The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-09 00:00:00

got. \Vitness told him she had been tried, convicted, and
sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment with hard labour,
and he then asked him (witness) if he had a newspaper con-
taining the report of her ease. Witness told him he had not,
upon which the prisoner produced the pieces of newspaper,
and said accounts given of him in the papers we r e not quite
true. It was stated, he said, that he had drank Mrs. Levy's
port and sherry, but this was not true, for he scarcely, if
ever, drank any wine. Again, it was stated that he had
dined off a turkey at the house of Mrs. Levy on Christmas-
day, at the expense of that lady, and this was equally un-
true, as he bought the turkey he dined eff himself. In re-
ference to the £5 note, which it was alleged he had
changed in the Borough, he said Newton gave him a £5
note at the garden-gate. three days before she went away,
as she owed him £2 at the time, and that note ho changed
in the Borough, and where he changed it he should recol-
lect. Witness told him that he had been informed by the
young woman Newton, that the prisoner had half the pro-
perty she stole from her mistress, but this he said was un-
true, as £5 was all he had from her. He said that he
had frequently been to the house of Mrs. Levy, to pray for
and with that lady for her future happiness—(loud laugh-
ter, in which Mrs. Levy joined and shook her head in dis-
sent). On their way to town the prisoner acknowledged
that he had accompanied Newton to the station on the
morning of the 21st of February, when she left the house of
her mistress, and had also visited her whilst she was in the
country, but while there they lodged at different houses.
On their way to the railway station to this court, the pri •
soner asked his opinion as to what he should do, whether he
should not plead guilty to the receiving, as ho was not
guilty of the stealing or receiving with a guilty knowledge ;
and his (Martin's) reply was, that at his age and from his
experience he must have sufficient judgment to form an
opinion for himself, and that he (Martin) should give none.
William Trast, of 7, New Bridge-street, Vauxhall, coffee-
house keeper, said the prisoner used to lodge at his house,
and that three or four weeks ago he changed a £5 note for
him. The prisoner left his houseon the 16th of last month
without giving any previous notice, leaving his boxes
there.

This being all the evidence at present, and the prisoner
declining to put any questions to the witnesses, or offering
anything in defence, observing that he should first prefer
having legal assistance, he was remanded to a future day.
The prisoner, who gave his age at 52, but who appears 10
years older, was then removed; but, on his application, Mr.
Elliott cot seated to take two sureties, in £lOO each, for his
appearance.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The speech of the Solicitor-General on
the subject of the escape of the Alabama from Liver-
pool was so eminently saccessful in the assembly to
which it was addressed that, for a time at least, it
put to silence the clamours of a small and active
party who, following their usual instinct, have set
themselves to discover that the great mass of their
countrymen are wrong in theory, lax in practice,
and instigated by motives the most sordid and feel-
ings the mcst reprehensible, because it has been the
pleasure of the press of the United States repeatedly
to stigmatise the Alabama as a British pirate, to
threaten all sorts of reprisals, and to denounce ex-
emplary vengeance against us for the loss inflicted
on their trade. These persons were for a while con-
vinced that we had flagrantly violated the law of
nations and broken through our neutrality, and
after all our sacrifices and fair professions had at last
openly sided with the South. Then it was said that
we had wilfully and deliberately connived at the
infraction of our laws, and suspended our interfer-
ence till we well knew it was too late. To this class
of declaimers and murmurers the speech of Sir
Roundell Palmer was a very serions calamity. It
absolutely and for ever demolished the whole super-
structure which the men who think that they can-
not be friendly to America without being hostile to
England have so laboriously built up. The accom
plished lawyer had no difficulty in showing—and
that not by English, but by American authorities,
and by no authority so conclusively as that of Mr.
Seward himself—that the selling of contraband of
war to either party in the struggle by private Eng-
lish citizens was no breach of the neutrality of Eng.
land, nor any offence against her municipal law.
Then it was made equally clear that England was
not involved in any breach of neutrality, even
though private citizens, contrary to her municipal
law, should built or fit out ships for the use of
either belligerent. Finally Sir Roundell Palmer
showed that the delay in producing proofs of the
real character of the Alabama was due, not to the
English Government, but to the American Minister
and that the case was advised on qeite as speedily
as was consistent with its importance by the law
officers of the Crown. We should have thought that
in England at least, this controversy was for ever
laid at rest, and that the most sceptical must have
been convinced that nothing had been done against
which America had any right to remonstrate, or of
which any English subject had a right to complain.
But we find that a meeting has been held iu Man-
chester, not, indeed, attended by persons of any
political mark, nor by a single member of a Parlia-
ment, but amply compensating in violence of lan-
guage for what it might want in weight or impor-
tance, for the purpose of petitioning the House of
Commons with reference to the case of the Alabama.
Something was, indeed, said about the duty of neu-
trality which devolved upon England, but the lan-
guage which found most acceptance was the denun-
ciation of the " felonious and traitorous conspiracy
which now rules the so-called Confederate States."
The petition which this meeting is about to trans-
mit to the House of Commons is a curiosity of its
kind. It calls the attention of the House of Com-
mons to the building of ships for the " rebel slave-
holders' Confederacy," to be used against the Go-
vernment of the United States, with which this
country is in friendly relation. Having given this
sample of their qualification for advising the Legis-
lature of a neutral nation, the petitioners proceed to
whch must,. we presume, prevent the acceptance of
show how well they are qualified for the customs of
a constitutional country by commenting, in flagrant
violati▪
on of the laws of Parliament, on words used
in debate by one of its members,—an irregularity
i
the petition. The petitioners press urgently on the
House of Commons the necessity of calling on the
Government to detain, and prevent from leaving the
country, certain vessels which they believe to be
now building for the Southern States until the
present struggle in the United States be terminated.
They do not ask, as it would seem, that the law
should be put in force, but rather that the Govern-
ment should act at once, not troubling itself to wait
for evi▪ dence, which might, as in the case of the
Alabama, lead to delays unfavourable to the stop-
page of the vessels. The petition calls attention to
the fact that the Alabama had on board trained
gunners belonging to the Naval Reserve, and ex-
presses the regret of the petitioners that no prose-
cution has followed these acts. As if this was not
enough, they express the gravest apprehension of
theirritation produced in America ; they believe
that the peaceful relations between the two coun-
tries are seriously jeopardised, and that we are
drifting into a war fatal to our commerce and to our
supplies of food, which would place the millions in
sullen opposition to the Government and sympathy
with the enemy, involve the loss of our colonies,
endanger our institutions and the integrity of the
United Kingdom itself. They, therefore, beg the
House of Commons to interpose its authority in
order to prevent any more ships leaving England
for the use of the Confederate States. We.have set
forth this petition at a length very disproportionate
to its merits, in order to afford our readers on both
sides of the Atlantic a specimen of what are not the
sentiments of the English people, so far as we are
able to wither them, with regard to American
affairs. There is hardly a word in the document
which we have set forth which is not most repug-
nant to the feelings of the great mass of the people
of this country. There is not the slightest wish to
speak disrespectfully
or act unfairly towards the
North, but neither is there any disposition to em-
ploy or to approve the use of insulting language
towards the South. So far from regarding the cause
of secession as vile and infamous, we have freely ex-
tended our admiration to the unity, the constancy,
the courage, and self-denial with which the affairs
of the South are conducted. We refuse to identify
the objects of the war of invasion and subjugation
carried on by the North with the emancipation of
the Negro, and view, in the proposal to break the
bonds of a race which they will not suffer to tread
the same earth or breathe the same air with them-
selves, nothing but an attempt to remedy the in-
humanity involved in the slavery of the blacks by
the stili more dreadful inhumanity of massacre and
extermination. We wish that our law should be
respected, and that whenever sufficient evidence
shall be produced on oath, not by way of hearsay,
but of di▪
rect and primary testimony, the law should
takeits course. But as we would never tolerate
that whi▪
ch is every day practised in America in our
Government ; as
We would never endure that, for
the sakeofsome imagined convenience, expediency,
o r necessity, our Government should take upon
itself to dispense with one jot or one tittle of the
law which is our birthright ; so, least of all,
. Foreign Enlistment Act. The law has
would we desire this to be done in the case
of the
prohibited certain things, but it has not made
them wrong in themselves, nor are we able to
see why the selling of ships to belligerents
by the subjects of neutral States should be
prohibited by the municipal law. It seems unwise
to enact further restraints on our natural liberty
than the law of nations has imposed, and thus to
give foreign States
and their adherents a claim to
interfere in the management of our domestic affairs.
But, be this as it may, we cannot too strongly con-
demn the attempt to urge our Government into a
violent and unconstitutional course by the threat of
a foreign war, of the disaffection of millions of its
subjects, and of their sympathy with the cause of