The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-28 00:00:00

TELEGRAPH TO INDIA.

The directors of this company in their half-yearly
report state that the shareholders were informed
last month that the Government had decided to re-
tain in their own hands the construction of the Per-
sian Gulf line, and that under those circumstances
the directors recommended the shareholders to
maintain and work their Egyptian line, and to
await the result of the completion and working of
the Persian Gulf line before deciding upon the
course to be pursued. The directors have since
found it necessary to discontinue for the present
the station at Jabal, on account of the
risk which was considered by the Penin-
sular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
to attend their vessels calling for telegrams. Under
these circumstances, the directors considered it the
best course in the interests of the company to make
arrangements with Messrs. Glass, Elliot, and Co.,
the lessees of the Malta and Alexandria cable, for
working the Alexandria and Suez line for four years
from the Ist January, under which the line is to be
worked and maintained in good condition, without
any charge on the company by the lessees who are
to pay the company, so long as the Malta and Alex-
andria cable continue in working order, £2,500
a year during the term of the lease. This will enable
the board, unless any unforeseen accident arises, to
pay a dividend to the shareholders during the next
four years of from 4 to 5 per cent. per annum. The
board have obtained the sanction of the Viceroy of
Egypt to construct a line to El Arish, with a view
to completing the further communication to Bey-
rout, Iscanderoon, or Aleppo, and so connecting this
company's line with Constantinople by one about to
be constructed by the Ottoman Government from
Diarbekir, on the direct line from Constantinople to
India, and also by the Persian Gulf Telegraph with
India, by which means a portion, and in case of ac-
cident to the direct line, the whole of the India and
China messages will pass through the company's
lines. The capital account to the 31st of December
shows that £45,175 had been received and £52,095
expended, including
£4,538
outstanding h
t the company.
caocmc accounts,
leaving a balance of £7,820 against
ce
The revenue account for the half-year shows that
£3,691 hadbeen 7 received and £3,2o3apnrdecedinga
expended,o
account,
nt, a
balance leaving,
with
of
£495.

Importing Tea without colour on the leaf pre-
vents the Chinese passing off inferior leaves as in the usual
kinds. Horniman's Tea is uncoloured, therefore, always
good alike. Sold in packets by 2,280 agents.
THE
GEORGE GRISWOLD.—We understand that
the Secretary for War forwarded instructions, yes-
terday, to the commanders of the batteries on each side of
the Mersey, and of her Majesty's ship Majestic, to the effect
that when the American George Griswold (with provisions
for the Lancashire operatives) enters the river, a salute of
15 guns should be fired from each battery, and a salute of
21 guns from the Majestic.
TriE NEGRO AND THE PROCLAMATION.—Tho
Federal "Military Governor of South Carolina,"
invited the negroes to a feast on the Ist Jan. The corre-
spondent of the New York. Times states that the assemblage
was not large, and in explanation he mentions thisinci-
dent :—" I read General Saxon's address to my negr o
if
Sam. a very intelligent contraband, and asked him f
he wished to join in the jubilee. But no, Sam did not want
to go, his wife was sick, and he wanted no whisky and
feasting.' I then tried to impress upon his mind the im-
portance of the day, and told him with all the solemnity
that I could master that flora that day forward he was for
ever free; but he only replied with a broad grin and a
shake of the head, ' I ain't no fool, massa, I knew what
dat means." What does it mean, Sam ?' But Sau i did not
want to tell. Upon my repeating the question, 'however,
and insisting upon an answer, he stepped to the corner of
the room, and taking up the broom stood in tho position
of shoulder arms,' at the same time slowly shaking his
head in a very meaning way. This expressive pamtomime
explained more eloquently than words that they wanted to
put a musket in his hands and enlist him in the S*iuth Caro-
lina Volunteers, but, in vulgar parlance, he couldn't see it.

ZO),
t Pir4.:'Sl*"."" Utt
•

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1863.

The strength of the PALMERSTON Government,
it is seriously to be feared, has within the last few
months become its weakness. That most gifted of
our administrators, Earl RUSSELL-Still familiarly
known to this generation by Lord DERBY'S humor-
ous sobriquet as " JOHNNY, who upset the coach"—
bas been at it again. Though promoted, like his
brother Earl his well-tempered satirist and once
upon a time his colleague (in Lord GREY'S
administration), "to the prim benches of the upper
school," Lord RUSSELL has during this last recess
or long vacation very notably indicated his
time-honoured reputation as a fabrication of
diplomatic imbroglios. As Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs he was, as we all remember, with a
atill lively sense of exultation, a very tower of
strength to the Cabinet—a Cabinet of which he
was, as he could hardly fail to be in regard to any
Clbinet, under any conceivable conjunction of cir-
cumstances, one of the foremost members, one of the

TilOS

powerful and distinguished among its Leaders.
That he is still, almost as a matter of course. But,
while he is so, while he is yet among the first and
Ibreraost, among the most powerful and the most
distinguished of our administrators, he has again
abruptly (thanks to his own exceeding wilfulness !)
become one of the most perillous and unreliable. As
i incited by some eccentric Demon of Mischief, the
loble earl the Foreign Secretary has, quite
wantonly and wilfully, as it would seem,
cerried confusion right and left into some
of the most delicate and difficult of the great
diplomatic questions yet agitating, more or less
directly, the chief powers of Christendom. With
such singular perversity, in some instances, has this
startling transformation been accomplished, that
what was order before the close of last session
under Earl RUSSELL'S auspices, has, before the
coming session could commence, become utter con.
fusion, and, in some instances, threatens every day to
become even more and more distressingly confusion
worse confounded. It is only necessary to glance
for a moment, in almost any direction, to realise
upon the instant the odd and astounding manner in
which this wonderfully strange result has been

arrived at.
Here, for example, just to begin with—is the
Heir to the Crown of these realms about to espouse,
in the early spring-time of this very year, one of I
the fair young Princesses of Denmark, the Princess
ALEXANDRA. His Royal Highness the
Prince of WALES was recently upon the
very eve of his betrothal. The negotiation
of these nuptials was actually preparing between
the Courts of St. James's and Copenhagen. When,
as though animated by some perverse solicitude to
cause heartburninga and embarrassments—if not in
any way whatever !that being in truth, we believe,
just absolutely impossible under the circumstances)
between the two august families, then being
drawn more and more closely together by the bonds
of a most intimate alliance,at any rate between their
respective Governments—Earl RUSSELL, all of a
viden, at about the unlikeliest of all imaginable
its, flagrantly outrages the long wounded
of Denmark in regard to a difficulty of the
most delicate and entangled character : the noto-
rious difficulty, that is, relating to Schleswig Hol-
stein! Earl RUSSELL contrives, moreover, thus
flagrantly to outrage the susceptible pride of Den-
mark, on this matter, by falsifying the whoie of
England's policy on the Schleswig-Holstein qucs-
tion—opposing Denmark and coinciding with
Prussia! That, we repeat, just to begin with. As
if, however, his unfortunate despatch in respect to
the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty was in no way
adequate, as a wholly unlooked-for embarrass-
ment to his colleagues in anticipation of the
meeting of Parliament—Earl RUSSELL, greatly

mom

daring in the way of diplomatic eccentricities
plunges (altogether out of his depth !) by v. hat Mr. 1
BOUCICAULT, were he describing the movement, I
might again aptly enough call " a header," plunges i
(quite voluntarily, observe ! and, as of a may say, I
body and soul together) into that wonderful Roman :
escapade ! The noble Earl's namesake, Mr. ('Do
RUSSELL, being his alter ego in this very singular
transaction. A transaction as it cannot fail to be
deemed on all hands as whimsical in its way as
any ever dreamt of by an European statesman.
The circumstances of the transaction referred to
are certainly not at all likely to be forgotten very
readily, or given the go by, sub silentio, either in
the Lords or the Commons. In its extravagance
altogether, in its amazing inopportuneness and per-
versity, it went even beyond the Schleswig Hol-
stein despatch already alluded to. The spectacle ,
now beheld was in all essential particulars far more
painful, and even, we will add, far more ludicrously
malapropos. The author of the Durham Letter
appears, in this new diplomatic extravaganza,
strangely transformed into the well-wisher and the
would be protector of the author of the Papal
Aggression ! A transformation—that—far beyond
any now being nightly witnessed upon the stage of
any London theatre when the burlesque opening of
the pantomime merges in a twinkling into the har-
lequinade. Every one knows well enough by
this time the eggregious result of this pre-
posterous intrusion of British diplomacy (wholly
unsolicited) at the Vatican, Parliament is safe to
have the whole story within a few weeks told all
over again. The sudden discovery (as he fancied!)
by Earl RUSSELL of a solution to the Roman
Problem! The attempted application of it ! The
reiteration of that attempt, in spite of repulsions in
themselves surely the most significant. The POPE'S
colloquial enforcement upon Mr. ODO RUSSELL'S
acceptance of the proverbial non possumus—virtu-
' ally familiarised in this instance into "Exceedingly
obliged, but—zeouldrather not!" The Cardinal's, that
is Cardinal ANTONELLI'S manifestation for once,
(or twice, as it happened) of " a great talent for
silence"—sigeifying in that instance what is
proverbially known amongst ourselves as the
application of the cold shoulder. The ulterior
result of this most ill-judged proceeding being
from first to last that no one was pleased! On
the contrary every one being more or less offended
by Earl RUSSELL'S utterly futile proceedings.
Alike the most devoted champions of the Papacy
and the most systematic of its assailants. To the
former the proposition of Lord RUSSELL was
nothing less than an insult, to the latter it was
something more than an outrage. Added to which
the disclosure of these underhanded proceedings of
Earl RUSSELL'S, through his agent—Mr. ODO Rus-
SELL—at Rome, in the name of England—must have
appeared to the French EMPEROR'S Government at
Paris, something very much indeed like treacher y
on the part of that one member at least in the
English Cabinet, supposing Earl RUSSELL (as
everyone presumes) acted in this matter very much
upon his own responsibility.

Bolder in its way, even, however, than the offer
of Malta to his Holiness as temporary asylum for
the Papacy until the political storm of Italy should
have blown over, has been yet another proceeding of
Earl RUSSELL'S. A proceeding, this, nevertheless, it
is to be presumed, in which Earl RUSSELL'S col-
leagues are more directly implicated. Allusion
being here made, of course, to the daringly inde-
pendent proposition that the lonian Islands should
be made over bodily to Greece—a proposition
boldly thrown out before the Houses of Parliament
or the councils of Europe could be consulted upon
the matter. Probably no better arrange-
ment could be eventually arrived at in respect
to the future status of the Seven Islands.
But—decidedly, obviously, undeniably—that was
not The Way To Do It ! Nearly half a century
ago England was formally entrusted by the Great
Powers of Europe with the responsibility of go-
verning the lonian Islands, for the good of all, under
the aegis of a British Protectorate. The abandon-
ment of that weighty responsibility could not,
therefore, by any possibility, be lightly decided
upon. The responsibility is of such a character, is
one so onerous of its kind and so delicate in its
bearings, that it ought not even to have been lightly
talked of. Earl RUSSELL'S proposition, conse-
quently, to say the least of it, has been precipitate.
The opinion of the Legislature should first
of all have been consulted. The Schleswig-
Holstein Despatch—the Roman Escapade—the
coolly out-spoken proposition in regard to the hand-
ing over of the lonian. Islands bodily to Greece :
all these are very toothsome bones to pick between
Earl RUSSELL and the Lords and Commons. About
the only judicious display of consistency on the part
of the noble Earl since the close of the last session—
aboat the only rational and manly maintenance by
him of what was wise and discreet in his foreign
policy, relates to the bearing of that policy upon the
fratricidal strife still unhappily raging in. North
America.

Immediately before going to press, news (brough
by the Asia) three days later from America, comes
to us, in a string of brief but for the most part
afflicting telegrams. From these latest tidings it
becomes more than ever apparent that the fury of
the contest between North and South increases
rather than diminishes in its intensity. The belli-
gerents are becoming manifestly more infuriated
with each other as time advances and as the for-
tunes of the war fluctuate. The principal
incidents now recorded are acts of retaliation. Now
it is resolved by the Confederates that the Federal
officers captured at Murfreesboro' shall be detained
prisoners until General BUTLER has been delivered
up. Now it is related of those same Confederates
that—with a deadly cruelty in the way of revenge
—because of the atrocities perpetrated by General
M'NElL—ten Federal officers have been executed
in Arkansas. So that by way of indicating
their horror at certain acts of infamy, other acts
of infamy of the like kind are deliberately
perpetrated in cold blood ! If this inhuman system
be persisted in, the consequences are likely to be-
frightful. Simultaneously with these
isolatedcome truly
proceedings, other events of a larger signi-
ficance are transpiring at the seat of war. Worsted
in their attack u
upon their
ppon Vicksburg the Federals are
preparing for a vigorous descent
anta-
gonists at a quite different point.
At Nw
they are estimated as not less than fifty thousand.eaner
From Springfield they are said to be driving back
the Southerners. It now appears that theConiederates
at Murfreesboro' was considerably larger than was
at first anticipated. As many as nine thousand,
it is believed, were there put hors tie combat,
0,000, that is to say, of the Confederates alone! In-
furiated by the mere thought of men like WNEIL
and BUTLER., and by the recollection of many months
now of fast and furious slaughter, the Southerners
are not, alas, contenting themselves even with
retaliatory executions like those just already par-
ticularised. Captain SWING seems to be among

their leaders, if one may judge from the burning
down of the State Capitol (with all its contents) at
Baton Rouge—a wanton act of destruction, attri-
buted to the hands of Southern incendiaries. The
deadly game of war, in truth, is fairly afoot now,
alike in North and in South. Among the

statesmen of Europe, the realisation of the noblest
ambition would be his—who should thurst back at
length into their scabbards the dripping blades of
those " brothers-in arms and rivals "—yet we will
hope—" in renown," the opposing forces of the
Federals and Confederates.

Mr. TAYLOR made some suggestive remarks in
his speech of last night at the Temperance Hall,
Leicester. He commenced by alluding to the ques-
tion of Reform, and, after some remarks on that
subject, he passed to the distress in Lancashire.
He alluded, in the highest terms, to the conduct of
the operatives, and expressed himself in the warmest
terms. The following passage evidences his
views :—" The bavo justified the notion of philoso-
phers, who argue that the world's progress is
taking a newer and higher plan of action than the
world has witnessed bofore. Hitherto we have
known the rise, culmination, and fall of empires;
but the world has never before witnessed such a
scene as Lancashire has presented for the last few
months. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, instead
of the patience and the manly forbearance dis-
played by the people, there would have been dis-
turbances little short of insurrection, and instead of
sending them loaves and benefactions we should
have been" sending them troops and ammunition.
What now must be the feelings of those who, in

times past, have uttered predictions and ex-
pressed apprehensions of the effect of giving
political power to those who might be savaged by
passion or poverty. Of poverty and destitution,
GOD knows, there has been plenty ; of passion
none, unless the patience of the people has been
sublimated into the elevation of passion."
This theme has been often spoken of by members of
Parliament, but it cannot be dwelt upon too often,
and no language can sufficiently extol the endur-
ance and energy of that much-tried community.
Mr. TAYLOR then passed on to the question of
church-rates, on which he said that there could be
no compromise whatever. If the adherents of
the cause had a little more patience they would
have more chance of obtaining their object
than when they are so uncompromising, and
and will accept no terms whatever. On the ques-
tion of retrenchment Mr. TAYLOR seemed anything
but satisfied, " I, for one," he exclaimed, " am not
going to vote for economy, if it is to be an excuse
for regarding the Emperor of the FRENCH as a lion
of such a description as the lamb could lie down
with. My views have always been that England
must not only for her honour, but her safety and
economy be strong enough to stand against the worst
that can be done." Next the hon. gentleman touched
upon the important point of the War in America,
on this question Mr. GIBSON appears to entertain
some mistaken notions. He lays done as an arbi-
trary condition that slavery is the root and the
origin of the war. He compared the position of
the North to that of a territory visited by a tor-
nado, when the hurricane was over the atmosphere
was purer. So said he when the tornado of war is
over, the accursed barque of slavery will have sunk
for ever beneath it. This is really quite absurd, when
we remember that President LINCOLN'S proclamation
does not set free the slaves of the States who remain
constant to the Union. After a calm consideration
of events, recent and remote, it is difficult for any
unprejudiced person to coincide with this conclu-
sion, that " What the North is really fighting for
is, that slavery shall be for ever abolished in the
United States." The hon. gentleman went further
still in speaking of the proclamation itself, and said
that it made us thankful to GOD that we lived in
1863. It is amazing that people can deceive them-
selves so. How can there be any benefit in a man
issuing orders to those over whom he has no con-
trol; what wonderful end can it attain, and what

good results can flow therefrom. This enthusiasm

among the advocates of the North in favour of
President LINCOLN'S proclamation is far more sur-
prising and unaccountable than the converse
opinion that Mr. GIBSON so rails at. " Nor can
we account for the phenomenon that, in freedom-
loving England, public opinion in certain classes
should have gone so widely astray upon
this question." The reason is that Englishmen are
too clear-sighted to be deceived, and they are aware
that it is all talk and not action on the part of the
North about slavery. Now that it serves the pur-
pose of partisans, it is very well to cry out against
the South and its sanction of slavery; but had the
South not sought to secede we should have heard
very little about its wrong-doings. It is a pity
that so many members should seek to promulgate
such extreme views among their constituents, as the
American war has been from the outset
one in which we can have no sympathy,
although it appears that we are to pay a heavy
price in the shape of suffering. Mr. TAYLOR con-
cluded his address by some strong remarks against
the South, and stated that it was all through the
virulence of that community that such violent
opinions were entertained against England. This
oration appears to have been very well received;
but it is to be regretted that it was not as liberal in
its notions as it was able in its style and tenour.