The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY ~ EVENING, NOVEUBERIIS, 1862.

actually making the proposals, while it will give •
no occasion for offensive action on the part of the
Americans. They will see what a power with
which they have always been friendly thinks of the ,
prospects of the war. They will understand that
France thinks, as well as England, that a separation
is a certainty. The Northerns will be unable to
abuse their old friend, as they abuse England, for
so thinking, and the effect on public opinion may
at least be to render the idea of a final separation more
tolerable. Should the Democrats succeed, as it is quite
possible they may, at the state elections, the results of
which we are expecting to learn every day, then,
indeed, there may be a serious modification of the
councils at Washington. Which way the modifi-
cation will be, no one can yet tell. If the Demo-
crats obtain majorities, they may be able to impose
their pro-slavery policy on the Government, but
they may also only make the Republicans more
determined during the remaining two years of office
certain to them, to settle the question of slavery by
emancipation once and for all. So utterly uncer-
tain, at present, is the working of parties in the
North. Least likely of all is it, however, as we so
recently pointed out, that any party would dare to
sacrifice the immense advantages with which the
North will reopen the campaign, or that even the
Democrats could venture to recommend that_ the
Southern blookade should be intermitted, at the
very time when it has begun to tell so disastrously.

While the Irish are fighting with shillelaghs and
votes, in Hyde-park, at the polling booth, and in
the House of Commons, for the temporal power of
the far-distant POPE, those who better know his
Holiness, and who have full experience of what the
temporal power is, are doing their utmost to subvert
it. But let the French EMPEROR and Irish Priests
strain themselves to the uttermost, one thing they
cannot prevent, the falling away of Italian Priests,
as well as the laity, from the Papacy. A Catholic
revolution is now going on in Italy. It is no copy
of the Lutheran Revolution; no real revolutions
are copies bf each other ; but it is one, nevertheless,
which bids fair to arouse men's minds, ultimately
to the thraldom in which they have so long been
unreflectingly held. We refer to the fact that, in
round numbers, ten thousand priests have signed
the appeal to the POPE to denude himself of his
un-Christian temporalities, and that Italy has got
rid of thirty-four Bishops and Archbishops, and
finds herself quite happy without them.

The Italians and their priests are still sincere
Catholics. To them the Italian Church is a point
of honour, and their faith in it is like that of other
nations ; unquestioning among the women and
peasantry, fading off into scepticism rapidly,
in proportion as they enjoy the blessing of an
independent education—the natural reaction of
excessive belief, being generally excessive disbelief'.
The young Galileos of the present day, like those of
a former one, when they have to unlearn the infal-
lible Catholic doctrine of the motion of the sun
round the earth, are apt to cast away belief in
Christianity itself with belief in infallibly false
astronomy. But the educated and sceptical, as well
as the illiterate, who, in Italy, are the vast majority
all profess themselves Catholics. They would on
no account become Protestants ; not, at least, in the
common sense of the term, for the Passaglians who
have signed the address against the temporal po aver
are, of course, Protestants against the most eagerly
cherished prize of the Popedom. These ten thou-
sand are all from the middle classes of the clergy.
The memorial is as reverential and affectionate in
language as it well can be, but it distinctly declares
that while Catholic piety shouts 'Long live the POPE!'
pious patriotism cries at the same time, " Long
live Rome, the metropolis of the United Kingdom t"
They tell him that he might be the " Holy man
destined to bring these voices into harmony," and, in
fact, inform him in the language of dutiful children,
that his duty is to abdicate his kingdom of this
world, and to become a spiritual Sovereign only.
Well knowing his prolonged obstinacy, and pro-
bably quite aware that he and his will never
part with their temporal despotism while a
foreign despot sustains them, aware, too, that
Bishops will probably in many cases deprive them
of their bread for their boldness, these ten thousand
priests have yet the courage to act as Italian
patriots.

Now nothing can be more natural than that
Papal obstinacy should thus create a real Italian
Catholic Church, independent of the Papacy. It is
in some way like this that most religious revolutions
have begun. The first movers little perceived
whither they would be led. In this case, Father
PASSAGLIA, firmly planting his foot on the truth,
that a Christian bishop must be sinning against GOD
and man when he is so covetous of worldly temporali-
ties, as to grind his subjects beneath the mercenaries
of a foreigner, that he may call himself their tem-
poral Sovereign—may be led to inquire into the
validity of Papal ecclesiastical assumptions. What
the result would be need hardly be foretold. Ex
aminers into the foundations of ecclesiastical
authority, whether in the Papal sect or any other
of those which delight in hieraehies, always return
from the inquiry with one conclusion—one not very
favourable to hierarchal right divine. How likely
therefore is it that the unjust and cruel intervention
of the French EMPEROR, and the carnal ambition
and obstinacy of the PoPE, may result in the
greatest social and political blessing Italy could
gain, a national church independent of the
Papacy, an educator instead of an oppressor
of human thought. It wound be indeed
a glorious result of French oppression should
Italians be emancipated from religious, or
rather from superstitious, servitude ; should
priests become universally patriots, and schools,
universities, and libraries be delivered from
the police of an index expurgatorius, in which the
word GOD stands at the head of the list. De-
livered from intellectual and spiritual bondage,
there is no reason why the Italians should not
become one of the foremost nations of Europe ;
and the temporary want of their capital would be
amply repaid them in their awakening to a mental
isidepender.ce which would soon place them be-
side England and other lands where thought as
well as action and speech are really free.

After the extraordinary laxity of the decision
arrived at in regard to the case of JESSIE M'LACII-
LAN, it appears to us inevitable that the extreme
penalty of the law should not be carried out against
SAMUEL GARDNER. On Monday morning next
at 8 of the clock, in front of Newgate Prison, to the
tolling of the death-bell of St. Sepulchre, this
wretched man is to die the death of a dog in expia-
tion of a murder of which it is a matter of absolute
uncertainty whether he has any guilty knowledge
whatsoever. Upon JESSIE APLACIILAN—now that
the evidence brought forward on both sides has been
thoroughly sifted throughout—the testimony of all
the witnesses carefully examined, and scrupulously
cross-examined in open court, fixed the guilt of the
Glasgow Murder (a murder of peculiar atrocity)
fixed the guilt of that frightful murder to all but a
dead certainty. Again and again she (the accused)
was found during the trial to have deliberately per-
jured herself. She was found to be in possession
of the clothes of the deceased. Her own garments
were discovered torn to shreds, and saturated
With blood, hid away in a hedge far from

the scene of this brutal assassination. She was
proved to have pawned under an assumed name the
plate which was missing from the house in which
the victim's dead body lay, and from which dwel-
ling-house the missing plate had been purloined at
thebav
itni time
d,j
ea
asserted,
thertefra si
instance,
that
LatACul;
LOn A
l'i
the
night assassination.
the fi t nsEtn
night of the murder she slept in her own bed, in her
he
own room, at some distance from Sandyford-place—
was shown by the evidence of more than one re-
liable witness to have not done anything of the
kind, but, on the contrary, to have been mysteri-
ously absent from her lodgings during the whole of
that very night upon which the murder of her in-
timate friend was perpetrated. Yet this is the
miserable criminal, the justly pronounced sentence
of death upon whom has been shamefully commuted
into a sentence of penal servitude for life! How—
under which unwonted circumstances—we all know
but too well ! After a secret investigation into
the case before an unauthoritative tribunal—and in
defiance of two noteworthy facts, that ought, both
of them, in reason to have been taken very seriously
into consideration. Firstly, the fact that the ver-
dict of the jury—of a cautious Scotch jury—was
simply, bluntly, and without any reservation or
modification whatever, one of Guilty ! Not a whis-
per being heard from the jury-box recommending
the prisoner upon any,even the feeblest, plea to mercy.
That was the first circumstance attendant upon the
close of the four days' trial of JESSIE M'LACHLAN
that ought to have commanded from the Home
Secretary the most serious consideration before
the right hon. baronet ventured to interfere
with the verdict delivered by those twelve
cautious and conscientious jurymen! As we have
said, however, there is yet another fact notice-
able at the termination of this public trial
at Glasgow sufficient of itself, one might
have imagined, to deter any Home Secretary
from acting rashly in setting aside as value-
less or :erroneous the Verdict of Guilty delivered
against the prisoner by the jury, and the Sentence
of Death pronounced upon her by the Judge. This
second and especially notable circumstance being
the unusual emphasis with which that learned
judge prefaced his formal sentence of the criminal
to undergo the last penalty of the law—avowing
hie own absolute and complete belief that the
wretched woman before him was guilty of the crime
of which she had been accused, of which she had,
after a patient and prolonged investigation there in
open court, a trial presided over by himself, been
convicted! In flagrant defiance of all which, the
Home Secretary has swept aside all considera-
tions of this kind! And aided by a hocus-
pocus in a back parlour, before two or three
ex-official examiners—as judicial authorities
unrecognisable in any way whatever by the law
of the land—Sir GEORGE GREY has commuted the
sentence of death pronounced upon JESSIE
NPLACULAN, and has himself sentenced her, during
the rest of her natural, or, in one sense, one might
almost call it, unnatural life, to penal servitude ! It
is an illogical decision—a wholly inconsequential
commutation. Yet scarcely has the Right Hon.
the Home Secretary acted thus by JESSIE XPLACH-
LAN than he hesitates to interpose in any way be-
ween SAMUEL GARDNER and his fate! This
miserable prisoner—now under sentence of death
in the condemned cell at Newgate—unlike JESSIE
M'LACHLAN—having had no distinct evidence
whatever of his guilt adduced against him through-
out the whole of the trial ! Unlike JESSIE NPLACH-
LAN—having been "strongly recommended to
mercy" by the Jury who tried him ! The jurymen
so recommending him to mercy, obviously from
their own painful consciousness that there was
really no sufficient evidence adduced to satisfy any
sane observer that the prisoner ought to be hung.
SAMUEL GARDNER—unlike JESSIE NPLACHLAN,
accounted for his absence from home upon the
morning upon which his unfortunate wife was
murdered ! According to the prisoner's own
account of himself upon that fatal morning he left
home at four and returned home at eight o'clock
to find his wife murdered. Still more the state-
ment was proved upon oath to have been correct—
a policeman swearing that he had met GARDNER
(by trade a sweep) coming out of his house at 4 a.m.
And other witnesses swearing in evidence after-
wards that the accused had, during the four hours
of his asserted absence from his home on
the morning of the murder, been engaged
in sweeping their chimneys in various parts
of the City. Every one of those four hours
was in truth in this manner most satisfactorily
accounted for—and accounted for by the evidence
given in by alnumber of dispassionate and trust-
worthy witnesses upon oath. But—even then,
some might imagine that the murder for which
SAMUEL GARDNER is going to be hung on Monday
Newgate,
egahteis leaving his house at
/ might after all have
been perpetrated
pienrpfreotn of
before
at
ted
four o'clock on that wretched morning ! How do
the facts of the case, however, tend to affect any
such supposition as that? Why, when the body—
mutilated and with the throat cut—is found, shortly
before GARDNER'S return home at eight o'clock a.m.,
there is a warmth still perceptible in the lower part
of the abdomen ! This, remember, although life is
known to have become extinct through a
copious hemorrhage—the victim having plainly
bled to death. Under ordinary circumstances,
according to the evidence of the general medical
practitioner (a Mr. SEQUEIRA) who was hastily
called in to see the body when the alarm
was first raised—four hours are sufficient after
death to allow of a corpse becoming cold—when
there is no bleeding to death, observe ! Here, the
victim had manifestly, as we have said, bled to
death, and that copiously. And yet, at eight
o'clock, when GARDNER returns home (having left
that home, as we have seen, fully four hours previ-
ousdy), there was warmth still perceptible at the
lower part of the abdomen. Nor is this all—be-
tween four a.m. on the morning of the murder (at
which hour GARDNER was seen leaving his home,
as sworn by the policeman) and eight a.m., when
he returned to find his wife murdered—during
those four hours of the sweep's absence from his
home (engaged all the while in the City at his usual
avocations) screams were heard issuing from the
house, screams were heard in the street by casual
passers-by ! Not a spot of blood, moreover, was found
upon either the clothes or the person of the accused
when he was taken. Added to all which not a
glimmering notion of anything like a com-
prehensible motive prompting the man to the
wd s
perpetration of the crime could even be suggested !
Yet the man who stands thus, in the presence of
it,e this crime, Consistently protesting his innocence of
right out—the unfortunateevery
hismannerandthiswith
man who confronts this
terrible crime, with every • •
indication of his being
free from the guilt of • it—recommended to mercy
though he was by his hesitating jury—is neverthe-
less to die the death • t
of a dog on Monday morning
Unless the HOME SECRETARY opportunely inter-
poses in his behalf! Contrasting the two cases—
that of JESSIE M'LACULAN, and that of SAMUEL
GARDNER--Sir GEORGE GREY would do well, we
feel persuaded, while there is yet time, to issue
orders for a reprieve being
despatched to Newgate
—before SAMUEL GARDNER can be led out to the
gallows on Monday

LATEST NEWS.

PARIS, Nov. 14.

The hifoniteur of this morning announces that the
Siecle bas received a first warning, for having pub-
lished ar article on the number of the members of
the Corps Legislatif to be increased according to
the number of the inhabitants.

La France of this evening maintains the accuracy
of the analysis it lately published of the answer of
M. Drouyn de Lhuys to General Durando's circular,
and adds,—" The analysis we have given even
weakens the force of the original. M. Drouyn de
Lhuys states in his note that General Durando, in
his circular, desires, like Garibaldi, to deprive the
Papacy of Rome,"
Rentes closed at 70f. 45c., or 25c. lower than yes-
terday.

TURIN, NOV. 13, Evening.
The King returned to the capital to-day.
The reviews held by his Majesty at Piacenza and
Bologna were magnificent.

The King was enthusiastically cheered in all the
cities thrcugh which he passed.•
The inhabitants of Parma, Modena, and Bologna
assembled at the respective railway stations to ap-
plaud his Majesty.

NOVEMBER 14.

Legal proceedings have commenced in the Turin
Maize Court against Signor Boschi, formerly of the
Ministry, and Secretary-General of Public Works,
who is accused of abuse of his official functions.
Among the witnesses are Signori Peruzzi, Bastoggi,
and Arese, formerly in the Ministry, with several
senators, members of Parliament, and high func-
tionaries.

NAPLES, Nov. 13.
The brigand chief Cavalcanti has been arrested

here upon the point of embarking for Marseilles.

ATHENS, Nov. S.

The decree calling together the National Assem-
bly ordains that Greeks residing abroad shall be
competent to elect delegates to that body in the
ratio of one deputy to 1,000 votes, of two deputies
to 10,000, or of three deputies above 10,000.

COPENHAGEN, Nov. 14.

The English Ambassador was received to-day by
the King, and officially announced to his Majesty
the approaching marriage of the Princess Alex-
andra to the Prince of Wales.

The Government has published to-day the de-
spatches sent to Vienna and Berlin on the 6th of
November, in reply to the Austrian and Prussian
notes. These despatches, which are accompanied
by documentary evidence, energetically reject the
Austrian and Prussian demands of the 26th of
August with reference to Schleswig and Holstein,
and explain what the Danish Government considers
to be the real bearing of the conventions of 1851
and 1852.

The Danish Government requests that the nego-
tiations should be confined to the affairs of Hol-
stein, and renews the offer to grant autonomy to
Holstein. .

The official Gazette also publishes a Royal patent,
dated the 12th of November, by which the orga-
nisation of the local Government of Holstein, al-
ready announced in former messages, is officially
confirmed.