Mr. Lincoln we are willing to
make great allowances. They were men of one idea
and of no practical experience, who thought they
saw an unique opportunity of carrying their favou-
rite project by a coup de main, and could not refrain
from taking advantage of it. The spirit of the
Forth was roused in a struggle for what some call
national unity and others call empire, and the Abo-
litionist leaders fancied they could utilise all this
patriotic passion for the purposes of a crusade
against slavery. From their point of view the
horrors of a servile war were as nothing in the
scale against the social heresies of slaveowners, and
they did not stop to calculate the gain or loss to
humanity of a war to be conducted on their system.
Bigotry seldom feels scruples or forecasts conse-
quen3es, and we are not surprised to hear that
the " preachers, lecturers, strong minded women,
and Anti-Slavery Societies" are still as frantic as
ever in their clamour for negro regiments and ex-
peditions designed to excite negro revolts. The
responsibility for these acts rests upon the shrewd
and cool headed politicians of Washington who have
made themselves the tools of this fanaticism, and
these, after censuring General Hunter for prema-
ture Abolitionism, have at last left him to carry on
war in his own way. It is but too probable that the
next mail will bring us details of the massacre of
Colonel Higginson and his negro followers on the
St. Mary's River, in Georgia, and that a long train
of sanguinary reprisals will flow from this event.
If the policy which has occasioned these atrocities
had united the North and strengthened the bands
of the Government, there would be some semblance
of an excuse for it, but the reverse is notoriously the
' fact. Just when the Proclamation is beginning to
hear its fatal fruits, it is virtually repudiated by
the great majority of Northerners, and the Union at

any price—an end of which no one in his senses
would attempt to compass by internecine warfare—
is finally avowed as the supreme object of the con-
test. To this change in the attitude of the Repub-
licans, as well as to their success in arming the Pre-
sident with extraordinary powers over every
department of the State, the apparent decrease of
activity on the part of the Democrat's may probably
be attributed. The battleground of the two parties
has been shifted, and the Republicans have gained
by borrowing part of their adversaries' programme.
At present the real question between them is not
as to the rights of the South or the claims of the
blacks, but as to the liberties of Northern citizens.
In the remerkable protest of the New Jersey Legis-
lature two paragraphs only have direct reference to
the prosecution of the war; a third is directed
against the Proclamation, which has few supporters
left ; and the remaining five relate to the assumption
of arbitrary authority by the President in the loyal
States. The key-note of the whole is the mainte-
nanee of the Constitution as it was. No " military
necessity" is to be pleaded in excuse of such
monstrous proceedings as those of General Schenck
at Baltimore. No suspension of the civil law is
to be permitted in any district not in a state of
open insurrection. No arrests without warrant, or
infringements of the privileges secured by the
Habeas Corpus Act are to take place, except with
the express sanction of Congress, and under a para-
mount regard for " the public safety." New States
are not to be created at will, or the right of seces-
sion admitted within an existing State, as happened
in the case of Virginia. " Any and every exercise
of power" by the Executive or by Congress, beyond
that delegated to them respectively by the Consti-
tution, is declared to be illegal. Such is the old
Democratic creed as adapted to the present emer-
gency, and though it contains no condemnation of
the war, except so !a- as it is waged for unconsti-
tutional or partisan purposes, or in order to reduce
the insurgent States to dependence, it is easy to see
that its adoptiou would mate peace inevitable.
HERALD.—It is very inconvenient to be mistaken
for somebody else, and the more so because the mis-
take ie never made when there is a benefit to be
conferred. As in the case of the wrong hat lett for
you at a ball, the character fastened upon you is
sure to be a worse one than your own. The man
for whom you are taken has always been doing
' something wrong. It may be a mere case of debt.
It may be a little matter of forgery. It may be an
affair for Sir Cresswell Cresswell. That there is
something unpleasant in the matter you may depend
upon it. On the other hand, who ever heard of a
man getting money paid that was not owing to him,
or receiving gratitude for cervices never rendered
in the form of a legacy, or reducing a rich lady to
matrimony, or realising in short any of tee prizes
of life, in consequence of his resemblance to some-
body else ? When one man is mistaken for another
man that one man is certain to be in a scrape. The
chance is one to which we are ail subject, and should
it overtake us we can only rely upon the protec-
tion of the law. This is all very well. But sup-
pose we have no law but martial law to rely upon ?
The first case to which we will refer is that of
an ensign iu a regiment stationed at Shorncliffe,
who was charged with uttering a forged cheque
upon the National and Provincial Bank at Folke-
stone. It was proved in evidence that on the
15th of August east a gentleman drove to the
bank in a fly, and presented a cheque for £l5,
apparently drawn by an ensign in the 78th
Regiment, upon Messrs. Cox and Co., of London,
in favour of Mr. Thorpe, an ensign in the same re-
giment, and demanded cash for it. The clerk asked
the gentleman if his name was Thorpe—he replied
that it was, signed that name to the cheque, and
received payment for it, On the forgery being
discovered the clerk went to the camp at Shorn-
cliffe, and there identified, " to the best of his be-
lief," the prisoner as the person who had pre-
sented the cheque. It came out in evidence, how-
ever, that the cheque was cashed shortly after half-
past 11, the bearer departing by the train at ten
minutes to 12 ; whereas the prisoner applied for
leave to go to Canterbury after half-past 11, and
end was seen by his colonel at ten minutes to 12
going in the direction of Sandgate. The flyman,
moreover, deposed that the gentleman whom he
drove to the bank on that day was not the priso ter.
The clerk not being certain on the subject, and the
prisoner having previously borne an unimpeachable
character in the regiment, were additional argu-
ments for the defence, and the jury, without hesi-
tation, returned a verdict of not guilty. That the
verdict was a just one there is not the slightest rea-
son to doubt. But the prisoner was fortunate in
having a fair trial according to law. Had he de-
n, nded upon the judv.ment of a court which tried
perso alleged to be. James Riley, a private in her
Nl,:jesty's 103.1 Reimenr, the other day at. Poona,
in the Bombay Presidency of India, he would pro-
eany find himself a disgraced and ruined man.
Riley was charged with having refused duty and
used insubordinate language. The defence of the
prisoner was that he was not a soldier, nor in any
way amenable to military discipline, He was
apprehended, he declared, at the Cape of Good
Hope, in 1861, as a deserter from the 6th
Foot, and after having been kept in con-
finement for ten weeks was sent on board
ship for passage to Bombay without ever hav-
ing been confronted with his accusers or
brought before any civil or military authority, or
the witnesses against him being sent either at the
same time or since. Upon his arrival in Bombay
he was attached to the 33d Regiment, and kept
in confinement, without trial or investigation, until
sent to Poona in September last, and attached to
the 103 d. After he had repeatedly asked to be re-
leased, the adjutant of that regiment requested to
know if, in the event of his release being greeted,
he would "take on" as a soldier, and sign certain
papers. His reply was that he was not a soldier,
and only required to be sent about his business. On
the 28th November he was released from confine.
ment without any trial or investigation, and told
that he was transferred to the 103 d. But as he did
not consider himself a soldier he refused duty, and
left the regiment to seek support for his case. He
was then once more arrested, brought to trial before
a district court martial in December last, and con-
victed, the only proof offered of his being a soldier
being the general order of the commander in chief
transferring him to the 103 d. Against that decision
he had solicited an appeal to a general court martial
in December, 1862. The prisoner submitted that
prior to convicting him of the charges which had
been made aga_nst him it was incumbent upon the
prosecutor to show that he was a soldier in accord-
ance with the Articles of War, that he had been
attested in the usual manner, that he had ever re-
ceived pay as a soldier, or that he had ever sur-
rendered himself as a deserter, as was also alleged.
Further, he urged that the proper course would
have been to try him at the Cape, where his accusers
were, or else to have sent him to England, where
the regiment frcm which he was stated to have
originally deserted is stationed, and caused him to
be duly recognised ; failing these proceedings, and
the prosecutor having had ample time to procure
evidence of his so-called desertion, he conceived
that there could be no further claim upon him,
and that he was entitled to his release. If such
be not the case, as he very pointedly put it,
any man is liable to be apprehended as a deserter
who happens to bear a resemblance to an absentee
from any corps, to be deported without trial or i
in-
vestigation to some foreign station, away from all
means of proving his previous mode of life, and
compelled to serve as a soldier thousands of miles
from the regiment whence he was originally stated
to have deserted, and away from all mesons of esta-
blishing his innocence. The prisoner's case,
.there
can be no doubt, is conclusive as to the illegality of
his detention. Yet in the face of the evident ille-
sghahlietrytoh be the rightftheproceed ninigash,,eavhedn
the very
supposing
reasonable
as thehn
aphr.
account which he gives of himself to show that he
is the wrong one, we find the prisoner again con-
victed, and sentenced to 168 days' imprisonment in
Addition to his previous 90 cloys. But this is not
all. The prisoner, upon hearing his sentence, and
being ordered to the cells, refused to move from the
quarter guard, and, stung by
a
uttered language which, if he be
nseontareeleaafsedwrfa'rnogm,
will probabl dwo
,oremh
saitnhhci
eemrwe
lityloi
military jurisdiction,
penal
esaesrevdi tfu,rdh emfmo
ltiht
ae
rrye situorfi
shdi
hltiithen.
trust, for the case is scandalous beyond all bearing,
and calls loudly for the interference of the highest
authority.
PosT.—The victim of the tragedy now popularly
known as " the Fordingbridge murder" was the
daughter of a respectable farmer, who lost her life
in an attempt to defend her honour from the brutal
assaults of one of her father's own labourers, on her
way through the fields to church on a Sun ay mica-
ing. It was in broad day, and witain a few yards
of a footpath, that the ruffian pounced upon his
victim, whose screams, notwithstanding, brought
no assistance to her aid, and who would seem
to have been deliberately throttled, and then
dragged insensible through mire and filth,
which effectually completed, by suffocation,
the bloody work which had been begun
by violence. Hardly had the murderer expiated
his crime on the scaffold when a similar offence wes
perpetrated, under similar circumstances, in an-
other agricultural district. A young girl, in ser-
vice in the immediate neighbourhood, was sent on
an errand to a public-house, and was never after-
wards seen alive. Her screams were heard during
the night, and when morning returned her bor y
was discovered half-way between her home and the
house which she had left on the preceding evening.
ter suspected assailant was immediately arrested,
and by dint of overwhelming circumstantial evi-
dence was convicted last week, and now lies under
sentence of death, without any hope of reprieve.

Prior to the time of its commission, though not in
that of its punishment, was the offence of the
wretch who at Newcastle-upon-Tyne took advan-
tage of the drunken wife;of a respectable mechanic,
whose life he destroyed in a similar manner. The
woman was found lying dead in a by-street, to
which she had been dragged by her murderer, and
there immolated to tne gratification of his passions.
It may be that, as he said upon his trial, murder
was not his object. But such a plea was most
righteously scouted by the presiding judge, who
pointed out the clear rule of law that he who, in
the prosecution of an unlawful object, is prepared
to carry out its intentions at all hazards, must be
saddled with the responsibilities of whatever re-
sults may chance to flow from his lawless resolves.
A few more days accordingly will remove from this
world a third individual, whose existence could not
be continued without peril to the remainder of the
community. Painful as the subject is, we cannot
avoid referring to a fourth cese,the details of which
have appeared in a recent impression, and which
differs only in the fact that death did not follow
on the perpetration of the worst outrage that can
be inflicted upon a female. Great Barkham is a
village within twenty miles of London, and is
a thickly pcpulated part of the county of Surrey.
In the month of November last the daughter of a
labouring man was returning home about dusk,
when she was accosted by a person who asked her
the way to Leatherhead, in the opposite ditecion.
Hardly had she left him when she heard him fol-
lowing, and, after a vain attempt to escape, was
seized and brutally outraged upon the spot. Of her
resistance to tee last no doubt existed, and so
piercing were her screams that they were heard at
the distance of three quarters of a mile, and at-
trncted to the spot the persons by whom the pri-
soner was ultimately arrested. The facts of the
case were clear. The ruffian himself attempted no
defence, beyond the simple allegation that he was
so drunk at the time as to be ignorant what he A as
doing. It was given in evidence that the exhaus-
tion of the poor girl had rendered her all but insen-
sible, and that her ravisher had narrowly escaped
being put on his trial for her murder. The jury, of
course, found him guilty, and Mr. Justice Wight-
man accordingly sentenced him to penal servitude
for a term of seven years. Now, we emphatically
protest against the exercise of so mistaken a lenity.
Had Mr. Adderley's bill passed into law, the scoun-
drel in question would at leak have been made to
feel that the indulgence of his lust involved an
amount of physical pain to himself which would at
least have been same security for the crime not
being repeated. As it is, he will assuredly be
among us again, seven years hence, and may
escape with a ticket of leave at a far earlier
period. Perhaps, as in a recent instance else-
where, he will make a point of visiting the scene
of his villany, there to insult by his presence a
victim whom he has ruined, and a neighbourhood
which he has disgraced. The crime of which he
was found guilty is one which is fearfully upon the
increase, as any one who will take the trouble to
examine the official returns may learn for himself.
With a questionable clemency we have ceased to
attach to it its old punishment of death. But in
defence of innocence in general, when its commis-
sion is fully proved, justice demands that the
heaviest sentence known to the law should be passed
upon the perpetrator. If many more escape as
lightly as Jas. Baldwin at the Kingston Assizes, no
power on earth will prevent the community from
taking the remedy into their own hands, and in-
flicting lynch law upon the offender. Had the two
lab ,urers who seized him delivered him over to the
constabe only after he had been dragged through
a horse pond until he was in the same state to which
he had reduced his victim, no one would, under the
circumstances, have blamed them. Much as the
operation of a lex talionis is to be deprecated, it can
only be effectually prevented by the conviction that
the punishment awarded will be in some degree
proportionate to the offence.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

MANCHESTER-ApRIL 2.

A thin attendance to-day, with a limited business in
wheat, Englist, sorts maintaining last week's prices, while
American was hilly as dear. Flour neglected, but there
was no change in price. Oats and oetmcal moved off only
in retail, at late rates. Indian corn and beans firm.