The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMM—The merchants who trade in China
have done a graceful act in sending Col. Gordon
home to us with a vote of thanks and congratula-
tion. This officer has just closed a career of foreign
service which reflects equal credit upon himself and
upon the community which claims him as a com-
patriot, and there is nothing exaggerated in the
terms of the address which has been presented to
him at Shanghai. His position has been, as the
Shanghai merchants say, one of unequalled diffi-
culty. He has been conspicuous for gallantry and
for ability in organization and command, and he
has given to the Chinese Government an example
of a foreign officer serving them with honourable
fidelity and undeviating self-respect. This spectacle
of high principle and chivalrous conduct in a soldier
who had every opportunity to satisfy any amount of
greed of gain is not only gratifying to our national
pride, but it is also valuable to our national inte-
rests. When a British officer is emancipated from
the stringent obligations of his own service, and
allowed to go forth with an independent command
in a melee of barbarians, it is satisfactory to know
that he comes back to us untarnished in fame, and
that he has left behind him among those barbarians
memories of acts of humanity, disinterestednsss, and
gallantry which even they must admire, although
they may feel no desire to imitate. Colonel Gordon
seems to have well earned the golden opinions he has
gained, andwetlaink we may ratify in England all the
fervid testimonies which comes with him from China.
To this Captain of Engineers the Chinese Govern-
ment owes that the organization of the rebellion is
broken up, that.the old capital of China is recovered
to the Emperor, and that the silk districts are freed
from the locusts that were devouring them. To
him also the European community owes the compa-
rative safety and quiet which exist in that portion
of China which is most immediately concerned with
our principal trading operations. It is now five
years since the banditti, who had so long harboured
at Nankin, issued in what seemed to be irresistible
force from the shells of the cities whose substance
they had devoured. They spread themselves over
the great alluvial plains which lie between Nankin
and Shanghai; they sacked the towns, they slaugh-
tered the people, and they drove before them an un-
resisting multitude, which no man might number,
but which rolled on in waves of famine, until it
surged against the outer ramparts of the European
settlement at Shanghai. Then it was that the hideous
scenes of slaughter and the broad horizon of blazing
cities moved our Admiral and our Commander of
the Land Forces to draw a cordon of 30 miles round
the settlement, and to make this a frontier line be-
yond which the murderers should not murder, and
within which the fugitives might at least starve in
peace. The Chinese officials were abject and useless
before this great invasion. They were ready to
catch at any offer of assistance. Something must be
done. These millions could not be left to starve in
their asylum, where nothing was afforded to them
but immunity from violent death. 'Then first arose
the offers of foreign mercenary bands, who proposed
to go beyond this cordon of 30 miles, and drive back
the rebels, and recover the land from which the
fugitives had been expelled. Ward, the American,
a brave, energetic, but rapacious adventurer, who
had been too unscrupulous to be tolerated eve} in
California, was the first to raise a rowdy band of
European and American desperadoes, and to offer
them for hire to the Chinese Governor of Shanghai.
The exigency was so great that even our Admiral
patronised "General Ward," and condescended to
act with him. But the " General" sold his victories
at so much apiece, exacted contributions on every
side, and was rather more formidable to the Chinese
governors than to the Taepings. He was, however,
brave as a leader of ruffians need be, and he fell fight-
ing. He was succeeded byßurgevine, also anAmerica n,
one of the episodes of whose career was his desertion
to the Taepings. It was the intolerable evils at-
tendant upon the employment of these adventurers
which compelled the Chinese Governor of Shanghai
to apply to Admiral Hope and Brigadier-General
Staveley to nominate some English officer, who
might form a force of disciplined Chinese to act
against the Taepings beyond the radius. This appli-
cation led to the appointment of Captain Gordon,
an officer of Engineers, who had distinguished him-
self in the Crimea, and who was then serving at
Shanghai. Gordon accepted the very perilous offer.
He went upon half-pay, thus risking his prospects
of promotion, and taking, a step in which only one
officer—a medical officer—was found to follow him.
He applied himself diligently to the formation of a
force of 5,000 disciplined Chinese, whom he was
compelled to officer by European soldiers and sailors
and non-commissioned officers from the army and
navy and mercantile marine. It was with these very
difficult materials that Gordon did his work. He
assumed his command in March, 1863. By dint of
a prompt provost-marshal he pommelled the China-
men into a sense of impropriety or impolicy of gene-
ral plundering ; by higher qualities of command he
managed to obtain the confidence and even the obe-
dience of the rough soldiers whom he had converted
into lieutenants and captains and majors. InApril,
1863, he took the field against 100,000 fighting
Taepings, and he went out into those vast plains
where the paddy fields and cotton fields alternate
with mulberry plantations and bamboo groves,
where a net-work of canals intersects the unvarying
flats, and where nothing breaks the line of vision
but the waving reeds of the funeral mounds and the
charred ruins of walled cities. Here he worked
with immense patience and courage. His difficulties
were greater with his own troops than with
the enemy. He could organise an artillery, he-
could teach the Chinamen to manage the cast-
away smooth-bore muskets of the Indian regi-
ments, he could even form a steam navy
of two boats drawing three feet of water each ; but
he could not always get the Chinese Governor to
pay his troops, and he could not always get his
troops to follow him without their pay. The bar-
barous names of the cities he recovered would
rather repel than excite the attention of the
reader ; and the slaughter he inflicted, the reverses
he sometimes underwent, and the wounds he suffered
would never give dignity or interest to a story
which must be told of such places as Chang-Chow,
Kin-Tan, and Sang Kiang. Soochow, however,
may claim to be known even in Europe , for the
city is famous for all that is imagined famous in
Chinese art, and has long been the seat of the most
costly and elaborate manufactures which survive in
that degenerating land. Having reduced all the
surrounding country, Gordon had planted breaching
batteries round the walls of this city, and had it in
his power. The Taeping Chiefs, finding resistance
hopeless, surrendered on conditions, and the troops
of the Chinese Governor were admitted within the
fortifications. The Chinaman immediately gave
• loose to his instincts, broke all engagements, and
despite Gordon's indignation, the city was sacked.
This was an outrage which neither Gordon nor the
British Government could endure. Gordon retired
from the active service of the Chinese Government,
but was persuaded after a time that the evils which
would accrue from leaving his followers without a
leader would be so great that he must continue at
least nominally at their head. When the news of
the treachery of the Chinese governor at Soochow
reached England the order in Council under which
Colonel Gordon had obtained leave to serve was
revoked. Gordon, however, had in the meantime
accepted as his mission the task of destroying the

rebellion. Although no longer able to command,
he accompanied the Imperial army which besieged
Nankin, and it was he who really took that city.
The Chinese owe to him the recovery of their empire.
It must be admitted that these services have been
handsomely acknowledged by the Government of
China. The Pekin Gazette has followed the career
of this officer victory after victory, and he has
received all sorts of quaint titles and high military
grades in the Chinese service. On the other hand,
he has been often left without money to pay his
troops, or rations to feed them, and he has had
ample means of knowing how difficult it is to
prevent an Imperialist force in China from degene-
rating into plunderers by sheer necessity. Ward and
Burgevine were not without excuse for even their
worst acts if such excuse can be found in the faith-
lessness of their Chinese superior officers, and in the
destitution among their followers which the miscon-
duct of these officials occasioned. Whatever may be
the credit due to Colonel Gordon for his skill and
gallantry in the field, he deserves much greater credit
for the higher moral qualities which enabled him to
refrain from acts of resentment under unmerited ill-
usage, and to hold in hand a European staff recruited
from a low class of Europeans and a barbarian soldiery
who were generally unpaid and often ill-fed. This was
what very few men could accomplish and what nothing
but a high sense of professional honour, and a deep
feeling of responsibility for the character of his coun-
try and his service, could have given even to Colonel
Gordon the strength of purpose to carry through.
Post—The Lord Chancellor introduced into the
House of Lords an excellent bill ; it was a bill to per-
mit any man who feels himself capable of holding his
proper place in the affairs of life to deal with his at-
torney as he would with any other professional man
with whom he has business relations, in which the law
does not consider itself bound to interfere. Solicitors
at present must be paid by a fixed tariff, calculated
on so much a folio, or so much a letter, &c. ; in fact,
they are the penny-a-liners of the learned professions.
In settling with your attorney, time, thought, skill,
integrity, despatch, and all the higher qualities of a
professional Man, are of no account, but as dust in the
balance ' • the weight of gold must be equi-poised by
folios. The system results in a matter occupying a
month, which might be done in a week—in the con-
veyance or deed when drawn up being unintelligible
from its diffuseness to all save the practised hands,
instead of being easily read over by the owner when
he wishes to refresh his memory ; and, la 3tly, in the
employer never knowing when it may please the
attorney to finish off the matter and close up the run-
ning account. 0 n the other side the solicitor feels him-
self degraded. He is not paid according to his merits
or his work, but according to his supplies of paper and
the glibness of his clerk's pen. To condense, to bring
science and accuracy to bear on the draughting of a
conveyance or other document, would be to work
very bard to deprive himself of pay. Not only has
he no inducement to shorten, but he is compelled to
lengthen, if he would remunerate himself in the pro-
portion which is his due. Hence the solicitors who
think and understand are in favour of the bill, but
the Lords, who don't think and don't understand
(although they would be the greatest gainers), met
to the number of 44 and rejected the bill at the bid-
ding of certain law lords, who dislike change, and
who gave them no reasons, but just told them to do
it. We dislike harsh comparisons, but a very close
analogy to all this may be studied in events going
on across the Atlantic. An advancing liberator pene-
trates the Southern wastes proclaiming freedom to
the slave, learning to the untaught, and security of
property to those who as yet have none. The un-
heeding blacks, blindly attached to their former
owners, neither understanding nor studying his pro-
clamation, fly from the marching emancipator,
cower beneath their old badges, and resist to the
death. We are struck with amaze and wonder ; but
look close at home, and as strange a sight is there.
The Sherman of the British Senate, the great Legal
Conqueror and Abolitionist, advances right into the
law jungle, and introduces to the enslaved lords
and landowners a prospect of emancipation, liberty
to the client, understanding where all is now dark
and difficult, small costs where now it is almost all
costs ; such he proclaims. But no ;as the crack of
the whip fascinates the one, so does the crackle of
the folio the other. The mass is indifferent, and
flies without an attempt to listen, and the few who
lurk near the battlefield range themselves under
their drivers and fire off their old-fashioned blun-
derbusses into the very face of their would-be bene-
factor. But the recoil of these antiquated weapons
hurts very much ; and it is very silly, because you
personally dislike the Danaans, to refuse the good
gifts they bear you, and, what is worse, to deprive
of these good gifts the outside public, who don't
dislike anybody in particular. The thought of this
reasonable bill having been thrown out by the sheer
force of inertness of the Peers, without a single real
argument being brought against it, only gives Mr.
Bright and his fellow-revolutionists a good case
against the House of Lords.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

MONMOUTHSHIRE.

The half-yearly meeting of this company was
held at Newport yesterday ; Mr. Crawshay Bailey,
M.P., in the chair.

The report, an abstract of which has appeared in
The Sun, was taken as read.

The CHAIRDIAN having briefly moved its adop-
tion,

Mr. CARTWRIGIIT called the attention of the pro-
prietors to the accounts, and the prominent recom-
mendations in the report. He disapproved the pro-
ject for the purchase of the Brecon Canal, and asked
upon what terms it was proposed to make the pur-
chase. The accounts showed an increase in the
earnings of the line for the half-year, compared with
the corresponding half-year of 1863, of £5,885, but
it appeared that nearly £3,000 had been . expended
in obtaining that increase, and inasmuch is the office
and certain other expenses were permanent and
fixed, whether the income increased or diminished,
he thought the increase of expenditure was too large.
They had been told by their chairman that the cost
of entirely relaying the permanent way would be
£34,000, but he (Mr. Cartwright) had estimated it
at a much higher figure, and the rate at which they
were now proceeding justified his higher estimate.
They had already expended £34,000 out of the ex-
pense account, and had also applied £12,000 from
the reserved fund in the relaying of the line. With
this money 31 miles of line had been relaid, and they
had still 51 miles more to relay. (Hear, hear.) He
found also that 3,000 tons of rails and a large quan-
tity of sleepers had been ordered. That could not
cost less than £23,000, besides the other items of
expenditure in relaying.
Mr. BATCHELOR thought Mr. Cartwright took
too gloomy a view of their affairs, and that the
carrying out of the Ebbw Vale and Cardiff Junction
project might be obviated by this company adopt-
ing a conciliatory course of policy towards a cer-
tain large company using the line.
The CHAIRMAN agreed with Mr. Batchelor that
Mr. Cartwright had taken a most gloomy view of
their affairs. He then showed that by laying by
£4,000 every half year their suspense account of
£34,000 would be paid off in four years. He gave
the reasons for buying the Brecon canal. That
company could reduce its tonnage rate (which was
now id. per ton on iron) to one-fourth, or one-
eighth, or one-sixteenth of a penny, and, as this
company was bound to carry at the same rate as the
Brecon canal, they might lose £3,000 to £4,000 a
year by them. They had, therefore, agreed to pur-
chase the shares in that canal at £25 per share
(£lOO paid), which would amount to about £25,000,
and to pay interest on the Canal Company's debt.
The report was then adopted, and a dividend at
the rate of 6I per cent. per annum was declared,
payable on the sth of April.
A vote of thanks to the chairman closed the pro-
ceedings.