The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-05 00:00:00

The New Stables at Marlborough House.

The Prince of Wales's stud has been removed
from the Royal Mews to the stables re-
cently erected at Marlborough-house. The new
building stands upon the north-east side of the
mansion, assumes the form of a square block with
two wings, and is almost wholly built of yellow
bricks. In the centre of the block is the grand or
Royal entrance, leading into the gardens, which
skirt the promenade of St. James's-park and com-
municate with the entire interior of the structure,
On either side of the Royal entrance are two coach
houses, each divided into three divisions, and each
division capable of holding two carriages. The
quadrangle in front of these coach-houses
and of the Royal entrance is covered by
an enormous skylight, supported by light
iron columns, open upon its three sides, lighted with
gas, provided with clocks, manure pits ingeniously
constructed, and well-tapped drains. The stables—
some of which are upon a second tier reached by a
gradual ascent behind the east wing of the building
—include 45 stalls and 12 loose boxes, and will
be as perfect as modern resources can render them.
The fittings have been supplied by Mr. Barton, of
Oxford-street, and are of iron of a chocolate colour,
excepting the vitrified enamelled corn-bins. The
hay-racks are flush with the manger, flat and open
at the bottom for the escape of dust. These are
filled from time to time by hand, all upper supply
of fodder from lofts being avoided. The floorings
are of brick, laid edgeways, so placed as to carry
off through trapped drains all moisture. Ventila-
tion is supplied without draught, by open work
just beneath the open ceilings. No flanges or pro-
jections are detectable anywhere, and even the hay-
racks are provided with " an improved slip-back,"
to prevent the possibility of the horses' noses get-
ting caught between the apertures. In the front
of the corn-bin, hay-rack, and water-tank, com-
prising the manger, a friction guard roller is placed,
which, besides being a most effective preventive
against crib-biting, is likewise, by its turning with
the slightest touch, a security against the horse in-
juring its legs by rearing on to the manger, and
" gives" to the contact of its haunches when it is
led round in its stall. The stalls are divided by
boarding, lasd at a particular angle to insure the
greatest possible strength, and to prevent splinter-
ing by kicking. These divisions are surmounted
by " open ventilating Exhibition pattern" iron rail-
ings, terminated by handsome pillars, with stall
rings and chains, the latter gathering up in a some-
what elegant festoon when not in use. It being the
general opinion that ophthalmia in horses has been
aggravated, if not altogether induced, by the glare
and refraction of white tiles and other glazed sur-
faces, the whole of the skirting opposed to the
horses' vision is lined with Raviencioni marble
of a bluish-gray colour, from the works of Messrs.
Burke and Co., of Warwick-house, Regent-street,
which, while it absorbs the light, imparts an agree•
able effect upon the eye, and certainly gives a relief
and finish to the general appearance of the stables.
In some of the stables are long rows of slate reser-
voirs for water, which, when closed, are converted
into seats for the attendants. The harness-rooms,
more particularly those with glass cases appropri-
ated to the State suits, are very attractive phases of
the establishment ; and those devoted to the ordi-
nary harness, fashioned to the form of the respec-
tive pieces of the bridle, &e., so that the shapes of
the latter when suspended are preserved, and, the
air being admitted, all injury from damp or mildew
is prevented. The sitting-rooms, dormitories, &c.,
for the upper officers and their attendants, are
worthy of remark from the manner, it is obvious,
their every requirement has been studied ; while
the luxury, not to say necessity, of ample bath
rooms is always within reach of the lowest of the
employes. The builders of this simple yet model
structure are Messrs. Smith and Taylor, the suc-
cessors of Messrs. Kelk ; and the whole of the plans
and arrangements have been carried out by them
under the direct superintendence of Mr. Penne-
thorne, his Royal Highness's architect.—Field.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TlMES.—Whatever bo done next Session, there is
one thing which the House of Commons cannot by
any possibility escape—we mean, of course, the dis-
cussion of the question of Secondary Punishments.
Though our columns are not, as during this time
last year, filled with the complaints and terrors of
persons who have been, or believe they ere going
to be, garotted or knocked down by " knuckle-
dusters" and "life-preservers," the question has lost
none of its importance and little,of its interest. It
has undergone a thorough and searching discussion,
and has now arrived at the stage when decisive
action is imperatively called for. The leading ob-
jections to oar present Secondary Punishments may
be briefly stated to be that so much of the punish-
ment as is inflicted in places like Portland is greatly
wanting in severity. The food is too good, the
treatment too pleasant, to inspire terror into hard-
ened offenders. The second objection is that the
system of tickets of leave has in practice broken
down. The surveillance of the police has been found
impracticable, and there is, in truth, no tangible
distinction between a ticket of leave holder and a
prisoner whose sentence has been remitted alto-
gether. A third objection is, that remissions of sen-
tence for good conduct are little more than a pre-
mium upon hypocrisy, and are often obtained by the
most hardened and desperate offenders, to the tedium
of whose imprisonment
.it is an agreeable relief, i❑

,he absence of more exciting employment, to "gam-
mon the chaplain." Fourthly, it is complained
that after subjecting our criminals to a process
which does very little for their improvement, we
turn them adrift upon a society whieh they have
already wronged, to commence a new career of out-
rage. The commissioners recommend that we should
remedy these evils in the following manner. They do
not propose to make the treatment of convicts labour-
ing on public works more severe, but to commence it
with nine months of separate imprisonment, and not
to recognise sentences of penal servitude for a less
period than seven years. They do not propose to
make the diet worse, or the restraint more severe;
they propose to send all who ate fit for hard labour
during the latter part of their sentence to Western
Australia, and that those who are unfit for trans-
portation should be set at large under superinten-
dence at home. No propositions could legs corres-
pond to the reasonable expectations of the public
than these. They leave untouched almost every
provision to which exception has been taken, ex,
cept the non-removal of prisoners from this country,
and they propose transportation in such a shape as
to make it a reward for crime if practicable, and to
enlist all the strongest feelings of the colonists of
Australia against its adoption. Three persons have
come forward to propose amendments on this plan.
The first is the Chief Justice of England, who gives
his opinion distinctly against the system of remis-
sions and tickets of leave, and proposes, we think
with the very general consent of the public, that the
sentence as pronounced by the Judge shall be lite-
rally executed in all cases, except where her
Majesty shall be pleased to exercise the prerogative
of mercy. Lord Carnarvon and the Hampshire
magistrates have devised a plan for greater severity
of punishment, and for remissions not based upon
good conduct, but upon the amount of labour per-
formed, those remissions being rather in the severity
than in the duration of the punishment. Lastly,
Mr. Adderley has expounded in our columns his own
views of the subject, which seem to consist in keep-
ing separate the ideas of reformation and punish-
meet, its doing away, as the thief Justice proposes,
wit.`', remiePions or tickets of leave, and leaving the
of future employment of the prisoner
expatriates..-‘1 has expired to private agency
when his sentene..
Cash is the position of the
assisted by the State.
T., subscribe at once to
question at this moment. NI ich requires that
the sound logic of the argument wt. should be
the sentence as pronounced by the judgt. -me we
carried into complete effect; but at the same ti..
cannot help feeling that this, like many other perfecti,
logical propositions, involves very considerable diffi-
culty in practice. Mankind must be governed either by
hope or fear, and, if hope be removed, we have
nothing left to trust to in our prison discipline, but
the number of our warders and the strictness of our
regulations. We might abandon without a sigh
the supposed reformatory effects of remissions, in
which we have no great faith, but we confess that
we should give up with regret the hope of making
the prisoners contribute in some degree to the
preservation of good order and discipline. We may
perhaps be driven to such a course, but it would be
with great regret—with diffidence as to the possi-
bility of maintaining it, and the prospect of a heavy
increase to the public burdens by maintaining.i
every prison a force sufficient to do by compulsion
tickets
that which is now obtained by hope. As
of leave, the institutions and habitsof their this country
offer, as it seems to us, fatal obstacles
to
Commissioners
effi-
ciency. The surveillance which the
recommend will never practically be enforced, and
tickets of leave, therefore, become
freelitinno,thsientig.
but unacknowledged remissions 0,

tences. But, little reason as we have to be satisfied
with the recommendation of the Commissioners as
regards transportation, we are not prepared with
Mr. Adderley to surrender the idea altogether, or,
which is much the same thing, to leave it to private
agency assisted by public money. If transportation
be abed thing, let us abstain from it altogether; if a
good one, let us take it into our own hands and con-
duct it by an agency responsible to the public. If
we fear, as Mr. Adderley hints, the reclamations of
other countries who may object to receive the refuse
of our population, that objection will be just es
cogent whether we direct the transportation our-
selves or give money to private persons to direct it for
us. The blind would be too transparent to deceive
any one, and the responsibility would attach with
all the more force from the consciousness of the
necessity of the concealment which an indirect pro-
ceeding would imply. We are convinced that a re-
turn to transportation to Australia could not be main-
tained in the face of the opposition of the colonists.
They would soon place us in the dilemma of giving
up our plan or enforcing it by arms, and they expect
with no unreasonable confidence that to this last
and worst arbitrament no Government would be
likely to have recourse. Besides, the transportation
to such a country as Australia would be much more
of a reward than punishment, and would tend
rather to the increase than the prevention of crime.
Must we, then, give up the idea of transportation
altogether, since we can neither acquiesce in the
recommendation of the commission nor in the pri-
vate agency assisted by public money proposed by
Mr. Adderley ? This gentleman argues that punish-
ment is one thing and transportation another, and
that the end of punishment is to deter the criminal
by his own sufferings, and others by the example of
his fate. From this he concludes,as we understand,
that, as the business of the Legislature is with
punishment, they ought not to meddle directly with
transportation, which is not a matter of punishment
but of the disposal of the criminal after punishment
is over. The whole of this question has, like many
others, been perplexed by a careless assumption of
the principles upon which it is to be decided. The
business of the State is not only punishment, but
the prevention of crime by all efficient and proper
means. One of these means is punishment, but it
is not the only one. Crime may be prevented by
fear, but this is not the only means of prevention.
Take, for instance, capital punishment. The man
who is executed can commit no more crimes, not
because he fears, but because he is for ever deprived
of the power. So with regard to imprisonment.
While a man is in prison he cannot commit crime,
because the confinement deprives him of the oppor-
tunity. Crime, then, can be prevented, not only by
example, but by interposing physical obstacles to
its commission. Perpetual imprisonment or death
cannot without inhumanity be inflicted for the
greater number of offences, but a man may without
inhumanity be removed to a place where, while
enjoying a certain degree of freedom, he is jusc
as incapable of renewing his injuries to the
society he has already wronged as if he were
kept in the midst of it in the strictest confinement.
We cannot see why this simple and efficient
means of preventing crime—the more simple and
efficient because it does not rest on any illusory
theory of reformation, or on the supposition that
the criminal will carefully lay to his heart his own
sufferings or the example of others—is to be given
up, We cannot afford to forego any advantage in
our struggle with crime. Every means of repres-
sion which we neglect is a wrong to the honest part
of society. The problem, therefore, resolves itself
into finding a suitable place for the transportation
of criminals, and devising such regulations as,
without unnecessary severity, may prevent those
who are sent there from repeating their injuries, to
their fellow-men. It is probable that if our worst
criminals were thus disposed of we might be able
the more readily to dispense with the remission of
sentencee for lighter offences.
HERALD.—In the accounts of the progress of the
Polish rebellion at Warsaw and elsewhere there is
so much colouring and exaggeration, so much of
what is clearly fabulous mixed up with what is cre-
dible, that the result is as far as possible removed
from the usually sober tenor of current history.
The telegrams from Cracow and Breslau will inform
us one day of atrocities that make the blood run
cold, of men brutally butchered or more cruelly tor-
tured to death, of women flogged or hanged, of a
reign of terror wore hideous than that of Murat or
Carrier. When our sentiments of pity and indig-
nation are just excited to such a point that we are
willing to give all our sympathy to the cease of the
patriots, we are roused from our dream, and cancel
our vows of vengeance, for a very circumstantial
statement has reached us from St. Petersburg,
proving the utter impossibility of the perpetration
of such outrages by arguments of time and place
which we cannot gainsay. Very much in the same
way the stories that coma to our ears, from Russian
sources, of poisoned daggers, the hanging of pea-
sante, attempts at assassination, and a system of
secret intimidation by a revolutionary junta, are, in
their turn, flatly contradicted by the organs of the
Polish insurgents. With no witnesses on whom we
can rely, except such as live at a distance, and whose
knowledge must come to them by hearsay, we are
in a sad quandary as to what we are to believe as
to the progress or prospects of the insurrection, as
to whether the war is carried on by either side or
both sides in the manner of brute beasts rather than
of Christian combatants. We would willingly, if
we could, disbelieve all the stories, blot out with
one common erasure these averments on either side
of atrocities which fill us with horror and disgrace
the whole family of man. But is the history of
events occurring in a country which, by express
travelling, we can reach in two or three days, events
which pass as it were before our very eyes, to be
nullified and made a tabula rasa. reckoned as much
a myth as the early history of Rome when dissected
by Niebuhr ? It seems as if it were so, as if we bad
no choice but to suspend our judgment as to every
matter of fact, to disbelieve every statement, how-
ever plausibly made, unless supported by absolutely
incontrovertible testimony. If the result of this
incredulity should be to damage the cause of the
Poles more than that of the Russians, it is the Poles
themselves who are to blame for it, for they it is
who favour us with most of the intelligence of the
progress of the rebellion, and they have been re-
peatedly
v convicted of having falsified and fabri-
eased this intelligence in such a manner as to tell in
their favour and to the discredit of their enemies.
No cause, however just in itself, can be served by
falsehood. In the case of the secret document alleged
to have been found among the papers of Count
Andrew Zamoyski, in the perquisition made in his
palace at Warsaw, after the attempt on the life of
General De Berg, the charge of bad faith is retorted
by the Poles against the Russian Government, which
is accused of having forged it. A small piece of
crumpled tissue paper, that seemed to be striped with
blue lines, is said to have assumed, under the focus of
a magnifying glass employed by the police, the pro-
portions of a lengthy document in writing. It was no
less than a " plan of the Polish revolution," bearing
the signature of Mieroslawski. On the first aspect
of the matter there is much that is improbable in
the story. The tiny piece of paper, to be concealed
in the quill of a pen or the cover of a watch, and
the blue lines of microscopic writing, are probably
details invented by men who have a natural love of
the marvellous. Nor is it likely that this wily agi-
tator would have appended his name to a treasonable
document intended for wide circulation. With
these reservations we are inclined to believe that
the document is authentic. Were it a forgery, we
should expect to find a more truculent tone pervad-
ing it. It would be to the interest of the Russian
Government to represent the Polish leaders as
organising a wide-spread plot for the extermination
of the Russians, the assassination of lukewarm
Poles, and so forth. This plan of the revolution
bears in itself the stamp of its authenticity. It ex-
plains the constant agitation kept up by the Agri-
cultural Society during the rule of the Grand Duke
Constantine, and for two years at least before the
conscription in the spring of this year. This " plan
of revolution" bears date on March 1, 1861. The
scheme of a rising was thus long ago prepared. The
first steps were to be taken in a very cautious and
wily manner. The offers of the Russian Government,
then proposing to emancipate the serfs throughout
the empire, wero to be outbid by the emissaries of
the Secret Committee at Warsaw, which, in the name
of the Polish landowners, was to promise in all the
provinces of Poland that the peasants should e
amicably endowed with the " statute lands." The
for
proprietors were to ply the Czar with petitions for
this boon to the peasants. Should he Should
was to be held up as the common enemoy.e
asserted
he, on the other hand, grant it, it
was
tlled to it by
everywhere that he had been coOpe refusesh, he
the plan
• ;midation, and was not making the
ins._ of keeping it. This part
at
all
any int..
d dishonest enough. It merits,
prey :Ilse with
was clever aie.e which was bestowed upon to
events, the praie, o unjust steward." It was
ive foreign propagandism
to be followed up by an
fict'Orrep.nondents and secrets
secret machinations o: the.
bymearis of new7olsrrnment: ant-2 Courts of En-
emissaries to the
those of France end England.
rope, especially
These powers w
ere to be " tired out" with repre-
sentation 9 of polish discontent end Russian oppres-
sion. While Europe at large was to be persuaded,
by fair means or foul, of the vitality of Poland and
the utter impuissance end approaching ruin of
ilxssia, the chief aim must be to compromise to-
wards Russia the Governments of France and Eng-
land. Assured of the sympathy, or at least of the
support of these Governments, having tightened the
relations which bound up their cause with that of
the " Italians and Hungarians, nationalities which
aspire to break the Austrian chain," the leaders of
the Polieh people were to eeeite in the population
of east and 'not a " patriOti3

cipline them secretly to arms. A premature rising
was deprecated, but as soon as ever offensive opera-
tions were commenced by the Russian soldiery, the
patriots everywhere were to join without the least
hesitation the popular m* e s." That the rebellion
was thus provoked while yet premature is now mat.
ter of history. To complete the miserable narrative
will have ere long to be added that the snows of
winter have quenched those last embers of revolt
which were not trampled out by the armed heel of
the Russian.