The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-26 00:00:00

Tilt SUN LONDON, SA TURD IT EVENING, APRIL 26, 1862,

Adjutant-General in Ireland, that he must either
to con-
leave the tervice or be tried by court-martial. He
asked for a delay of four and twenty hours,
suit his friends, but it was refused, and he was told
Ile con-
that a quarter of an hour was sufficient.
sented, and wrote an application for leave to retire
from the service ; but a night's reflection brought
repentance with it, and he applied to the Horse
I Guards direct to have his application cancelled, on
the ground that it was written under intimidation
It was, thereupon, decided by Sir GEORGE BROWN,
the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Ire-
land, that Captain ROBERTSON, of the 4th Dragoon
Guards must be brought without further delay
before a court-martial. And before a court-martirl
the unfortunate officer was brought accordingly.
With what result we all know. Acquittal upon
two of the charges, and conviction upon the other—
the whole being inconsequentially followed up by
the sentence that he be cashiered ! That sentence,
however, it now appears, her MAJESTY benignantly
refuses—on the statement, remember, of the Judge
Advocate-General, and with the knowledge, of
course, of his Royal Highness the Commander-in-
Chief—positively and authoritatively refuses to
confirm. Justice having been tempered with
mercy, Captain ROBERTSON is formally acquit-
ted, and returns to his duty now in obedience
to the gracious command of the SOVEREIGN, without
a slur upon the whiteness of his honour as an officer
and a gentleman.

Amidst the excitement of the American war, and
the attention it awakens even on this side the At-
lantic, let us not overlook what ought to be a more
interesting subject to us—we mean the behaviour
of those of our own people who suffer under it. The
blockade, which is, we trust, to transfer the cotton
supply of Lancashire from slaveholding America,
to Free India, must, in the process, cause wide-
spread suffering through our cotton manufacturing
districts. Every day brings us fresh accounts of
thousands out of employ, and still greater numbers
working but half time—of operatives enduring
privations which compel them to resort to parish
relief—sorely, indeed, against their will, and of
masters working their mills from charity, rather
than faith and hope, because they could not bear to
have their old workmen to depend on legal relief.

Let our American friends look across the water,
and do justice to all this. What keeps so quiet and
patient such a mass of suffering men, and of suffer-
ing masters too P Why do they not, as a body, de-
mand of the Legislature to give them cotton or
bread—the former rather, for they are too
proud to ask for the latter ? French workmen do
appeal to their Government, and, with the leave
of our American friends, were they in a like case
Americans would break the blockade. Had they
an unquestioned naval superiority, and did the in-
ferior fleets of any power cut of the bread of their
workmen,—we think Mr. ADAMS would not be
answerable that his countrymen would not compel
their President to break the blockade. What then
keeps our industrious fellows quiet under enforced
idleness, and want? Nothing whatever but respect
for law. Americans in the same position would
Lynch their Government if it did not open the ports.
They would exclaim our country right or wrong.
They would deny that any people, and Britishers
especially, had any right to starve Americans. Mr.
SEWARD would prove to the whole world—of Ame-
ricans—that the case was a wholly exceptional one;
that the law of nations would not require any
nation to respect blockades to its own starvation ;
that reason and common sense were anterior to, and
the foundation of, international law; and that the
authority to which all New Englanders defer ex-
cepted from moral censure the thief who stole to
relieve his hunger. Indeed, we could more easily
write an argument for an English SEWARD,
under our circumstances, than for our
PALMERSTONS and RUSSELLS, who insist on
not interfering, and ask the unemployed opera-
tives to suffer in patience.
Probably never has a case occurred in which
England had so strong grounds for disputing the
technical interpretation of what she has unfortu-
nately hitherto regarded as binding international
law. She has always asserted in the strictest form
the legitimacy of a real blockade, but she never be-
fore suffered as she now does from a blockade aris-
ing out of the quarrels of another power, she hav-
ing the fullest power to break it. She has, in
former cases, been the blockading power herself;
or the blockade has merely affected some minor
branch of industry, or perhaps driven us to supply
ourselves from sources a little less convenient. We
have now, on the contrary, to be almost pharasai-
cally legal—we " pay tithe of the mint anise and
cummin" of international law, and overlook the
" weightier matters of judgment and mercy." We
respect the rule that a real blockade ought to be
binding, but we overlook the law of self-preserva-
tion and of mercy to our own millions.
We are not, however, pleading for an alteration
of our course. While we could make out the
strongest commonsense case for doing so, we would
never compromise our national honour. We would
not afford the pretext for its being said that we

maintained one set of international laws for other
nations, and another for ourselves. Let our honour
be above suspicion. When the understood law of
blockade is done away, let it be by the universal con-
sent of nations; and, as we should be among the
last probably to consent, let us not be among the
first to enable other nations, by our acts, to require
it of us.

Srill, to return to the point from which we
started, it must never be lost sight of that all this
time the conduct of Lancashire men, and masters,
too, is deserving of all praise; it tells France and
the Continent that we are not, in the un-
worthy sense, " a nation of shopkeepers"
—that if, indeed, we are such a nation, then our
shopkeepers are as fit to rule the world as was the
Roman Senate; and in respecting the rights of
others a little more so. It tells America that we
are not cotton slaves. That neither the South
could purchase our recognition by withholding cot-
ton, nor the North reproach us with intervention in
regard to her blockade, to procure it. We have
seen some indications lately of Americans begin-
ning to comprehend our resolute self-denial, we only
hope they will have the magnanimity to confess
that their suspicions have been altogether un-
worthy.

When our Chancellor of the Exchequer, the na-
tion's steward, steps forth to remind the country of
the desirableness of economy, he ought to have both
our encouragement and our serious attention. The
leader of the Tories may taunt and sneer end re-
proach him with being, as one of the Cabinet, a
party to the expenditure for which he has to pro-
vide, but the country regards all that, and justly,
as the mere temper of a disappointed man who
consoles himself by trying a second time to sting a
superior, and, politically, more upright man,
to death. The country and the House of Commons
will be foolish indeed, if they tolerate against Mr.
GLADsTONE the spite which annoyed to the utter-
most Mr. GLADSTONE'S great predecessor. And
we must confess we often wondered that honour-
able gentlemen on the Tory benches, 'whatever their
envy of Mr. GLADSTONE, should publicly condescend
to cheer invectives, the motives of which were so

offensively transparent, and which were uttered in
the most palpable disregard of the public service
Mr. GLADSTONE, unlike his skilful censor, cannot
act a part. He believes in his principles, and
like every sincere man, his faith may sometimes go
to the verge of enthusiasm. But Mr. GLADSTONE'S
is a faint
which saves and gives life to our com-
merce, by getting rid of the burdens which would
sink it, and which labours to save our revenue
too, by the double process of reducing our ex-
penditure, and by repealing taxes which burdened
us more than they advantaged the national revenue.
Is such a man to be left unsupported, to the
subtle carpings of a man who, having twice
filled the same office, has not left on record one
solitary act for which the nation thanks him, or
which history will even mention. Shall a mere
routinist or blunderer in finance be encouraged in
harassing a Financial genius ?

Mr. GLADSTONE, we have said, is no actor.
Ho knows, as we all know, that, by a useful
constitutional fiction, ho and the rest of the Cabi-
net must be supposed to be of one mind—and
they are so, thus far, that if he were not allowed
to express the sentiments and views he does, he
would doubtless quit them. If the Cabinet re-
garded seventy millions a-year of taxation as a
palladium of our national security and prosperity,
Mr. GLADSTONE, we may be sure, would honour-
ably resign—he would take his place below
the gangway ; for, to rejoin the benches where
Free-trade masks cover Protectionist features, he
is far toe honest to do. But what if the Cabinet,
or the more influential majority in it, believes
with Mr. GLADSTONE that the country demands
the present high expenditure too generally to be
easily resisted—while they would willingly curtail
it—where, then, is the inconsistency of the Nation's
Steward openly indicating his conviction that
the expenditure is an unhealthy one ? What

if the Cabinet thinks its most suitable mem-
ber should be a missionary to a too apathetic,
or even extravagant public on this point? What is
Wormwood and gall to Mr. DISRAELI is that Mr.
GLADSTONE and the Government will not give him
and his unscrupulous followers an opportunity of
raising an endless clamour against the Government
for starving the public service, by proposing redue-

tions before the country clearly saw their expe-
diency. How utterly reckless the whole faction is,
the Revised Code has shown plainly ennugh. Even
when the Government, as honest men, only pro-
Posed such a reduction as could not be made ex-
cept by refusing payment to those who had earned
nothing—we all know how gladly they seized on
the selfish clamour of the interested, as a means
to extort money for doing nothing from the na-
tional exchequer. Mr. GLADSTONE and the Go-
vernment are, we think, quite right in not attempt-
ing retrenchment in the teeth of the Galway Packet
jobbers and the mutilators of the Revised Code.
They will, more wisely, teach the country first;
and then, when those who have b pay demand safe
retrenchments, Mr. DISRAELI and his suffragans
must bite their lips and acquiesce. Itimay grieve
them not to assail retrenchment, as it now grieves
them to be doomed to silence on Italy, but silent
they will have to be.
To us Mr. GLADSTONE'S observations at Man-
chester on the state of the national finances, seem
pre-eminently manly as well as just. He himself,
indeed, said that he regarded it as his first duty to
practice no concealment, but in Parliament, or out
of it, to bring the real state of things before the
people. Happily while there is an obvious call for
financial economy, there is to ground for the
slightest alarm. The revenue and the expendi•
ture just balance, and the expenditure is
diminishing. Mr. DISRAELI clamours for a
large balance in hand, but he sneaks
out of any suggestion .for creating it.
Why ? Because had he proposed reductions the
Government would have gladly at.,,vptcd Lliew, and
the Tories could not have repeated the treachery to
the public interests they practised in regard to the
Revised Code. Had he, on the other hand, proposed
new taxes, even the present DERBY elected Parlia-
ment—the Parliament recruited by Galway and
Dover and Cunard contracts, and similar means'
would have been afraid to sanction them—while he
himself shrunk from the odium of going to the
country, a second time, on a doubled house-tax or
something like it.
Mr. GLADSTONE takes the more consistent course.
He lays down that seventy millions a year is an
abnormal expenditure. He denies, therefore, that
we ought in such years of excessive expenditure to
force the nation to provide a large balance. We
have a peace expenditure just now, like the highest
spring-tide aided by a strong east wind up our
river; and it would be as foolish to. exhaust the
nation by taxes more than sufficient to meet it as to
waste our labour in the other case by constructing
embankments ten feet higher than the flood. The
proofs of this fact do not require detail. When in
1853 we had an expenditure of 55a millions and a
revenue of 59 millions, there can be nothing now to
require the present extravagant difference. When,
with a sixteen-penny income-tax, during the Rus-
sian war, we never raised so much as we now do,
it is undeniable that we ought to bring our taxation
below what that of a costly war demanded. It is
broad facts like these which will now put to the
rout all the interested sophistries of Toryism, and
all the splenetic ingenuities of mortified party
ambition.

One reply, to his adversaries of our gifted and
1 honest Chancellor of the Exchequer we ought to
give in his own words—" Now, there are those who
tell you that this state of our finance, which I hold
forth to you as unhealthy, is owing to the delin-
quencies of the Government, and almost entirely,
perhaps, to the delinquencies of a particular indi-
vidual. There are those who would say, If you
had imposed some more taxes, or if you had reduced
fewer, we should have been able to show a better
state of the account.' Gentlemen, with all the con-
viction of my mind, and in the broadest sense, I
deny that statement. The taxes we have reduced
have been taxes in which the receipts of the Exche-
quer bore no proportion to the burden imposed upon
the people. Even if, at the moment, they are not
fully replaced, it is our business not to confine our
view to the moment. After the lapse of one or
two years, we know that the result of such measures
wisely chosen has ever been to make the Exchequer
richer; and also that, in the meantime, their effect
is, under a great weight of taxation, to induce, dis-
pose, and enable the people to bear its pressure."
These words are the key to the whol3 financial
policy of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has
faith in fi ee trade. Will the country willingly
again exchange him for one who swallowed it only
in compulsion, with many wry faces, and who has
never thoroughly digested it to this day.

Her Majesty the Queen will hold a Privy Coune
this day (Saturday) at Osborne, Isle of Wight.

Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz is expected in town in a few days
from Germany.

His Excellency Mr. Adams, the United States
Minister, has taken, for a term of years, the house lately
occupied by Mr. Russell Sturgis, in Upper Poitland-place,
whither the office of the legation has been transferred.
The Duke of Somerset has returned to his resi-
dence in the Admiralty from Osborne.
The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland are
expected to arrive at Northumberland House on Monday
next, from Alnwick Castle.

LATEST NEWS.

RAGUSA, APRIL 25.
A battle has taken place between the Turks and
be insurgents at Bjelopogiie, in Albania.
Hassem Pasha, the Turkish Commander, lost
our cannon and 500 men.

TURIN, APRIL 2:5.
The National Bank has determined to take
Italian Five per Cent. Rentes upon deposit, at the
rate of 70.

ROME, APRIL 22.

The French and Italian troops have come to an
arrangement for the suppression of reactionary
movements on the Papal frontier.
In conformity with this agreement, French troops
have entered the Neapolitan territory, advanced as
far as Castellaccio, and, in eoncert with the Italian
troops, pursued Chiavone's band. Chiavone, how-
ever, took refuge in the mountains, and the French
troops then returned to the Roman States. Near
Veroli they seized a cart laden with arms, ammu-
nition, and military uniforms, sent to the brigands
by Francis 11.

ST. PETERSBURG, APRIL 25.

The Journal de St. Petersburg of to-day pub•

lishes an Imperial ukase, reorganising the Muni-
cipal Council of Moscow, the members of which are
henceforth to be elected by the city corporations,
after the plan adopted in St, Petersburg.
The Northern Bee of to-day gives an official
denial to the report that the produce of the tax on
brandy will continue to be farmed after the Ist of
Sun ..ry, 1800.