The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SATURDAY REVIEW.—There are some disadvan-
tages, undoubtedly, attending upon the political
longevity of which Lord Palmerston was so inces-
santly reminded by his Scottish admirers. One of
them arises out of the extreme handiness of the
topic for complimentary addresses, flattering leaders,
and the Ake. It is so easy to treat, and involves so
little disputable manner, that it is sure to form the
chief ingredient of all that class of compositions.
Unfortunately, however, it does not i❑ itself neces-
sarily involve any great statesmanlike qualities— •
and topics of eulogy which are dwelt upon with
exceptional frequency are apt to be looked upon as
the most prominent characteristics of the person '
who is the subject of them. Saying of a statesman
that he is venerable is rather like saying of an or-
dinary man that he is worthy, or of a young lady
that she is a nice unaffected thing. It is apt to
mean that there is nothing else to be said. But
there is another and far more serious inconvenience
in the longevity which is so much prized upon the
other side of the Tweed. It seems to have a
curious tendency to convert a man into a myth be-
fore his time. It has been truly said that the younger
Pitt became mythical before he had been dead ten
years. But then be died at the age of 46. When
a statesman lives till he is 80, he can hardly com-
plain if the my th•making instinct inherent in man-
kind declines to wait till he is dead. It has already
been for some years busy with what it is difficult
to avoid calling Lord Palmerston's memory. He is
now the ideal type of a healthy animalism—the
embodiment of•animal spirits and physical vigour.
He is to the Genial school as the incarnation of the
cardinal virtues of toughness and high spirits; and
they are resolved that their triumph shall not be
evanescent. An enthusiastic votary of that per-
suasion, writing in the Times, is not satisfied that
the first saint in their young calendar should be the
leading English statesman of his day. He wishes
to make their supremacy eternal. From this day
forth, all successful politicians in this country are
to be distinguished professors of Genialism, Much
is not said about the intellectual qualities of the
English statesman of the future. These are com-
paratively immaterial, and may be left to take care
of themselves. The " social element" is the one
thing needful. Suck qualifications as " the gift of
speech, capacity for office, generous patriotism,
political courage," are treated with supreme con-
tempt. The Premiers who are henceforth to rule
over England may or may not be endowed with
these; but they "must be able to ride, shoot, fish,
and play at cricket, besides understanding some-
thing about various other sports in which
it is needless to join, but which yet contribute
topics to every table"—by which circumlocution,
we may presume, the Turf is gently indicated.
Further, it is necessary for a statesman's political
success that he live out of doors, be much on horse-
oack, and learn to endure the extremes of heat and
cold." He must be " ever in front of life," and "if
he has to work night and day fur a week, he must
find himself the better for it at the end." Such is
what an American would call the latest platform of
the Genial school. Any politicians who are unable
to satisfy it may save themselves the trouble of can-
vassing Genial votes. It might be invidious to
ask how many existing statesmen could claim this
catalogue of virtues. We shonld like to see a com-
petitive examination in these acquirements, held
for the benefit of admiring foreigners. Few spec-
tacles would be more edifying, and, except for the
infallibly disastrous results, more entertaining, than
the sight of all the members of the past and present
cabinets trying whether they can " ride, shoat, fish,
endure the extremes of heat and cold, and work
night and day for a week, without being the worse
for it." Clearly the only course for the Queen,
when next there is a vacancy in Downing-street,
will be to naturalise M. Jules Gerard, and to re-
quest him to form a Ministry from among his
friends. It is a very common failing in great minds
to value themselves most for that which is least va-
luable in them. Richelieu was specially proud of his
powers as a poet, and Newton used to lay the
greatest stress upon his divinity. But it does not
often happen to a man that the same mistake is
made for him by his friends. Lord Palmerston's
case is, in this respect, peculiarly unfortunate. He
has many qualities which have obtained for him
the confidence of his countrymen, and which
will secure for him a lasting name. His wonderful
tact in managing rival parties at home and contend-
ing Governments abroad has enabled him to carry
alike his country and his Ministry through junctures
of considerable difficulty. He has shown great ad-
ministrative skill on one or two occasions in which
the country would have been seriously perilled by

incompetence. His foreign policy, right or wrong,
has not been impotent or purposeless. It has left
a mark upon the destiny of Italy, of the Turkish
Empire, and of China; and its effects will fot m an
important element in their future history. These
are merits that have procured him a great popu-
larity, which in the main ho has fully deserved. But,

in addition to this set of qualities, his political
position has forced him to cultivate another set of
a very different kind. He has never, during his
present administration, been in the command of
more than a very precarious majority, and he has
been weighted with the alliance of one or two un-
popular colleagues. The result is, that he has been
driven to resort to unusual expedients for keeping
himself in power. Other Ministers have been
content to rely on the strength of their party, or
the excellence of their measures. Lord Palmer-
ston has been compelled to supplement these by
supports of a less ambitious' kind. He has been
forced to sustain his position by a process of per-
petual electioneering.

SPECTATOR.—The vague expectation that after
Easter home politics may be more lively, is, we con-
ceive, unfounded. Apart from accident, the rise of
some wholly unexpected question, the death of some
eminent individual, or an unintended defeat of the
Ministry on some point which Mr. Walpole had
not perceived in time, there is nothing visible which
promises gossip mongers the smallest excitement,
or politicians the least satisfaction. There will be
more to do, of course, as there always is after
Easter, for there will be the budget to discuss, and
Lord Palmerston has promised an explanation about
his Polish negotiations; and some American ques-
tions, in spite of the unreasonable temper of the
house, must receive a patient hearing. Sir George
Grey, too, may positively be whipped into a show
of activity, and it is not very likely the session will
Pass without one of those detni-theological debates
which the house can never avoid, and for which,
with its habitual reticence, it is so unfit an arena.
The country does not want anything, now that
Easter has passed, any more than it did when Par-
liament reassembled, and till it wants something
there can be none of that external pressure which
stimulates representatives into energy. Lanca-
shire distress, we trust and believe, will not become
a party question, for though Liberals should be a
little more inclined to delay, and Tories to schemes
of immediate emigration, the bulk of our public
men are certain on such a point to consider only the
permanent welfare of the State, and landowners
and millowners are for once united by the bond of
a common interest. The Ministerial scheme is sure
to be moderate, if not feeble, and it is feeble mee-
sures, 1.e., measures which give the country time, and
make no concession to the demand for spasmodic
energy, which will best content all but the few on
the one side who would sacrifice Lancashire if only
they might be rid of Manchester, and the few on
the other who would feed the operatives for ever
out of State funds, rather than endanger the faintest
chance of a revival in their trade. Lord Palmerston
will most certainly not commit himself to any theo-
logical question, his friends will contrive to gild the
coming educational pill in some endurable manner;
and for the rest, the Tories in England want no-
thing, and that is precisely what Lord Palmerston
so cheerily professes to give. Out of England every-
body wants a great deal, but then no two men are
agreed as to the lengths they are willing to go, or
to combine in securing some possible instalment of
good. A very large party in England would approve
the recognition of the South, and another large party

desire that the Southern fleet should be seized, but
neither are prepared, or indeed able to carry their

desires into action, and the result is a passive appro-
val of all that Ministers do. /f they demand the sur-
render of the Peterhoff, the anti-Yankee feeling is
i gratified; f they seize theAlexandra,Southern friends
mutter discontentedly that after all public decency
must be respected. Lord Palmerston is certain in
any case to maintain the national honour with even
too high a hand, Earl Russell is equally certain on
Amer.can claims to be coldly but clearly just, and,
short of a great concession or a great injustice there
can occur nothing, in our American relations which
would consolidate the fractions of jarring opinion
into a strong reproof. So, also, with the Polish
revolt, which still engrosses Continental atten-
tion, and is considered by diplomatists the vital
question of the hour. Finally, the chance of a
purely party contest, of a desperate struggle of Outs
and Inns, directed to office and not to a measure,
seems as far off as ever. The Liberals, growing
audibly, still march under Lord Palmerston's
banner, and, r.t, the worst, only tell Mr. Brand not
to rely too implicitly on their votes. mey
c°lll-
ar?.
mand, when the Irish are not in ill bumour,
Mr. Cobden not furious with the Premier, a w, o
ing half of the house ; and when those contingencies
occur, which happens at least ozoda.t gmonth, there
is the reserve guard at hand.
reasteqssuin
eos
lions or party conflicts a parliamentary
seems to the politician dull.
isasinjurious
Whether that
to
h
tdull-
ness, the offspring of content,
nation as to newspapers, may be questioned ; but
the prosperity produced by the steadiness of the
current of affdirs is, Perhaps, not greater than the

prosperity, Which results from the intellectual
activity stimulated by, (tensional shocks. Sleep is
only invigorating when it is not too long.
LONDON REVIEW.—The Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer seems disposed to avail himself of the calm-
ness of the session by obtaining from unquestioning
houses their legislative sanction for some of his
crotchets. After an interval of ten years he has re-
turned to the attaek on the Three per Cents., which
failed so sadly in 1853. He has passed the Post
Office Savings Banks Bill through the Commons,
and, having safely landed it in the Lords, he has
justified the prediction we made at the time it was
introduced, and has announced his intention of in-
troduaing after the recess a bill to extend its provi-
sions to the funds of ordinary savings banks. The
operation on the funds involved in the Savings
Bank Bills is so intricate that its effect does not
seem easily understood ; but, as au interlude between
these two bills, Mr. Gladstone has brought forward
a third measure, in which the funds are openly dealt
with. The Stock Certificates Act announces in its
title anintended operation on the 3 per Cents. The
details of the Stock Certificates Bill are sufficiently
simple. At present its operation is confined to the
Three per Cent. Consols and the New Three per
Cents.; any person having his name in the Bank
books as a proprietor in these stocks will be enabled
to obtain in lieu of such registered title certificates
in blank transferable to bearer, with coupons for the
half-yearly interest annexed to them. It is provided
that the certificates shall only be issued for £5O
stock, or exact multiples of £5O, and that no certi-
ficate"shall be issued for a larger sum than £l,OOO.
This fast regulation is one of those rules dear to of-
ficial persons, but incomprehensible to ordinary
mortals. The nature of the case forbids any limit to
the number of certificates issued, and supposing any
one should ever wish to hold certificates for £lO,OOO
stock, the only ends attained by forcing on him ten
certificates instead of one, are the increased con-
sumption of paper and the multiplication of writing.
The regulation is precisely like that which requires
a person who wishes to send £3O by Post-office
orders to take out six orders for £5 each, instead of
one for the whole sum. To return, however, to the
details of the scheme : the coupons will be paid
as they become due, minus the current income tax ;
and the payment of the amounts upon them to the
bearer absolves the Bank from any further
liability. It would appear, though it is nowhere
expressly stated, that an innocent purchaser of a
stock certificate which had been stolen would
be protected in his possession. A holder can secure
himself against loss from theft by availing himself
of a process which will at the same time deprive his
certificate of any peculiar value. He can write upon
it his name, address, and quality, and thereupon
the certificate becomes absolutely inalienable, ex-
cept so far as the title would pass by the death,
bankruptcy, or (in the case of a women) marriage of
the holder. For the purposes of sale, a certificate
with a name inscribed on it—or, as it is called in
the act, a nominal certificate—would only be a bore.
A cautious man who had written his name on his
certificate, and wished afterwards to realise, must
present the certificate at the Bank, prove his iden-
tity, get himself re-entered on the Bank books as
an ordinary stockholder, and then procure a tre nsfer
of the sum so entered into the name of the purchaser
from him. It is clear that, instead of writing his
name on a blank certificate, a holder had better re-
turn it at once to the Bank, and get himself in-
scribed on the Bank books as an ordinary proprietor.
A section provides that no holder of stocks as a
trustee shall take out a certificate, unless he is au-
thorised to do so; and should he do so without such
authority, he shall be punishable as guilty of a
breach of trust. We are left to the law as to what
the punishment will be, and unless the trustee is
guilty of fraudulently converting the stock to his
own use, the threat is little more than a brutum
fulmen. There is no provision for the protection of
those who have obtained a distringas over any share
in the stocks. It may be asked, what use is this
Stock Certificates Act designed to serve P bat the
question is more easily asked than answered. The
act will apparently involve the nation in some ad-
ditional expense, as it contains a clause enabling
the Treasury to make an extra payment to the
Bank on account of the trouble, expense, and re-
sponsibility imposed upon it ; but we may hope
that such extra payment will be small, as the ope-
ration of the act itself will most probably be very
limited.
EXAMINER.—For the brutal murder of Jessie
M'Pherson in Mr. Fleming's house at Sandyford,
proved against Jessie M'Lachlan, that criminal was
most righteously sentenced to death. To the crime
of murder she added that of false witness, and by
breach of the ninth commandment she succeeded in
procuring from the blind mercies of the Home Office
partial absolution from her penalty for breach of
the sixth. But her false witness was of the most
detestable kind. Found red-handed, the prints of
her naked foot stamped in the blood of her victim,
afterwards selling the plate for her own use, seek-
ing to dye and alter and take to herself her victim's
clothes, carrying her own clothes dabbled in blood
by railway to a distant field, there tearing them
and scattering them abroad, exculpating herself
when accused by three successive sets of minutely
circumstantial lies, and not daring, when on her
trial to play the last card in her hand in a fourth
set of lies, also minute and circumstantial, that
could be on the trial openly met and confuted, this
woman was declared guilty on the clearest evidence.
It was only after judgment pronounced, that her ad-
vocate produced in court her last and most infamous
set of excuses, in which she sought to save herself
by casting the load of her own infamy upon an in-
nocent old man. If the contents of that paper were
true, it contained the woman's only just defence, and
would have been produced upon her trial and sub-
stantiated. It would not bear open judicial sifting,
and was therefore produced after the verdict, for the
purpose of creating a diversion in the prisoner's fa-
vour among weak-minded people out of doors, and
giving a handle for appeals to the Home Office. And
the Home Office actually admitted an appeal founded
upon this pretended confession, one of a series of con-
tradictory confessions, that in some part refuted itself,
and that was rightly characterised by the judge,with
all the public evidence before him, as infamous.
The Home-office listened to the appeal, and under-
took in the secret way customary to it when it acts
as a private criminal court of cessation, to inquire
into the lie. The result of the inquiry was an un-
explained commutation of the sentence of the mur-
deress from death to imprisonment for life. This
is assumed by more than half Glasgow, and, by all
professional philanthropists to be justification of
the calumny with which a wretched woman sdught,
through a fresh victim, to escape from the last
penalty of murder. By help of Sir George Grey,
who is virtually her accomplice in this dark work
if he do not publish all the evidence that justified
his interference with the course of' law, Jessie
M'Lachlan has lied herself out of the hangman's
noose and an innocent man into infamy. Mr. Stir-
ling will next Friday bring this matter before the
House of Commons. No British subject ever suffered
greater cruelty at the hands of despotic foreigners
than old Mr. Fleming has suffered at the hands of
the Home-office if there was no ground for the com-
mutation of M'Lauchlan's sentence. If there was
found any fresh ground of suspicion against him he
has a right to know what it was, that it may be
openly established against him, or that he may not
be denied the opportunity of clearing himself, as we
are sure he can. He and his family have courted
and prayed for full and open investigation. The
old man has been stabbed in the dark with consent
of the Government. When it is a mere question of
injudicious or judicious mercy to an individual
offender, the Home-office may act unchallenged on
private information. Here there is not only a deal-
ing at discretion with the guilty, there has been
imputation cast upon the innocent. We cannot
doubt that Mr. Stirling will be supported on Friday
in his endeavour to procure fair English justice for
the Fleming family in this most wretched case.
LAW TIMES.—The " Devil's Own" have main-
tained their reputation at the grand review at
Brighton on Monday. By universal admission they
were the most soldierly of all the corps that took
part in the business of the day. We should have
been inclined to question our own judgment, for we
have a natural bias towards our brother lawyers,
and a pride in our profession, of which we are not
ashamed, but which might lead us to look upon them
with partial eyes. But the opinion we now place on
permanent record in this Journal of the law and
that
atlhbee
lawyers, is that expressed by all the newspapers,
Init
nsusually
Court yCluoreplisnewderteo
praisewitourhout exception,c
craft,
conspicuous above all the rest
for the physique of
the men who formed it, for the precision of their
step and movements, for the neatness of their accou-
trements, for the m
and for their martial anbifest perfection of their drill,
earing. The question has
been asked
often why this should be? Lawyers are
not men chosen for their bodily, but for their mental
powers' The Inns of
Court have some advantages in
frequent opportunities for drill while at home ; but
then they are on circuit and in vacation for at least
half the year. Wherefore is it, then, that they make
sech admirable soldiers? We believe it to be the
result of the habit of obedience to those placed in
authority over them, which a lawyer contracts in-
sensibly, and practises every day of his life in the
courts. Implicit obedience is the foundation of drill,
and drill makes the soldier.

A SAD CASE.—At the Hull quarter sessions, on
Friday, a case of peculiar interest was heard. A
woman, born a Prussian, the daughter of a general and the
wife of an eminent merchant, was tried for felony for the
fourth time, and sentenced to three years' penal servitude.
The Recorder said he knew her to be of distinguished
family, but an uncontrollable love of drink had brought her
to this miserable condition,