The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-01 00:00:00

1863.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

1a..--

HERALD..-We perhaps hardly realise the im-
portance of facts which are reaching us by each
mail from New York. Digesting the news as it
comes piecemeal, we fail to catch the full meaning
of the revolutionary action that is making some-
thing worse than a bear garden of the pride of
American patriots; and, like travellers viewing the
Pyramids, shall only have the true view when, re-
moving from the level of a close proximity, we
become able to take in at a glance the whole bear-
ings of the
our readers, gigantic work. It has been well for
as, indeed, it is fortunate for the
European
public, that we have had in our corre-
sponCent "Manhattan" so vivid and well-informed
a painter of the events as they have arisen. Long
and actively engaged in American politics, none can
know better the shoals and deeps of their intricate
navigation, and in everything appertaining to the
action especially of New York society, his
graphic sketches come from the pencil of a ready
artist, thoroughly at home equally with its
movements and the influences that direct them.
We risk little in saying that nothing so true or
characteristic of the elements that distinguish New
York from every other city in the world has ap-
peared elsewhere, and that no like conception is to
be obtained on the true nature of the anarchy which,
long brooding over that unhappy capital, has at
length manifested its power in a succession of ex-
traordinary riots. Himself an American de pur
sang, the interest of his picturesque and telling nar-
ratives is increased by his being, in part, " the ori-
ginal he draws," and from his sympathising so
evidently in all the scenes and things he describes
for us. Would to Heaven that he had better sub-
jects for his sympathies and better materials for his
descriptions; for it may be doubted if anything
more unhappy than either ever crossed the dreams
of the philanthropist, exercised the patience of the
philosopher, or exhausted the resources of the poli-
tician. Human nature must have forgotten itself
into a new creation not to shudder at tha pictures
he gives us from a civilised society in a Jhristian
commonwealth, formed mainly, too, of offshoots
from our own country ; and terrible as have
been the lessons of inhumanity furnished by
the records of the war, they whiten before
those which he sends us warm and palpitating
from the butcheries of his New York streets.
It used to be thought that the excesses of a cruelty
grown ingenious in the unhealthiness of depraved
natures which made the early days of the French
Revolution a phenomenon in human history, might
be accurately attributed to the wild vengeance of
uncultivated masses, wrought by a long custom of
slavery into the moral degradation that fitted men
for the indulgence of crime as the want of some dis-
eased nature. Bat the atrocities that are now
taking the belief of an appalled philanthropy are
the acts of free citizens, who have long exercised
every privilege of liberty under a diffusion of lite-
rary light unprecedented since the invention of
letters. The death of Count Foul©n under the
roused passions of a Parisian mob, to whom he had
been. denounced as a forestaller of corn, was not
marked by more revolting circumstances than the
butchery of Colonel O'Brien in the streets of New
York. He had ventured amid the crowd alone,
but, staggered by a sudden blow received at the
back of the head, he was at once enclosed, and,
when made powerless, was beaten within an inch
of his life, and the " almost inanimate body" then
taken " by the strong arms of the crowd" and
hung in the old Parisian fashion, d la laterne. A
few minutes, however, was all that the impatience
of the mob could allow for this tame mode of punish-
ment, and the body, not yet dead, was again taken
in hand by the crowd, and thrown as so much rub-
bish in the street. Now commenced the last indul-
gence of the taste of a modern mob, and nature,
says the reporter, "shudders at the scenes that fol-
lowed." The body was mutilated past recognition.
The head was made one pultacious mass, the clothes
" saturated" with blood ; and a crowd of 300 stood
around gazing on " the corpulent form " of the
powerfully-organised soldier, who lay faintly breath-
ing, with the eyelids twitching and lips convulsed,
and showing the other signs indicative of a slow and
agonising death. Left for a time in this condition
the body was again seized by some of the spectators,
dragged by the legs from one side of the street to
the other, and then the head was raised at intervals
that an application from the foot of one of the crowd
might "dash the already mangled mass again to
the earth." And it was while this protracted
game of human football was going on in the go-
ahead capital of the New World that the unfortu-
nate colonel breathed his last. The crusade made
on the wretched negroes reaches, if possible, a still
higher region of execrable brutality. Whatever
deficiences there may be among this unfortunate
people they are characterised by habits peaceable
and docile even to tameness, and apart from the
prejudices of colour and taste there is absolutely
nothing against them in the Free States, except
that they can only live by competing with German
and Irish immigrants for the meaner forms of un-
skilled labour. Yet, in the capital of a republic
where all men are born free and equal, where the
truths of the Christian system are held to be a
living code, governing the lives and securing the
happiness of every household, a population of Ame-
rican citizens is found actively at work making the
poor people's tenancy of a house a title to burn it,
end their appearance in the street an authority
for killing them. Our well-informed correspon-
dent had some time ago apprised us of the coming
danger, and noted the fact that it had been so
far scented by the victims that they " walked
long distances rather than get into cars and
omnibuses, where, says "Manhattan," "they are
exposed to the scowls of vengeance whenever the
time comes." " The indications," which, he added,
were then showing themselves on all sides, have
been realised, we would fain believe, in even larger
proportions than he or any other American could
have foreseen. His " low estimate" fixes the num-
ber already murdered at 200; and how many have
perished by fright and famine, or are buffering
under a maltreatment almost equal to murder,
seems to be past calculation. One of these wretched
beings was found by him hinging to a lamp-post,
his clothes stripped cff, and a cigar in his mouth,
until some boys intervened to release the body and
drag it round the block of houses, with the variety
of now and then picking out the eyes with sticks,
or knocking out " his firm white teeth with stones."
When our kind-hearted correspondent was moving
from his door to give an alms to an old negro
" seventy years old, blind as a bat, and such a crip-
ple that ho could hardly move as he was led along
in rags by his equally aged wife, both trembling
with fright, and not knowing where to go," he was
stopped by the characteristic warning "not to give
anything for God's sake, unless he wished to be
killed as an Abolitionist and his house burned."
That the warning
was a necessary one may be in-
ferred by the eloquent fact that our correspondent
shut up his heari, and 141 his WOMB "let the ohl
couple meet their fate," with the prayer—let us

--,Qt it was not a barren one—that Heaven would
°-•e a mild one. Every now and then in
the shrieks of the negroes,
' with affright," would
-0. midway in

make the 1.._
his own househniu,

"some of them raving mat.
make his blood run cold ; and writ .L
the riots, he closes with the portentous
" Hereafter negro life will be worthless." The alat-ra.
ing circumstance in all this is, perhaps, less that an
infuriated mob with power in their hands should
abuse it on this helpless portion of God's creation,
than that the better divisions cf society should be
able to make so weak a protest against the atrocity,
Our correspodent seems to look upon the extermi-
nation of the New York negroes as some mysteri-
ous necessity of democratic government, and when
Archbishop Hughes addressed the 5,000 citizens
who were supposed to have been largely corn,
promised by those crimes, no word of censure
upon the most conspicuous atrocity that has yet
darkened this century seems to have escaped his
lips. It is as well that we should note this sign of
the times in a community which must be admitted
to be pre eminently civilised, for the costly experi-
ence that dishonours America must lose half its
value if it fail to prove a warning for our own.
Opinion cannot be too soon put on its guard against
a tendency at once so terrible and unaccountable.
It is a national apostasy in morals that asks the
careful study of all charged with the responsbilities
of public lite, and amounts, in fact, to what Lord
Bacon calls " a setting eat in the bark of a Chris-
tian Church the flag of a bark of pirates and
assassins."

TIMES.—On Thursday a man was tried and con-
victed at Maidstone of a murder committed and dis-
covered under circumstances which, if murderer and
victim had been in a higher rank of life, would pro-
bably have made the crime notorious through the
country. The reputation, if we may call it so, of a
murder is often due to something foreign to itself, to
some fortuitous occurrence, or come relation of the
parties to each other or society. In this case these
were of the humblest find least romantic class; the
perpetrator of the deed was a labourer, the murdered
man, a poor, petty tradesman. The event will
doubtless soon be forgotten, but the details are
hardly less extraordinary than those of crimes
which are remembered after the lapse of a century.
The prisoner, Alfred Eldridge, a labourer thirty-
three years old, was indicted for the murder of
Richard Steed, on the 2d of May last. Steed kept
a small shop, at which the prisoner had dealt, and
incurred a debt of a few shillings, for which Steed
had sued in the County Court. It appears that at
that time, which was three months before the
murder, the prisoner had uttered threats against
the deceased. Nothing, however, came off then
immediately ; the prisoner managed to pay the
money, and the men were to all appearance re-
conciled. About seven o'clock on the evening
of the 2d of May the deceased, who had lett
his house with a small sum of money in his
pocket, was proved to have met the prisoner by
chance at a publichouse. The prisoner asked
him if he was going home, and, on his replying
that he was, Eldridge said he would go wit ri
him. They were seen to go away conversing in
a friendly manner, and were also noticed on their
way by a man who was in his garden. Steed was
never seen again until he was found, about a quar-
ter past eight o'eldek, in the agonies of death. His
skull was bea:fn in, his features were undistin-
uishable from his ce being crushed and stamped
into a shapeless mass,
brain was protruding
from the fractured bone; hen as taken home, where
he almost immediately breathers
his last. It was
evident that his skull had been cut ot: en with some
sharp instrument, and that then he had beeii stamped
upon with heavy boots and left for dead. In fee.: the
marks of boot nails were on the face. Suspicion a:
once fell on the prisoner, and the next day he was
apprehended and the house searched. 'I he super-
intendent of police asked for the boots the prisoner
wore on the preceding day. They were produced,
and seemed to have marks of blood upon them, but
they had been probably wetted and then dried, for
they were quite hard. On closer examination a sin-
gular and damning piece of evidence was discovered.
On the boots, which were heavily armed with iron
nails and heels, were human hairs sticking in the
mud which still remained upon the soles. " The
hair was dark brown, and there was at least one gray
"hair stuck on the boot." The hairs corresponded
exactly with the hair of the deceased, who was an
elderly man. In addition to this there were spots
on the prisoner's trousers, and he had on a pair of
clean stockings, those he must have worn the day
before being nowhere to be found. On being ques-
tioned as to the events of the previous evening he
gave an account of what passed which was improb-
able in itself and was contradicted by a witness at
the trial. He said he had left the deceased at a cer-
tain spot and gone home by himself by a particular
way. That way was a very circuitous one, and there
was no reason why he should have chosen it. More-
over, a witness swore that he had seen him and the
deceased pass by a spot which, if the prisoner's story
were true, he had not been near. The aid of science
was then called in to test the evidence that had
been collected. Chymistry and the microscope
played their wonderful part in bringing the mur-
derer to justice. Dr. Taylor stated that he had exa-
mined the trousers and found numerous small spots
upon them. These were tested in the usual way,
also examined by the microscope, and they were dis-
covered to be blood. Of this there can be no doubt,
but the boots did not furnish such clear evidence.
They had marks which looked like blood, but as no
" coagulum," or " clot," could be found, it was im-
possible to speak with certainty. But, on the other
hand, the washing of the boots would account for
the appearance presented. A red fibre was in one I
of the stains, another was still sticking to the boot,
and was examined in court by means of a lens.
These fibres corresponded with the fibres of a red
comforter worn by the deceased on the evening of
the murder. Dr. Taylor had, furthermore, examined
the hairs on the boot microscopically, and "some of
them, in his opinion, were decidedly human hairs,
though one of them was doubtful. . . He had
compared the hair thus found en the boot with that
taken from the head, and they corresponded, as far
as he could judge, perfectly." This evidence was
corroborated by another scientific witness, Dr. Parry,
who was able to state that " he had examined in par-
ticular a spot on the right leg, and found there cor-
puscles, or globules, which corresponded ex-
actly in character with those of human blood."
Indeed, there hardly ever was scientific evi-
dence more positive and trustworthy. The
remaining evidence principally related to
some admissions said to have been made by the pri-
soner, and, if the witnesses are to be believed, there
certainly seems tittle doubt that he in substance
confessed his guilt. But, putting this aside, the
case was one of circumstantial evidence, and Baron
Channell made the usual remarks and gave the usual
caution to the jury. The previous quarrel, the pro-
posal of the prisoner that they should walk home
together, the circumstance that they were seen to-
gether at a point on the road which the prisoner de-
nied having passed, the finding of the dying man
within a very short time afterwards, the disappear-
ance of the prisoner's stockings, the state of his boots,
the blood spots on the trousers, the human hair and
the particles of red woollen sticking on the boots,
and moreover, the fact that the money of the
deceased remained in his pocket, thus indicating
some other motive for the crime than robbery--all
these things, though falling under the description
of circumstantial evidence, make up a case more
convincing than almost any that can be framed by
direct testimony. The scientific men, as the Judge
remarked, did not so much bring new evidence of
their own as confirm by rigid examination that of
the uninstructed witnesses, and for that reason the
case may be looked upon as being all the more
satisfactorily proved. Seldom has a foulder murder
been committed, or one in dealing with which it
was more essential that justice should not miscarry.
the jury deserve every commendation for not allow-
ing fanciful doubts to impel them to an acquittal,
or a perverse view of the case to reduce the crime
to manslaughter, To the stupid and ferocious
natures of bad men of the prisoner's class the idea
that an act committed in a lonely country place,
far from any human eye, will never be brought
home to them is most apt to occur, and this singu-
lar case of a foul deed wonderfully proved against
the doer will be a salutary warning.

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A French View of the Duke of Wellington.

-

The last number of the Correspondant contains an article
on the Duke of Wellington. "In the list of her distin
guished men," says the writer, "England counts none
whose influence on her is of a stronger kind than that of the;
Duke of Wellington. All is to the last degree curious and
001,:elicafed, but it is supremely instructive; and by follow-
ing carei:lllY all that in his character is attractive for his
countrymen,
'
we have the key to the greater part of the
transformations Ns
hich the English mind has passed through
during the last 50
yetzs. What we must observe above all
is that the military forte.
e of the Duke of Wellington
goes for little, relatively, in aet,,ounting for the sort of moral
dictatorship, which he ended by exe:cising over his coun-
try. Had he died in 1826, the impression proeuced by hint
in England would have been effaced. His retiown would
place him by the side of Marlb, rough or Nelson, but of
action on the soul of the nation there would be no trace. It
is by dint of living and of being that ho has stamped him-
self on the mind of England, and has sunk the more deeply
into it according ai the date of his successes sue his mate-
rial services becomes more remote. His glory btu but a
small share his power. He predominates by the force of
his character, and it is simply for what he is, rather than
for what he has done, that people admire him and seek' to
imitate him. What is called the ' great war' has much,
less charm for the English people than is generally sup-
posed; and though towards its close that great struggle ex-
cited popular enthusiasm, for the last 30 years at least Eng-
land makes it a principle to discredit war, and directs all her
energy to the peaceful development of society. Since teie Re-
form Bill in '32, and Sir R. Peel's reforms in '4l, the move-
ment of the English mind is become social, commercial,
political (only occasionally), educational above all and
always, but never military. Now it was in the very height
of this movement, and during tho last 12 or 15 years of
the Duke of Wellington's life, that his country has become
as it were incarnate in him, and pushed its veneration for
him to founding after his death an institution the main ob-
ject of which is to train up young men to imitate the civic
virtues, the special moral excellence, of the illustrious
Duke. Owing to his militaily fortune her preponderance
for several years in the affairs of the world, it is not
for that alone that England feels grateful to him ;
it is for his secondary qualities thiot she identifies herself
with him; it is by that sort of excellence which is within
every man's reach that he has subje,eted, as it were, the
public mind. I irtues that may be pfactised by every
Englishman are what proud Albion honours in Wellington,
and what renders the union between the country and the
man indissoluble. Of the qualities by which men govern,
england seems to hold but little account in the Duke.
What she demands are the qualities of submission to duty,
those which are most valuable in the ordinary occurrences
of life. Absolute obedience to duty is what it seeks and
admires. If you want to know after this how England
claims the Duke of Wellington, the answer is easy ;
she claims him more by peace than by war. Of the mere
soldier she already thinks less; but what she honours and
would imitate is the citizen—the subject of the Crown—
the most devoted servant of the nation. One of the most
remarkable things in the Duke of Wellington was his little
inclination a priori for war. From the beginning to the end
of his career it was from him that pacific counsels always
proceeded; and his moderation astonishes even those who
knew him best. No man ever felt more deeply than he did
all that even a successful war has of the terrible; and per-
haps the greatest of all praises to which he is entitled is that
never during his long military career did he allow himself
to be led away by the charm of glory ; never did this sublime
intoxication, which even the strongest minds find it difficult
to resist, ever trouble the rectitude of his mind, or disturb
the dry straight prosaic line which appeared in his eyes to
be that of duty." In a note the writer of the article eulogises
the extreme delicacy which the present Duke has shown in
editing the " Supplementary Despatches" of his father,
" In the 8,000 pages already published' we look in vain for
a single line tending to disturb the peace or honour of a
single family."

COUNTRY MARKETS.

WAKEFIELD-FRIDAY.

Wheat dull to-day, and prices rather in buyers' favour,
but no disposition to force sales at any material decline.
Spring corn unaltered.

Averages for the week :
Wheat ,1,911 qrs., at 46s lld
Rye — —B Od
Oats lO :23s Od
Beans