The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-06 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JULY 6, 1863

brought to a close. They have fought and bled for
it; given the lives of fathers, sons, brothers, and
husbands for it, and are not disposed to make any
further sacrifices of treasure, time, blood, or exec.
tion in its support. They once believed that the
South was merely mutinous, and could be reduced
to order and discipline in the " ninety days" of
Mr. Seward and by the 75,000 men of Mr. Lin-
coln. They have awakened to a different and
a sadder conclusion, and have learnt to admire the
Southern and to despise the Northern AEministra-
tion, in proportion as the war aivanced ; and are
convinced that the South not only will, but ought
to be recognised as an independent Power. Such
is the present opinion of the great majority of the
Irish Roman Catholic population, basing himself
ru
ap,o
en
two hd
rAe
hr hinbsiseihf oipn uvoguhre
ofs haaps
shuad ni
otnh u
Peace,
ecaoce
if no other be practicable. To this complexion the
whole Democratic party must come at last, Many
of its leaders—in addition to Mr. Fernando Wood
and Mr. Benjamin Weed, who loudly proclaims this
doctrine in his paper—are already sensible that it
is no more possible to restore the Union than it is
to restore the empire of Charlemagne, or the domi-
nion of Powhattan ; but, being more concerned for
the future predominacy of the Democratic party,
and its share of the " honours and plunder', of office,
than fcr the immediate welfare of the country, hesi-
tate to take any step which might give increased
popularity to their rivals the Republicans. Their
notion is that whichever of the two parties makes
peace will be politically ruined for a quarter of a
century. They do not wish to remain out of office for
so long a period. They see that peace is the one thing
needful, and if the Republicans could be persuaded
or compelled to make it upom humiliating terms,
they would only be too glad to accept the peace and
to use the humiliarions that prepared and 'mom-
panied it as the means of a long exclusion of their
rivals from power. The Democratic party, taken as
a whole, is too cunning and too sordid to be very pa-
triotic, except in great extremity, and relies too much
upon the innate depravity of human nature as one of
the great fulcra of Government to place itself very
much in advance of public opinion, or that which it
believes to represent it. The day may come, how-
ever, and that much sooner than it anticipates, when
the public peril will he so imminent under the worse
than imbecile mismanagement of the present Admi-
nistration, as to compel it to think less of party and
more of duty than seems at present to its mind, and
to declare itself a ready follower in that path where
Mr. Fernando Wood and Archbishop Hughes and
nearly the whole of the working classes have pre-
ceded it.

All the keys much resembled each other in appearance, but
each pair of keys would only open their own lock.
The Rev. Mr. Leach, rector of Hubberstone, and chair-
man to the Milford Improvement Commissioners, deposed
that he remembered an application made to him for his key
of the safe containing the veal, which Szlumper required
for the purpose of affixing to a lease. After this had been
done the prisoner borrowed the key from witness on pretence
of cleaning all the locks, and a day or two afterwards re-
turned a key which was not the same as that lent to him.
No authority was given the prisoner from the board to exe-
cute a power of attorney. The commissioners had £244
stock, at 3 per cent., in the Bank of England. The witness
was not aware that the prisoner had ever accounted to the
commissioners for the £244 after he received it.

Messrs. Roberts, T. J. Lewis, G. P. Lewis, Richards,
Gould, Thomas, Davies, Williams, Welmert, and Durant
all commissioners, corroborated the evidence as to the pri•.
saner having never received any authority from the board
to execute the deed.

The power of attorney authorising the selling out of the
stock was produced, also letters written by Szlumper in the
name of the board to Messrs. Cancellers, brokers, of London,
inquiring as to the formalities necessary in order to sell out
stock, and receipts in his handwriting for half-notes received
from Messrs. Cancellors.

The jury found the prisoner guilty,
There were two other indiet!,:frifs for forgery szsinst
him, but Mr. Lascelles offered no evidence thereon.
His Lordship suspended his decision till Friday morning,
when he sentenced the prisoner to four years' penal servi-
tude.

intrigue and t onVersation. Francis Joseph and the
Arehdukes may wall have been astonished at their
visitor three years ago, when he presented himself
with the firm intention of taking up the rege-
neration of Austria us a personal matter. An an-
cient Briton in his war paint eould not have been a
more astonishing atriVal at Vienna. 'the experi-
ment, however, seems to have had so pleasing an
effect upon his fortunes and his character that he
has tried it again. Attired, like Godiva+ in nothing
but his native medeaty, he saddles his favourite
animal and rides, with Mr. Lindsay for his hand-
maid, into the middle of the haunts of Tyranny.
The monarch of France and Mr, Roebuck have thus
met at last. Caesar has encountered with impunity
the gaze of Brutus, and Brutus has returned to
humble life a mollified and mitigated patriot, his
face glowing with the delight of having conversed
with one more Emperor. Mr. Roebuck went to
the Imperial Palace a bitter-blowing East wind ;
he has come back all South-east and South. The
sour grapes of Sheffield have been ripened by the
sun of Fontainebleau. Mr. Roebuck has frequently
received merited castigation, both in the House of
Commons and elsewhere, but he has seldom received
a better dressing than he got from the bitter tongue
of Mr. liright. Mr. Bright pointed out, with truth
and plainness, that Mr. Roebuck is hardly the man to
play the British Paul Pry to Imperial perseneges,etill
less to represent the French Emperor in the House of
Commons. The manner in which he chose, two
years ago, to speak of Napoleon 111. makes it ludi-
crous in the extreme for him to assume the charac-
ter of Ambassador Extraordinary from that monarch
to the English Legislature. Nor do we want an
official of the kind. All the notes of private inter-
views that Mr. Roebuck has taken are thrown away.
It is highly inconvenient that the attention of the
house should be taken up with tittle tattle to which
it is undignified to listen, and which it would be
still more undignified for the Commons of this coun-
try to regard. What Mr. Roebuck chooses to do on
the American question somebody may do upon the
subject of Turkey, or the lonian Islands, or the dis-
tress in Lancashire. If the private wishes of Napo-
leon 111. are indeed to be perpetually dragged into
the deliberations of Parliament, let Baron Gros have
a seat below the bar, accompanied with the privi-
lege of stating succinctly to the house, before each
division, what the French Emperor is likely to think
of it. The Imperial will may thus at all events flow
to us in a responsible and accredited channel, not
filter down to us through half a dozen peri satetic
gossips, who are neither fitted for the part of Impe-
rial parrots by their accuracy of memory or their dis-
cretion. If this be objected, let Mr. Nassau Senior
be sent round every summer in an official capacity;
and let a committee of the house sit upon his note
book when he comes home. It is needless to observe
that the Bashi•bazouk diplomacy which Mr. Roe
buck and the Liverpool merchants have endeavoured
to bring into fashion increases infinitely the diffi-
culty of all regular and official authorities. When
every Briton who pleases is his own ambassador,
Lord Russell will have an uneasy time of it. All
this is quite unconstitutional and out of place. What
Napoleon 111. wishes the House of Commons to be
told, he can always ask Ministers to tell them. So
long as we have a Government at all, it will be
better for his Imperial Majesty to confine his confi-
dence within recognised bounds, or he must not be
surprised if they are treated both with neglect and
indifference. The less Parliament hears of the pri-
vate wishes of Emperors and Queens and Princes,
the better it will discharge its duty to the constitu-
encies that returned it.

EXAMINER.—Mr.Bright never made a more earnest
and impressive speech than that of Tuesday last in
opposition to the recognition of Confederate inde-
pendence. He carried with him the complete at-
tention of the house, and secured for his eloquence,
at least, the admiration of his bitterest political op-
ponent. 'But the just hatred of slavery led in his
fervid mindto the use of some bad argument. Take,
for example, what he said on the subject of cotton
supply, for which some zealous abolitionist must
have been furnishing him with fabricated statistics.
Trusting to these he comes to conclusions in direct
contradiction to the entire history of our cotton
manufacture. Every one had believed that the
greatness of onr manufacture was owing to the
capacity of the Southern States of America to pro-
duce a cheap and good raw material. Seventy years
ago, before the culture of cotton was introduced in
America, the value of our woollen manufactures
greatly exceeded that of cotton, and when, on the im-
portation of American cotton, Mr. Pitt told that the
cotton would in time exceed in value our great na-
tional staple, he would not believe it possible. But
our exports of cotton goods have exceeded those of
woollen at least fivefold, all the result of the pro-
ducing capacity of the Southern States of Anglo-
Saxon America. Mr. Bright is stone-blind to all
this, and his charge against the slaveholders of the
South is, that they have failed to produce it in the
requisite quantity and cheapness. These are shortly
the facts. Before the cultivation of the cotton plant
was introduced into America, and especially before
it was pushed into the valleys of the Mississippi
and Alabama, and when our main supply was de-
rived from the West Indies, the price of a pound of
cotton ranged from two shillings to half-a-crown.
For some years before the breaking out of the pre•
sent civil war the Southern Americans, favoured oy
a superior fertility of soil, adaptation of climate, na-
tural facility of transport, and skill in production,
had brought the pound of cotton down to one-
fourth part of the first named price, and one-fifth
part of the latter, yet Mr. Bright is not
satisfied, and blames them for not doing more. By
war the American supply has in a great measure
been withdrawn, and the price of cotton has risen
to something very like what it was 70 years ago.
For the last two years India, Egypt, Brazil, and
other countries have had enhanced prices, a bounty
equal to from 200 to 300 on every pound of cotton
they can bring to market, but they have miserably
failed to supply the place of the southern American
States.

WEE. KLY DISPATCH.—We have another publica-
tion of a quarter's revenue and another boast of
prosperity. Now we own to a superstition against
this self-glorification ; it is generally the symptom
of that kind of security that leads to errors and
heralds reverses. We see nothing in the returns to
show that, in spite of the Lancashire distress, Great
Britain is not holding its own ; for that we are
grateful. To make what we can of the figures be-
fore us, we find that the increase for the factitious
year is £998,072, a very pleasant balance in itself,
but utterly counteracted by the equally patent fact
that the " Miscellaneous" is larger than in the for-
mer year by £1,025,517. If the readers of the
Dispatch required to be told that this "Miscellane-
ous" is no revenue at all, but either repayment of
advances or of debts, and therefore so much con-
sumption of capital, or accrues from the sale of
stores and bad bargains at a frightful sacrifice, we
have on many occasions taken care to give them the
information. However, the Excise has declined in
the course of the year no less than £1,373,000; on
the quarter, £481,000 ; and we believe that this is
occasioned mainly by remissions of taxation calcu-
lated upon, and partly by credit given for malt-
tax, the partial return to a system which Mr.
Gladstone had broken in upon by a very stringent
exaction of prompt payment. So when the
Customs, Stamps, Taxes, Property-tax, Post-office,
and Crown Lands, give us an increase on the
year of £1,345,555, and on the quarter of
£486,500, we are quite content to believe in a real
elasticity, and grateful to consider the permanent,
solid resources of the country capable of meeting the
shock of an almost unexampled misfortune without
crumbling under the blow. A somewhat kindred
topic is the attempt to decimalise our weights and
measures, to adopt a French scientific standard as
our meter, and to put ourselves in accord with the
continent by reckoning in tens from that point.
Now, as a matter of theory, quite apart from practice,
this would, doubtless, be very desirable. We do not
greatly admire the objection that begins by admit-
ting—" it it were to be done afresh, it would be
right to do it," but in this case it is undoubted'y
applicable. It is altogether a matter of convenience
as to reckoning. We might, undoubtedly, facilitate
our dealings with foreign nations by adopting their
weights and measures; but for one large transac-
tion well worth the careful calculation of a compe-
tent man, which we enter into with foreigners, there
are about a million small dealings between our-
selves, entered into by mere habit by those wh,
have scarcely the power of making a new reckoning.
We should say, therefore, to Mr. Cobden and the
parties who mooted the question in the House of
Commons on Wednesday, and who gained a ma-
jority against Mr. Milner Gibson, affirming their
principle, Go very gently. It is easy to do serious
and wide-spread injustice by any precipitation.
CIVIL SERVICE GAZETTE.—Just on the eve of the
publication of the Report of the Royal Commission
on Penal Servitude, and when all the subjects
connected with his department were about to
receive the fullest consideration by the legis-
lature and the public, Sir Joshua Jebb, in
apparent possession of his usual health and mental
vigour, has by a most sudden dispensation of Pro-
vidence been " removed from the evil to come." The
awful and distressing circumstances of his death
would of themselves disincline those who were ar-
rayed against him on public questions from any
unnecessary criticisms, and for ourselves we can
sincerely say that even if it had been impossible for
him so far to modify his very tenaciously held opi-
nions as to have become useful in building up a new
convict system in this country, we should certainly
have devoutly wished that the most influential and
pertinacious opponent of reform in convict adminis-
tration had vacated his official seat by any other
means than those sadly impressive ones which at-
tended his departure. Putting Sir Joshua Jebb's
mo;iyes at the very best, and aeguowledging that