The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 25, 1862.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tiris DAY.—Morning, 9h. 40m.—Afternoon, 10h. 25m.
TO-MORROW. -Morning, 11h. 10m.—Afternoon,illh. 45m.

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 1862.

The boast of JEFFERSON DAVIS that the Confede-
rates were prepared to dispute " the vaunted naval
supremacy of the North" turns out not to have been
a vain one. For some time it has been reported
that the old Merrimac was being iron-plated
and equipped to do battle for the South, but we
hardly expected to hear that she had suddenly come
out from Norfolk Navy Yard, and in fair open fight
had sunk one Federal man-of-war, and, apparently
by the terror created by the act, had caused another
to surrender. Yet such is the fact. It is also the
fact that another iron-clad Federal vessel being
brought into action, the two ironsides fought fiercely
for five hours, the Merrimac being at last obliged
to retire, though nut much injured.
With what intense interest will all our naval men
scrutinise, as they arrive, the details of these ac-
tions. They are the first in the history of naval
warfare between both iron and wood, and iron and
iron. In the brief form in which we have the ac-
counts to-day, they are quite a study. The Merri-
mac herself was protected by all the ingenuity of
American mechanics, perhaps the most inventive
and ingenious in the world. She was covered with
plates, bows and stern alike, down to two feet be-
low the water line. The sloping arrangement,
"like the roof of a house," was adppted ; and it was
so far successful that the broadsides of the Cum-
berland and the Congress, which we expect
to find mounted heavy guns, did her no harm
whatever. By the next day the newly iron-
plated Federal ship, the Monitor, was brought up;
we are not told in what form she was plated, but
as nothing is said, we expect to find that it was in
the less remarkable and ordinary manner. Yet the
Monitor succeeded at last in forcing a hole through
the port side of the Merrimac. Of course, we are
curious to learn the comparative power of the guns
of each ship, as well as the style of the plating.
The Monitor was uninjured, however, after five
hours' firing, and we expect to find that her oppo-
nent was armed with some of the most formidable
of the numerous guns which were left to the Con.
federates when the Federals had to burn all that
was combustible at Norfolk Navy Yard and aban.
don it.

The battle, however, fully illustrated one thing--
the absolute helplessness of a wooden sailing ship
against an iron-clad steamer. Not only were the
broadsides of the wooden ships harmless as against
their iron opponent, but their sails did not enable
them to steer out of her way, and their wood
crashed before the iron beaks of the Merrimac.
We have been told, on very high authority too,
that if an iron steam ram charged an enemy, the
sudden shock would tear loose from any fasten-
ings, the engines of the ram herself, and so cripple
her. The Merrimac has settled that question.
She sustained two such shocka, and her engines
did their duty perfectly the next day. With
the exception of the broadside, the encoun-
ter takes us back to the days of
SALAMIS, when banks of oars supplied to the
Greeks and their opponents the place of steam,
rendering the galleys equally independent of wind
and tide. The Merrimac dashes, like an Athe-
nian galley of old, into the side of her enemy,
draws back, fires a broadside into the disabled
vessel, steams at her again with her iron beak,
and leaves her to sink.

"Woe worth, woeliworth thee, wicked wood."

Had the wooden vessel, however, been a steamer,
and a faster one, this exploit would have been
impossible. Had she been one only equal in
speed, and more quitkly obedient to the helm
than the Merrimac, the latter could not have
easily run into her. The battle might have been
like so many we have read of in antiquity, when
each ship was endeavouring to get the position in
which she could drive her iron beak, with the
most advantage, into the other's side or bows.
The Confederates will, even by the Northerns,
be acknowledged to have earned this naval success.
Several of the ablest naval officers belonged to their
party, and the ships are said to have been ably
handled. It is but eleven months since the Gosport
navy yard at Norfolk was burnt ; yet all resource-
less as they were presumed to be, and with Fort
Monroe, on the opposite side of the narrow channel,
which leads to the navy yard, in possession of the
Federals, the Confederates have yet contrived to re-
store the workshops, to raise the Merrimac, to plate
her with iron, and to render her a vessel which would
not be despised by the Ironsides of Europe. Under
the circumstances, they must receive the praise of
great naval vigour; and were the war to close to-
morrow none would grudge them the honour of
able administration, and skilful and brave fight-
ing. One Federal ship sunk, another captured,
and a five hours' fight, sustaining only temporary
damage, are the first fruits of Southern naval
prowess.

The Lunacy Bill we may now regard as safe.
Read a first and second time in the House of Lords
with only a show of obstruction—visible oddly
enough on the Ministerial side of the House as well
as on the side ;of the Government—the bill, with
scarcely any modification or abridgment, last night
passed through committee. It is to be read a third
time the day after to-morrow, namely, on Thursday,
the 27th March, and—or the tables will indeed have
been turned in the most unlooked-for manner at the
eleventh hour—there and then passed accordingly.
So that, already, it would hardly be premature to
to say that the WINDHAM case, so truly lamentable
in itself, has not been without its good results. The
young master of Felbrigge Hall, in the county of
Norfolk may, from this point of view, at least, be
said, and said truly, to have not lived in vain !
Out of the very extravagance of a now famous levia-
than inquisition instituted at the instance of certain
loving friends and relatives of—we need not say
whom—with a view to discover (in the most disin-
terested way possible) the question as to the sanity
or the insanity of an eccentric young harum-scarum,
rakish, raffish country gentleman—out of that
mamoth inquiry good has come at any rate
for all future Enfans Prods:qua ! The repetition
of the scandalous waste of time and money
recently witnessed with so much indignation by
y e thek s pcuobulritc, first of all during several
w a her MAJESTY's Ex-
chequer, and afterwards during several more
b egeneral
in
the
weed
in the crowded Session House of

the City of Westminster, will henceforth
be rendered impossible—by reason of the Bill yes-
terday passed through committee in the
Lords. It may be observed:that, in going through
committee, the numerical strength of the opposition
then endeavouring to impede the progress of the
measure, was tested point blank by a division in
regard to one of the clauses--clause 3, running in
the original draft of the Bill, " Nor shall the
opinion of any medical practitioner be taken in
proof of insanity I" It has long been proverbial, of
course, that doctors do unquestionably differ. And,
if the extent :to which they differ needs at any
time to be conclusively demonstrated, we need
only turn to a consideration of the evidence of
" experts" upon a given case like that in regard to
the sanity or insanity of young Mr. WINDHAM.
A certain number of mad doctors, of professional
witnesses, of scientific men qualified, one would
say, to arrive at a rational conclusion upon the
question at issue, a certain number of medical men,
surgeons or physicians, are called into the wit-
ness box by the opposing sides. A dozen or a
score, say this another dozen or another
score (you can get any number of them)
say that. Looking at the same array of facts, they
arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions. And
as to the value of such evidence itself, namely, as
to the " opinion" simply of any given medical
practitioner, the Lord Chancellor:gave yesterday—
in the course of his very able argument on clause 3
as it stood—a most amusing illustration. Refer-
ring to a certain inquiry of this kind, without,
of course, specifying the name of it, the Chancellor
remarked that " half-a-dozen medical witnesses
went to see the subject of the inquiry, and the evi-
dence given by one was that the decay of mental
power might be set down as part due to mania and
part to paralysis ; and that if the paralysis had
occurred without mania, the probability was that
he should have found her mind in a state of decay
without delusions. The doctor adduced as proof of
the patient's insanity that she could not tell how
much £lOO a year was a week. But on cross-exa-
mination the counsel asked him, in his turn, if he
could tell, and the learned doctor was observed to
hesitate. Said the counsel Don't Le nervous, how
much is it ?' Said the doctor, I decline to state.'
Said the counsel, Is it that you will not, or that
you cannot tell ?' Said the doctor, I decline to
answer.' Nevertheless, this medical gentleman
covered his retreat with a cloud of sesquipedalia
verba,' and said, I should call tie case a mixture
of chronic mania and dementia, or, speaking in
popular language, a mixture of fatuity and mania
in a mind which had previously been
sound.' " Now that is exactly a ease in
point. It serves to illustrate distinctly the fact
that the mere " opinion" of medical practitioners
given in this loose off-hand manner in a court of
justice, ten on one side and ten on the other, is in
itself utterly valueless. There is no end to it either,
except so far as the length or shortness of the purse
upon each side might tend to restrict or to increase
the number of professional men called pro and con
into the witness-box. Otherwise one might array
in formidable processions, upon this side and upon
that, now the whole divided aggregate of
M.M.R.C.S., now the whole catalogue of learned and
unlearned men, whose names are inscribed (there
are happily not very few of the hitter) upon the
living list of the Royal College of Physicians.
Never anywhere (more glaringly than in instances
of this,character) it is a matter of such absolute cer-
tainty, upon evidence of a professional kind, that the
result will be, as the familiar phrase is—six and
half-a-dozen. And it is to get rid of evidence of
this description, as really, to all intents and puss
poses, as we have said, valueless, that clause 3 was
introduced there, in the very preamble of the New
Lunacy Bill by the, Chancellor--u oboist; declailub,
as we have seen, that henceforth no " opinion" of a
medical practitioner shall be taken in proof of in-
sanity. Reasonable, as all past experience tells us,
though the clause is upon the very face of it—
strange to say, it was opposed last evening, so to
speak, tooth and nail, as though it were really
some perilous and rash innovation, it was op-
posed in this way by two learned ex-Chan-
cellors, sitting upon opposite sides of the House of
Lords, by Lord CHELMSFORD and by Lord CRAN-
WORTH. Ineffectually opposed, we cannot but re-
joice to remember now : otherwise one:of the most
valuable clauses of a truly admirable bill, would
have been hastily :erased from it—the retention
of clause 3 upon the bill being decided
by a clear majority of twelve in a House of
sixty-four, 38 voting for the clause and only 26
against it. With a few trifling modifications, the
Bill of Chancellor WESTBURY has passed there-
fore in its integrity through committee, and on
Thursday it is to be read a third time; so that it
will be carried down to the House of Commons long
before the Easter Holidays can have commenced.
Out of evil, consequently, is again coming good.
The Windham Inquiry resulting by necessity, as
it seems, in this wholesome readjustment of the
Laws relating to Lunacy.

I On the twenty-first of July, 1861, the Federal
forces fled in headlong panic before the Confede-
rates at BULL'S RUN. On the seventh of March,
1862, the Confederate forces left the works which
gained them the victory, without firing a shot.
On the 10th of this month the Northern army of
the Potomac advanced to find a second time that
they had no enemy to encounter. Thus ends the
long-played drama of Manassas and Bull's Run. A
reconnoitring troop of 2,000 men treads the ground
over which their comrades trod the reverse way,
shrieking for their lives last summer, and all to find
—nothing at Centreville—nothing at Manassas,
but the blackened and burnt remains of all that
could not be carried away. This looks like
a confession of Northern power and superiority
on the Potomac ; probably caused in part by the
rapid development of the strength of the Northwest
forces in Kentucky and Tennessee, and the with-
drawal of Confederate troops westward. But yet it
reads somewhat ingloriously. The 21st of last July
seemed to demand some nobler atonement than the
deliberate retreat of the victorious army before over-
whelming numbers. Still, the substantial gain
must be with the North. Gordon's-ville, to which
the Confederates are said to have retreated, is only
about 50 miles from Richmond itself, the Virginian
capital. The New York Times regards the retreat
as a confession that the war is ended. A very pre-
mature conclusion, especially so when the now cele-
brated nav❑l battle and victory at the mouth of St.
James River occurred the same day as the evacua-
tion of Manassas.

The PRESIDENT has now, however, become both
politically and militarily bold. He has carried his
emancipation proposal in the House of Representa-
tives by the large majority, 88 to 31, and will doubt-
less carry it in the Senate. But he means by mili-
tary occupation to make it as desirable for haughty
Virginia to accept payment for its slaves as for
Maryland or Kentucky to do so. On last Saturday
the whole army of the Potomac, from Fort Monroe
to Western Virginia, was to advance; and, though
what it has to do with the Northern movement we
do not exactly See, the naval force in the Gulf of
Mexico was to be ready for action on the same day.
Northern Virginia would seem to be quite open to
the Federals. Their opponents have now aban-

Boned the whole of the Potomac quite down to the
eea ; indeed the Confederates have been able to de-
stroy their own batteries on the river, and to burn
the only Confederate steamer they found on it. We
shall scon hear, however, whether the Confederates
make a serious stand anywhere north of Richmond
itself.

Success also attends the Federal arms in the
West, as well as in Virginia. General lIALLECK
is again victorious with his Missouri army over
the rebels in that part, having completely routed
them, after three days' hard fighting, in the slave
State of Arkansas itself. The losses are reported
as very large on both sides, but we may hope, as
usual, largely exaggerated. In Tennessee the Con-
federates are reported to have made a stand at a
place where four railroads meet ; its name is un-
known to maps, and probably incorrectly given.
We read of a further stand made by the Confede-
rates on an island in the Mississippi, and
of General BEAUREGARD, who has been
long lost from sight in the West, going thither
to lead them. The sum, however, of the
whole is, that, with exception of the naval victory,
the Confederates are everywhere giving way.
Whether they will be able to make a better resis-
tance by concentrating their forces remains to be
seen. They are being rapidly pressed back to the
planting States; and as to the coast, this very mail
informs us that another of the Southern ports, the
one on the confines of Georgia and Florida, has been
added to the list of Federal eon qaests. We shall now
see what is the reported determination of the South.
Whether they will be dispirited and make terms,
or fight to the last, time only can tell. We do not
believe in the commisariat difficulties of advancing
through Virginia on which the journal which advo-
cates the Southern cause in England lays such stress.
Nature will not fight for• the South till the States
are reached which are almost in a state of nature.
It will be of little use, however, for their sparse
populations, more than half of them negroes, to
think of setting up for themselves. All must
follow, if Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia are
lost to the South, and they are all accessible to the
Federal arms both by sea and by land.

LATEST NEWS.

PARIS, MARCH 25, MORNING.

The Cotzstitutionnel of this morning, in an article
signed by M. Boniface, declares that the rumours
of a change in the Ministry have not the least
foundation.

NAPLES, MARCH 22.
Five English war vessels are in the Bay.

LISBON, MARCH 25.

News has been received here from Loanda, in
Western Africa, announcing that the Portuguese
troops had fallen into an ambuscade. Major Niazil
and 50 men were killed by the natives.

MILAN, MARCH 23.
It is asserted here that a grand demonstration
has taken place at Verona.

Fireworks are said to have been discharged
showing the Italian tricolour.
Many Hungarian soldiers have been arrested at
Mantua.

MONZA, MARCH 24.
Garibaldi has arrived at this town, and has been
greeted with an enthusiastic reception.

ST. PETERSBURG, MARCH 24.
Count Nesselrode, Chanceller of the Empire, died
yesterday at 8 p.m.

The lnvalide Russe denies the rumour of an in-
tending disbanding of the Cuirassier Regiments of
MA,' 0 ..cutl.

CONSTANTINOPLE, MARCH 22.
The breaking up of the ice on the Danube has
damaged several ships.

THE OUTWARD BOMBAY MAIL.

The Indus, from Southampton on the 12th inst.,
arrived at Malta on the 22d, at noon, and left at 6
p.m. on the same day for Alexandria.

The Vectis, from Marseilles on the 20th instant,
reached Malta on the 23d, at 1 a.m., and left at 7
a.m. for Alexandria.

FRANCE.
PARIS, MONDAY.

The Moniteur of to-day contains the following
official account of the reception by the Emperor
of the deputation bearing the address of the Corps
Legislatil:—

The Emperor, in reply to Count de Morny, who
presented the address, said :—" The adhesion of
the Corps Legislatif is the more valuable to me,
as the discussion of the address offered a spectacle
worthy of attention. As unhappily extreme opin-
ions are most forward to display themselves, and
as respect for the liberty of speech causes them
to be heard in silence, the public often take this
silence for tacit acquiescence. But your address
has now dispersed all these clouds, has put matters
in their true light, and re-established confidence.
I receive with real satisfaction the expression
of the feelings of the Corps Legislatif. People
have been too much moved by the simple an-
nouncement of certain financial measures. A
system can only be well judged when taken as a
whole. The one proposed contains at once aug-
mentations and diminutions of taxes and resources
for extraordinary public works which can either be
developed or restricted. This question will, how-
ever, be discussed by common agreement, and I do
not doubt that with the spirit of conciliation which
should animate all, the committee on the budget
and the Council of State will act in concert to
bring about a solution in conformity with the
wishes of the Chamber and the general interest.
Be good enough, therefore, to be my interpreter,
and express to your colleagues my gratitude for the
conourrence, which I am convinced will never fail
me; assare them that I have no desire to 'separate
myself too soon from a Chamber whose enlighten-
ment and patriotism afford to the country all the
guarantees which it can desire."
The Presse of this eveningstates that the Frenoh
naval division has anchored off the Piraeus. The
English and Turkish equadrons had arrived there
previously.

BOURSE, March 24.—The market has been heavy,
and Stock having been rather freely offered, prices
have receded. Threes, for the Account, which
opened at 70f. 15c., are now at 69f. 80c. The Rail-
way Share Market shows at present but trifling
variations, but business has been rather dull. The
following were the last quotations :

41 per per Cents... 97 90 Bank Shares 3100
Do. end month.... 98 10 Credit Fonder 1530
3 per Cents . 69 75 Belgian 4
Do. end month.... 69 80 Piedmontese Fives 6B
New 3 per Cents .. 69 65 Roman
Do, end month.... Austrian
Credit Mobilier.... 770 Spanieh Threes 514
Do. Account...... Home Debt