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

Sun,

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 9, 1863

Au exceedingly delicate question is now arising
as to whether El Toussoun or El Monassir are to be
detained in Mr. Lain D's Building-yard down at
Liverpool. Whether those two steam rams, now
upon the very eve of their completion, are to be
detained there, by order of Her MAJESTY'S Go-
vernment, under the Foreign Enlistment Act. The
settlement of this question one way or the other,
and that within a very few days from the present
moment, is dependent, of course, upoa the deci-
sion arrived at by :the law officers of the
Crown, as to the bearing of that enactment upon one
of the nicest points of international law. 'Whether
can it be shewn that the destination of these
two formidable ships-of-war is such as would
bring their retention in the building-yard within
The capacity or authority of the Government !
7 hat is, really and truly, the question. Originally,
as is well known, nay as their outlandish names
sufficiently indicate, El Toussoun and El Monassir,
they were ordered to be built in Mr. LAIRD'S yard
by his Highness the late Pasha of EGYPT. They
ware ordered by him, we believe, about the time
of his visit to this country : when his Highness
was feasting his guests on board his yacht with
all kinds of good cheer, while undermining his
own constitution by paisoning himself with stale
bottled-up Nile water. They were ordered, these
two steam-rams, as one may say, vicariously or
circuitously : that is to say by a French House, to
whom had been given by the late Pacha a strange
twofold commission—one for coining a considerable
sum of Egyptian money in France, the other for ,
getting constructed,llaere in England, by one of our
best shipbuilders, these very two steam-rams EL
Toussoun and El Monassir. At the period of the
late PACIIA'S sudden and unlooked for demise, one
of those two commissions had already been com-
pleted. The money, to the full amount stipulated,
had been duly coined in France, and, not only that,
it had been actually conveyed from France into
Egypt. So that that part of the contract could not
by possibility be repudiated. Not so did it happen
to be, however, in regard to the other part of the
commission—that is to say, in regard to the two
steam-rams, then, at the time of the PACEIA'S death,
—merely in course of construction. The commis-
sion, so far as it related to them, was at once can-
celled by his Highness's successor. The re-
sponsibility of the order devolved, in consequence
of that unexpected repudiation of it in Egypt, upon
the French house from which Mr. LAIRD had re-
ceived it. The problematic circumstance in regard
to the transaction in its present phase, therefore, is
---as to the purpose to which these two steam-rams
are about to be applied by the French House fo

which they have been manufactured. What may
be their destination' The destination, that is,

of El Toussoun and El Monassir ? Not Egypt, as
originally intended—that we know. Whither,
When completed, is it intended that they should
proceed ? " The accusation is," says the Premier's
?rgan, the Morning Post, " that they aro destined
I°l' war with a friendly Power. They will conse-
ZhnnlitlY," says the Post (and we presume it speaks
"" eonEdently upon authority ')—" they will con-
sequently be detained,•
determine
Whether,
and a court of law will
Fo-
reign
I,,hlia ether, under the terms of the Fo-
nt Act, the detention is legal, or
whe!lacr the Owners can recover them from the
an insurance craeoernrnent." Upon mere suspicion
happened!) to evadendeavoured (ineffectually, as it
pietion of a busiaee) only tee other day, the coin-
as contract into which it had
entered at its own
deliberately. upon goodwill and pleasure, quite
fraud, and arson, and we
ere suspicion of foul play, of
,
atrocities besides—r, Larder i cold blood and almost,
n"? hardly what other
one might say, by wholesale
that the lives
have
be case of Wool,
of the whole TEMPLE family, ii,eet\ing
burning Wilfully jeo-
LEY V. POLE, was said to
attempted
doret than
pardised by the plaintiff on the
his dwelling-house, on Campden.hiii,iz down of
a year ago. All this was attera
brought home to the accused upon mere suspicion, be
for there was not evidence of any weight adductl
to support the charge. It will be wise on the part
of the Government, therefore, in this matter of the

two steam rams now in Mr. LAIRD'S building yard,

not to act simply and solely upon mere suspicion !

Recent events have materially contributed to
enlarge our general store of knowledge. The wars
and revolutions of our own days have familiarised
us with the details of localities whose name 3 ware
scarcely to be found in the old geographies and
guide-books. The Crimea, although figuring in
Tartar history, was not so well known in England
and France ten years ago as it is now; Cawnpore
and Lucknow were names only faiailiar to Anglo-
Indians, while the student might turn over a good
many maps of Italy before he lighted on Solferino
or Magenta; and we have all learned to thread our
way more readily through the perplexing maze of
English and Indian names, whie'i servo to distal-
Raish the localities of the vast States of America
re
following the track of this unhappy war.