The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-20 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

THE OXFORD, 6, OXFORD-STREET, EVERY
EVEN ING.—Re-appearance of tlnaworth. the orizinal of
"Or any other man" -The Colleen Bawn, by Miss Caroline
Parkes—Mr. Maclagan's Entertainment Drew Dean, the
great Flautist—the Neapolitan Minstrels—Selections from
Verdi's " Ii Corsaro" and "Nabuco," Donizetti's "Don Se-
bastien," dzo., with full band and chorus.
Commence at 7.

THIS NEWSPAPER,
44THE SUN,"

Has now been finally and conclusively sold to
C. Kent, Esq., its principal editor, who was the pur-
chaser thereof at the auction at the sum of £2,420,
inclusive of the valuation of the plant, machinery,
furniture, and effects. The biddings ware on Thurs-
day re-opened, before the Chief Clerk of the Master
of the Rona, by the offer of an increase of £5OO ;
Mr. Kent then offered an increase of £BOO, and, no
further offer being made, he was, by an order of
the Master of the Rolls, declared the purchaser
for £3,220, inclusive of the plant, &c. Mr. Kent
has to pay the balance of his purchase money
into Court on or before Saturday, the 27th inst.,

and will then become the sole owner of the pro-
perty from that date.

ADASI RIVERS STEELE, Solicitor,
44, Bloomsbury-square, London, W.C.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tills Day. 1 Morning, 12h. 30m.—Afternoon, 12h. 58m.
To-MORROW.-Morning, lh. 24m.—Afternoon, lh. 52m.

attp
441.".4 TA, f rr;,-
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• " 4iete i

THE SUN.
LONDON, SATURDAY, DEC. 20, 1862.

The Royal Commissioners of the Great Interna-
tional Exhibition of 1862 have recently capped the
climax of their now perfectly consistent mismanage-
ment throughout. After inviting H.R.H. the
Prince of WALES to preside, early in the New Year
(1863) over the ceremonial of the distribution of the
Prizes awarded to the successful Exhibitors, they
have had the consummate indecorum to acknowledge
the gracious compliance of His Royal Highness
with their request by politely informing their
future SOTEREIGN that they would, upon second
thoughts, dispense with his offices upon the pro-
posed occasion—the design of a public distribution
of the medals, as originally projected, having been
abandoned as inconvenient by themselves, these
ever-blundering and ever-bungling Royal Commis-
sioners.

Nor is this all even—they have since then, in a
manner quite deliberately and gratuitously reite-
rated this flagrant indecorum and discourtesy. As
thus. It should be premised that the intention of
this Board of Sage, had been in every conceivable
respect charmingly in keeping with all their other
doings from first to last. They designed to
have the ceremonial of distribution conducted
with all suitable pomp in the early part of 1863 in
the empty hideous mausoleum of the dead and gone
Exeibition itself ! They proposed to gather together
in the shuddering cold weather of the late winter,
or at the very latest of the raw early spring, thirty
thousand or so of her MAJESTY'S lieges, presided
over by the youthful heir to the throne, his Royal
Highness having, as we have seen, graciously com-
plied with their most precipitate and indiscretely
ill-considered invitation. There in Captain
Fowice's horrible abortion of7a Building, ridiculously
compounded of a blending of several mammoth
barns, a jumble of gigantic cucumber frames, and
a couple of colossal glass domes, worthy in their
ribbed and swelling contour of this present Age of
Crinolines—the Commissioners actually had the
inhumanity to propose assembling together in order
that they might shudder for several hours in
the cold, at the modest charge of a guinea
a-head, those who might be in any way desi-
rous of seeing for themselves how wretched the
Building looked when stripped of its costly and
many-coloured contents, while his H.R.H. the
Prince of WALES, with half frozen fingers, handed
medal after medal to the more fortunate and the
more deserving among the Exhibitors. From the
first instant of the mention of this design, the
absurdity of it was apparent to every one—but the
Commissioners themselves. It gave one a sense
of intense discomfort—the mere outline of this
most sagacious proposition. It was evident upon
the instant that, unsatisfactory as the appearance
of the edifice indubitably was, even when adorned
ith all its magnificent and gorgeous adornments
--those treasures of the earth there accumulated
en /nesse from both hemispheres—its ugliness in
every Neap architecturally would be all the more
glaringly visible,
from the fact of the naked shell or
husk being the area
a of the assemblage. Beyond
which there Neese _
ever for the mere creature manifestly no facilities what-
huge structure left vacantcomfort of heating the and altogether unused
during the previous winter
ee
though, it is certainly to be e
very deeply
Whs. Eventually—
regretted,
not till after the Prince of WA/Ashadbeen asked
and had graciously consented to Preside
over the
Distribution, or rather himself to distribute the
Prize Medals to the Exhibitors—eventually
the Royal
Commissioners themselves recognised
thoughts what everybody else
upon second
before them had seen quite distinctly at the very
first blui,h_riareely, that the thing ought never in
reason to have been dreamt of. Recognising this
fact itt length quite unrristPkeably, they made even
bad worse by writing, almost one had said
disloyally, beyond all doubt
most undeservedly,
`put off" to his Royal Highness. A commu-
nication was addressed to his Royal High-
ness, intimating, in point of fact, that a little
calculation had served to convince the Royal Com-
missioners that the celebration to which his Royal
Highness had been invited, and one over which, he

_. _.-----
had generously consented to preside, must, after all
be—not postponed merely, but entirely and
definitively abandoned. As cool a proceeding,
this, in its way, as could very well have
been thought of—the last and fitting climax to
the blundering of the Royal Commissioners.
As though this.however were:not yet quite enough
as a specimen of miserably bad taste under the cir-
cumstances—the Royal Commissioners have just
now, as one might venture to say, literally perfected
their indiscretion by the fact, nay, also by the
very manner of their declining the handsome
offer volunteered to them in their dilemma by
the Crystal Palace Company ! An offer which
if accepted might even yet have enabled
the Royal Commissioners to carry out the scheme
of a distribution of prizes, with his Royal Highness

as The Distributor, not in that hideous shell of a
used-up Building at South Kensington, but in the
lovely Crystal Palace, among the verdant and

flowery slopes of Sydenham. Instead of availing
themselves of the generously-conceived and princely
offer of the use of that charming structure, the
Royal Commissioners, obtuse with a crass stupidity,
as it_ would seem, down to the very end of the last
chapter of their protracted history of mismanage-
ment, churlishly decline the offer at once, and
that, moreover, without even the grace of
a mere Passing show of hesitation. The
" put off " so the Royal Commissioners
thought—must perforce be looked upon as final.
' Their latest blunder, and in some respects their
greatest blunder (their amazing letter to the Prince
of WALES apprizing his Royal Highness that his
attendance, as President of the Distribution, could
be dispensed with) that last flagrant error of theirs,
the Royal Commissioners were determined, under
any circumstances, coute qui coute, to abide by.
Moreover, said they, the abandonment of the notion
of any ceremonious public distribution at all had
been intimated far and wide throughout this coun-
try—all over the continent of Europe—east, west,
north, and south the tidings of that abandonment
of the notion was flying to the ends of the earth.
Those tidings there was no time now left to
recal—so at least thought and argued the
Royal Commissioners. Therefore—they begged
leave to decline the proffered Crystal Palace
as the scene of any exhibition of the kind. The
Crystal Palace Company would really seem to have
been treated by the Royal Commissioners as though
they were "encumbering them with help," actor d-
ing to the happy phrase addressed with such de-
lightful irony by Doctor JOHNSON to the fastidious
and eminently supercilious Earl of CHESTERFIELD.
The Royal Commissioners were much obliged, but
they would rather not.

We would recommend to all who wish for some
authentic information on the temper, spirit, and
resources of the South in carrying on the present
war, a small duodecimo by a New Yorker, " Thirteen
Months in the Rebel Army." After reading it,
nothing will be plainer than that any communica-
tions from " own correspondents" at Richmond, or
any other place in the South, are of the smallest
possible value. So strict is the supervision of every
person, of all the journals, and even of the Post-
office itself, that nothing disadvantageous to the
South is suffered to leave it. The young writer of
this story was, so early as the beginning of 1861,
forced to volunteer into the Rebel army, merely in
consequence of having written in a letter home—
" This is a hard place to live in, as I had to ride
ten miles to get paper and ink to write this
letter." This led to his being brought before
a low, drinking, violent Vigilance Committee
in Arkausas, where he had been quietly
and industriously earning his living, observing the
utmost prudence on the subject of slavery. But he
was a Northern man, did not speak so well as he
ought to do of the semi-savage district he was in,
and it was by the merest good luck, the better temper
of two or three of the committee, and the exhibition of
two six-barrelled revolvers, thnt he got a vote of
acquittal. One fellow went out and brought a
rope to hang him into the room; and, after his
acquittal, he thinking it wiser immediately to leave,
and having taken a boat to Memphis, one of these
fellows got there before him with the letter—a
policeman took him before another committee there,
and he was again offered the alternative, in no
equivocal terms, of volunteering into the Southern
army, or of being hung! His very entrance into
the rebel army indicates the character of the men
who have no terms of vituperation bad enough for
Mr. LINCOLN'S arrests, and for General BUTLER'S
rule. And Memphis, where he was thus dealt
with, is the commercial capital of Tennessee.
From other instances which occur in his narra-
tive it is clear that this compulsion of Union men
to serve in the rebel army was universal. We are
all shocked at the brutality of Genera] M'NEIL, and
think that execution is too good for him; yet only
in regard to the number of the sufferers did this
savage outdo what the rebel officers also do in cool
blood. Two brothers, of the name of ROWLAND,
in Eastern Tennessee, while the rebels were raising
a force there, differed in opinion respecting the war.
The younger was vehemently loyal. They compelled
him to enlist. He protested in vain, always telling
them he would desert on the first opportunity.
The opportunity occurred at the capture of Fort
Donelson, when he joined the loyal army. After
this he was amongst some prisoners taken
at the battle of Pittsburg Landing, and was ac-
tually captured by the very regiment to which he
had previously belonged by compulsion. Some in
their fury attempted to kill him on the spot ; but
he was reserved for a more formal fate. No mere
guerilla captain like M'NEIL, bat the general of
division, IiARDEE, ordered him to be shot. The
general was indeed ashamed to witness the exe-
cution ; but he was shot, dying most courageously
and loyally, with just the same revolting parade
and formality as that practised by M'NEIL, and
some 10,000 troops were called out to witness this
murder ! Missouri might well reply to the
demand for M'NEIL by a demand for the
surrender of General HARDEE. That general
described ROWLAND as brooding over his fancied
wrongs, and said no sum of money could have in-
duced him to witness the execution, but that it was
necessary to prevent other desertions ! If this were
true, it gives us a pretty picture of the violence
used in the South to force Union men to fight.
The system of repression is, however, seen to
be complete. The Union sentiment dare not show
itself, if it existed. We often hear of the divisions
in the North. This in truth is really, in one sense
to its credit—it allows people to think as they
like, and to a great extent to talk as they like too ;
but thirteen months' service in the Confederate

surgeon, showed our I. Volunteer" that no Unionism
army in every capacity almost, ending as an army
Was allowed. The South is a unit, for it is united
by terrorism. Perhaps it would be more correct to
say that it had long ago driven away every anti-
slavery man, and could oniy have a few right-
minded, thoughtful persons of that character, who
would no more dream of than of committin expressing their opinions
g suicide; indeed, the two things
wo'ild be identical. The South
, he tells us, is ter-
ribly in earnest, and when the North becomes so,
it will no more allow the present liberty of expres-
sion and
action than the South does. Even the
Northern newspapers
are, lie says, one chief source