The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-28 00:00:00

and continued to fall upon its head. Everything that stood
in the way of the car was dashed to pieces. Every minute
brought a new danger, and what danger I Now lam terri-
fied to think of it; but I declare upon my honour that at
the time not one of us entertained a thought of saving his
own life at the expense of the community. Several times
some one of us might have jumped out, and then the bal-
loon, being lightened of a considerable weight, would have
ascended, to the great peril of the others. Madame Nadar
was supported by her husband, and I can affirm that our
greatest moral suffering was to see her frail form so terribly
knocked about—and yet this poor woman never uttered a
cry, During these terrible moments when all our bones
were cracking, she looked at her husband and at us so
calmly and so sweetly, that we would all willingly have
been crushed to have saved her."

The above letter, it will be observed, does not describe
the actual descent; it is probably intended to be followed
by a third.

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

l'lmEs.—ln the course of last year's Session Sir
M. Peto protested,with just indignation, against the
lenient punishments inflicted upon the perpetrators
of savage assaults in oar Police-courts. Sir G.
Grey, in his reply, admitted the fact, and we might
have hoped that the attention since given to the
treatment of criminals would have secured us
against a relapse into this all but direct encourage-
ment of street outrages. We cannot say that any
such expectation has been justified. Every day
the same class of crimes fills the reports of our
Police-courts, and every month a long list of them,
representing only the very worst, appears in the
calendar of the Middlesex Sessions or. the Central
Criminal Court. Yet the apparent partiality of
magistrates and judges for ruffians who have re
venged themselves for a taunt with the knife, or
beaten unoffending persons within an inch of their
lives, continues unabated. While fraud, embezzle-
ment, and other offences against property, are
visited with relentless severity, acts which indicate
the highest degree of wickedness, which occasion
the highest degree of suffering to the victims, and
which naturally inspire the highest degree of ter-
ror among others, are treated as if they were the
most venial of misdemeanours. It is high time
that this perverse and mischievous inconsistency
should be traced to its true cause, if it has any
other cause than judicial caprice, and that those
who are guilty of it should be made to feel their
responsibility towards the public. A few specimens
of the sentences passed at Clerkenwell during the
past fortnight were lately furnished by one of our
correspondents. A person convicted of receiving
certain medals belonging to an officer, knowing
them to have been stolen, was sentenced to four
years' imprisonment; a man who had smashed
both his wife's eyes at different times, thereby
depriving her of sight, and had so brutally
maltreated her for year's as to make it a won-
der that she had lived through it, was
imprisoned for two years. For stealing a watch,
after former convictions, another prisoner got four
years' imprisonment. For a vile assault upon a child
twelve months were considered an adequate penalty.
Another correspondent, in a letter w uich we pub-
lished yesterday, proves that the same standard of
guilt is recognised in Cornwall. " 'William James,
convicted of stealing a pair of boots, was sentenced
to nine months' hard labour ; John Green, only 16
years of age, found guilty of stealing a shirt, was
sentenced to three years' penal servitude." On the
other hand, " John Willcocks, aged 34, a labourer,
was charged with violently assaulting' a child two
years and a half old with a leather strap and
'buckle,' after which he threw it, face foremost, into
its cradle. The surgeon found its arms, thighs, and
back " covered with seep bruises," and the mother
believed it at the time to have been killed, as it well
might have been. "The prisoner was sentenced to
three months' imprisonment." We have only to
turn to the police reports in our next column to find
parallel instances. One man gets a month's impri-
sonment at Marlborough-street for knocking down
a constable in the execution of his duty; another
gets two months at the same court for striking a
policeman on the back of the head with a stone,
while he called on his associates to " knife him,"
and vowed he would do so himself " when it was
dark." At the same time and place, " William Payne
and Samuel Webb were fined £3 each for being
drunk and exciting the mob to assault the police."
A pork butcher, convicted of making a disturbance,
together with other rowdies, in the course of which
indecent assaults were committed on young women,
was fined 20s. by Mr. D'Eyncourt, when he was
liable to a penalty of £7. Another young man, to
whom an assault of this kind was brought home, was
fined lOs by Mr. Combe. Lastly, Thomas Hamuaell,
who had struck one gentleman a furious blow in
the face, had made the most violent resistance to
being arrested, had sprung from the dock while the
charge was being taken at the police-office, and
knocked another gentleman down, and had been
three times convicted of felony, was condemned by
Mr. Partridge to one month's imprisonment with
hard labour. We are willing to suppose that in one
or two of these cases there may have been extenu-
ating circumstances which were not published. We
are further willing to make allowances for the
variety of theories held by experienced magistrates
on such questions as the policy of punishing first
°fleeces severely. Still, after all the deductions end
concessions that can be made, we are struck by the
monstrous iniquity of these sentences. No weaker
word will fitly express the wrong done to
society by an administration of the law which
jealously vindicates the rights of property, whilst it
give us no tolerable protection against personal
violence. It is the characteristic of barbarous codes
that they are more indulgent to the murderer than
to the thief. Civilized Government ought to adopt
the very contrary principle, and to place the security
of life and limb above the security of property,
however valuable. There is no test of criminality
which can be applied to these two kinds of guilt
which will not establish the greater atrocity of
personal violence. Cruelty is the most detestable
of vices, and the nearest approach to pure and per-
fect wickedness of which human nature is capable.
It is possible that a starving man may be tempted
to pick a pocket to pass a bad shilling, or to obtain
money by false pretences, out of sheer misery and
despair. It is impossible—nay, it is inconceivable
—that any man can deliberately inflict horrible suf-
fering on a fellow-creature, still more on a wife or
a child, without having a heart so bad as to deprive,
him of all claim to mercy. Such cases are by no
means rare, and yet how seldom is a proper sense of
their enormity shown by those who try them, or
the utmost rigour of the law employed to prevent
their recurrence ! But it is not only the depth of
depravity evidenced by the deed that should be the
measure of retribution ; we are bound also to con-
sider the feelings of the victims. Now, there is
really no comparison between violent assaults
and common larcenies in respect of the pain
and loss which they respectively produce. It
makes one's blood boil to read of a man receiving
but half the punishment for nearly killing a
poor girl that was inflicted on another for
breaking a pane of glass. Who would not rather
have his purse stolen than get a black eye ? And if
this would be the estimate of an ablebodied man,
what would be that of weaker members of the com-
munity ? We have a right to demand that the com-
mission of the more grievous outrage shall not be
rendered the less hazardous, and, therefore the
more common by the decisions of our magistrates.
It argues a strange insensibility on their part to
the moral aspects of criminal justice that any such
tendency should have manifested itself. It would
argue a still stranger indifference on ours to the
safety and comfort of ourselves and our fellow citi-
zens if we failed to point out its inevitable effect in
multiplying crimes of violence and defeating the
efforts of the Legislature to check them.
POST.—At a time when German ambition
threatens the peace of Northern Europe it may not
be out of place to inquire whether every possible
step has been taken by those specially interested in
the maintenance of tranquillity to avoid hostilities.
The power of Germany preponderates so vastly over
that of Denmark that it might seem superfluous to
say that the Danish Government have done every-
thing in their power to appease their angry neigh-
bours, and to prevent a war in which, singlehanded,
they would be obliged to succumb. But although
this is undoubtedly so, still the strong claims which
Denmark can advance to the protection of the
principal European Powers might just as probably
prompt her to resist just demands as the conscious
nese of inherent strength. If Denmark is confident
that in the day of trial she can summon to her
as-
sistance Sweden and Great Britain,
France, she may feel as indifferent about
l stilt
were
em-
ployment of measures of conciliation as t
junc ure,
herself a first-class Power. At the present
pledged to
and proebaniy
and before any of these States are finallyp
readiness
take up her quarrel, it is therefore necessary
inquire whether Denmark hasa to
evincedrbitrament than
to accept some other mode
ill be earned into
threatened Federal execution w
.imp?ssible. The
that of the sword. We do nototfhink that the long
.
not
effect, but such an event is
present is the time for deliberation, ior no sooner
will the advanced guard of the German army cross,
or attempt to cross, the Eider, than Denmark's skiers
must determine on the course they will adopt. How.
over interested the maritiinePowers of Enropo may
be in obtaining the integrity of the Danish monar-
chy, they have a right to demand that they will not
be compelled to take part in a quarrel which, by
the exhibition of a little forbearance, might have
been avoided. Let us then inquire whether, if this
Federal execution, and the war which it will
un-
doubtedly occasion, are inevitable. Don,
Mark, and
those who have counselled Denmark, I have done their
utmost to avert the catastrophe. Ttl;s question has
been critically and ably discussed ' ,
in the lreading