The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-01 00:00:00

7HE SUN LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING JUIY 1, 1862.

that the sum of £69,685,789, actually poured
into the Exchequer for the year 1861-1862,
is merely about £500,000 less than the
seventy millions and odd calculated upon by that

right hon. gentleman.
Examining some of the items in detail it is im-
possible not to be struck by the encouraging aspect
of several of the remarkable records jotted down
among the numerals making up these extraordinary
tables of our annual revenue and our annual expen-
diture. Turning to the Post-office returns for
instance—there are there recognisable at once, a
continued development and a steadily increasing
productiveness that, familiar though we have long
since become with them, are still sources to the
most reflective amongst us, of a perpetually
new surprise and an ever fresh and lively admira-
tion. It must be thus even, at moments, with Sir
ROWLAND HILL himself. Still as years roll on, as
time advances, the productiveness of that " lucky
penny" first thought of by Sir ROWLAND HILL,
grows more and more appreciable. There is visible
now in these last Post Office returns, a distinct gain
upon the quarter of £25,000. There is a gain upon
the year of £135,000. The revenue contributed by
that noble institution having risen within a single
twelvemonth from £3,400,000 to £3,535,000.
Steadily as this increase has gone on from year to year
since the inauguration, three and twenty years ago,
01 the Penny Postage System, it shows now, after
the lapse of all these years of a practical experience
of it as a system, no indications whatever of, any-
thing like a diminution in its powers of perpetual
multiplication. The increase under the head of
Stamps, moreover, reveals a result in its way just
as remarkable, if that be possible, still more re-
markable. The revenue yielded by Stamps
showing an increase within the year
last past of £191,775, and an increase within the
quarter of £67,000. The amount collected in this
way for 1861 being £8,441,170 ; and the amount
for 1862, £8,657,945. Such are among the latest
evidences of the judiciouness of our financial policy
in reversing the reading of an old, old aphorism—
demonstrating, the truth that penny wisdom is not
always, if but properly applied is never, pound
foolishness.

Whatever may be laid to the charge of the Bri.

tish House of Commons, no one can accuse it of
being insensible to shame. For its vote's sake two
years ago, and those who knew of it, although ex-
ceeding sorry to waste £2,000,000 more of public
money, it yet consents to it, and by a division of
about three to one it gives Lord PALMERSTON—
whose political dancing pleases the House exceed-
ingly—two millions in a vote. With a logic which he
knew would be the most conclusive of all,the Premier
appealed to the House to stand by the vote which
it had solemnly and deliberately given two years

ago by a large majority. What could the unfor-
tunate House do? Should it save appearances or the

public purse ? There are, unfortunately, for Parlia-
ment as for individuals, times when the parse must
be sacrificed to appearance—the poor professional
man has continually to live as if he had a splendid
income; the insolvent tradesman dares not change
appearances, it might precipitate bankruptcy, and
destroy his only chance of retrieval ; we have even
heard of persons who dare not appeal against a
heavy income-tax assessment, when they had no
income at all, for fear of the appearance it would

present.
We must not, therefore, be too hard on the 158
who had not courage to vote on the merits of the
case last night ; we have most of us done the same
thing in principle to save appearances. This time,
too, the Government had given way on the worst
' folly involved in the vote of 1860, the Spithead
Forts, and therefore it was thought that twopence
in the pound income-tax was a reasonable demand
to save them from the honour, as Lord GREY
thinks it, the humiliation, as they think it, of re-
pentance. Besides the fortification folly is Lord
PALMERSTON'S crotchet—his lordship is just now,
and in so many respects deservedly, in high favour

with the House—and, if it did cost the country a
million or two, would not the country willingly
pay so much to please its popular Premier. We
think it would, rather than that the Premier
should go of office ; but this is not a party ques •
tion, and if the House had been content to vote
that only the works which it would cost more to
abandon than to finish should be completed, and
the rest wait till a more convenient season, Lord
PALIKERSTON would have kept his place, and the
best justice the case admitted of have been done for
the country.
There is, unfortunately, a long list of forts be-
sides those at Spithead—twenty-four, if we reckon
rightly, connected with the defence of Portsmouth,
and seventeen with those of Plymouth ; seven at
Pembroke, seven at the Medway and Sheerness,
three at Dover, three at Portland, three at Cork,
one at Chatham, three at Gravesend—nearly three
score and ten forts are yet on paper or begun, to
cost some seven millions by estimate when com-
pleted. Are these really all to be finished ? Are
we really committed to what will certainly cost a
year's income tax if not two before they are done
with. Surely the whole subject ought to be gone
through carefully again in committee, or by an im-
partial as well as competent commission, before we
spend another million in this way. If it were only
that we know more now than we did in 1860 this
alone would be ample reason for delaying the exe-
cution of such costly, and as they are now gener-
ally thought, useless works.

The advocates of fort expenditure cannot any
longer impose on the country the self-complacent
fallacy that they alone care for its defence against
the possibility but extreme improbability of an in-
vasion. The country now begins to understand
that the question is not between defence and no de-
fence, but between defence which would prevent an
invading prince from getting his fleet out of his
own ports, and defences which must remain fixed
where no invader would trouble himself to come

near them.
We shall not again repeat the conclusive argu-
ments, which almost all but Government officials
and their immediate supporters accept, for an iron
fleet instead of iron forts, or, at the least, for build-
ing the iron fleet first, as the more necessary ; but
it is well to remind the country of the evidence the
Departments and the Services have furnished that
they are not to be trusted. For seven years they
have had the thing in hand taking their own way,
and what is the result ? They have spent the enor-
mous sum of THIRTY MILLIONS on wooden ships,
which they are now forward to tell us are of no use,
and that we have still our fleet to build ; and they
did this although they knew, or might known, the
whole time,what Crimean experience taught France,
that wood must give place to iron. We confidently
predict the same issue for the PALMERSTON forts.
When the income tax has emptied our
pockets to build them —we shall be
told, and
worithfoutrruythea,
years
shamt
oirte,mtuostbeumildptya them
for threefleet
quite as large as if we had no forts at all! For, this
is the deliberate opinion of the witnesses on whom
the Government most •
rehed, that, if we have the
forts, we must not provide fewer ships in conse-
quence. Can the country---we ask—trust advisers
who have wasted thirty millions, and who confess

that when we have spent at least eleven millions on
forts, we mast spend just as much on ships as if we
had saved the money ?

Happily, for all parties, there appears to be an
end, at last, to this ridiculous discussion about the
Thames Embankment Committee and Mr. COWPER'S
Correspondence. The Suppressed Despatch, a Ses-
sion or two back, we all remember. The thought
of it, even now, must bring a qualm, we should
imagine, to the conscience of Lord LTVEDEN, some
time Mr. VERNON SMITH, of the Board of Control.
The hubbub now is, or rather we can say, at length,
has been about a lost letter. Heartily, indeed, do
we trust that we have heard now the very last of
it. Yesterday's explanation, in the House of Com-
mons, it is reasonably to be hoped, has finished up
the subject altogether. Time enough that it did
too; for everybody was, at length, getting so
utterly confused at what had been said, and done
and written by this person, that, and the other that
the confusion, every additional moment, appeared
to be growing really worse confounded. What
with Mr. W. F. HIGGINS, of Chesham-place, and

Mr. M. HIGGINS, of Eaton-square the
one distinguished as the " tall gentle-
man," and the other as the gentleman
whose father-in-law is an ex- Chancellor : what
with Lord ROBERT MONTAGU, and Mr. HORSMAN,
and Mr. COWPER, and Colonel KNOX, and Sir
WILLIAM JOLLIFFE, and we don't know who else
besides—everyone of them feeling somehow perso-
nally aggrieved in this matter—each of them in turn
assuaging their own wounded feelings by indulging
in the most sarcastic taunts and recriminations
upon somebody else, who was alone to be regarded
as having been in the wrong—the public at large was
getting rapidly nauseated by the whole affair, and
tired to death of the very name of HIGGINS, no
matter what were the inches of the one, or the
family connections of the other.
As it chanced last evening, the House was in the
merriest of all possible humours. The mere shak-
ing of Mr. RORSMAN'S head, when appealed to
by Lord ROBERT MONTAGU, was enough to
elicit roars of laughter. Later on in the sitting
after the rather lengthened discussion of
a weighty matter in debate like the momentous
problem of our National Fortifications, the hon.
and gallant member (Captain JOHNSON) who, at
the close of that debate, availed himself of the
opportunity to deliver his maiden speech, could
scarcely open his lips, or waive his hand, or
wink his eyelids, but what the house generally
was all but in convulsions of merriment. Read-
ing Captain JOHNSON'S speech, as it is reported,
there is nothing particularly funny about it from
first to last. But then, as .t7Escilir:Es exclaimed,
in regard to DEMOSTHENES,—" If you had but
heard him !" It is the manner of the man, it is
what those who are of Captain JOHNSON'S cloth
facetiously term " the cut of his gib" that affects
the audience, more than the mere words articulated.
Evidence of which is nightly afforded at our theatres
by the appearance of any favourite low comedian.
It is not by any means what is set down
for him to say before the footlights that
takes so with an audience. Before ever the favourite
comedian can open his lips—the look of him, his
walk, his very silence, puts pit, boxes, and gallery
at once into good humour : the contagion of hilarity
spreads through all present, and often the merest
inanities tell" like so many sparkling witticisms.
Judging from the effect produced by the hon, and
gallant member last evening, we should certainly
pronounce Capt. JOHNSON to be a decided acquisi-
tion to the House of Commons. Now that the
House can no longer be enlivened by the eccentri-
cities of Colonel SIBTHORP , now that it can no longer
chuckle over the professional brnsqueries of Admiral
Sir CHARLES NAPIER, now that members can no
longer indulge in the pleasant pastime of laughing
in their sleeves at the whims and oddities of speech,
once so welcome to both sides of the House, from
the lips of the late Mr. DRUMMOND, we would
earnestly impress upon Captain JOHNSON the ne-
cessity of his not subsiding now into the ranks of
the silent occupants of the back benches. We can't
afford to lose him. And assuredly the hon. and
gallant member ought to be perfectly well satisfied
with his reception yesterday. The heartiness of
the good humour marking that reception we cannot
at the same time but attribute in some measure to
the gay spirits into which the House last
evening had been roused at the very commencement
of its sitting by the laughter-moving influence of
the HIGGINS imbroglio. Lord PALMERSTON just
hit off the folly of further discussion upon
that absurdity when he remarked with humorous
gravity—" There is nothing in the world more
likely to lead to no result than a discussion about
what I said, and you said, and they said—because
it is certain that no two people will agree as to
what was said by either party." Really, when we
come to lock back upon this preposterous equivoque
between the two Mr. HIGGINSES, when this has been
said all has been said. It is for all the world like the
garulous repetition of some vapid and valueless
conversation by some exceedingly commonplace
ungrammatical mediocrity, with-his perpetual inter-
larding of says he, and says I, and says they. One
after another—Mr. M. HIGGINS, and Mr. W. F.
HIGGINS, and Lord R. MONTAGU, and Mr. E.
HORSMAN, and Mr. W. COWPER, and Colonel W.
KNOX, and Sir W. JOLLIFFE—they have all
had their say : all the particulars are out—
and so there is at last an end of it. An
end that is of this meaningless squabble about
the baulked communications (aside) between
Mr. W. COWPER and Mr. M, HIGGINS. Not
an end, we trust and believe, however, of the affair,
out of which those intercepted communications,
spoken and written, arose—concerning the renewal
of the lease of Montagu House to the Duke of
BUCCLEUCH, and the undoubted and indisputable
subserviency of the Thames Embankment Com-
mittee to that same Duke's wishes. Parliament will
not rise, we hope, this session before that miserable
transaction has been revised. The very questionable
modification of the bill, and the still more ques-
tionable renewal of the lease, must be thoroughly
gone into before the Lords and Commons aro pro-
rogued.

Why should not Hungary receive from Eng-
land now, when she needs it so much, the moral
support of the English Government ? Why should
Italy enjoy it, but not Hungary ? Italy's great
patriot makes common cause with Hungary, and
shows an interest in her liberties only second to
that which he feels in those of his fatherland, if
Italy be still the fatherland of GARIBALDI. Our
attention is invited to the claims of Hungary just
now by a very sensible letter of ,4 A Hungarian,"
addressed to a contemporary, in which he shows
the best reasons for not uniting in one Imperial
Diet, or Reichsrath, with the deputies from other
parts of the Austrian dominions. So bold has been
the financial conduct of the Beichsrath that per-
sons, not unfriendly to Hungarian independence,
have thought Hungary might really have a gcod
chance in the Reichsrath after all it she made up
her mind to send deputies to it.
The " Hun garian" replies, that the nation cannot
be brought to surrender its independence. That
its Constitution, even if it granted less liberty than
than that of the new Austrian one, has, like that

of England, been the fruit of a long growth, and is'
adapted to the nation by its long continuance. That
all relating to money and credit and the military
establishment are essential to the independent
existence of a nation, and the control of them
cannot be surrendered by Hungary. And, again,
supposing the Hungarian deputies, with those of
Bohemia and Poland, to be powerful in the Lower
House, the Upper one consists of Imperial nominees,
archdukes, 8.7 c., created at pleasure, who could
swamp ail the proceedings of the Lower House.
Add to this that the Imperial will could always un-
make to-morrow a Constitution which it made yes.
terday, and the good reasons which the Hungarians
have for mistrusting despots and Germans,
foreigners to them—and it will be plain that the
Hungarians cannot consent to part with the gold
of an old free Constitution for the worthless paper

of a new one.

Now it is not fair that our Foreign-office should
not represent England on Hungary as well as it did
on Italy. In regard to the latter the country had
once to compel Lord RUSSELL to do his duty—
oaght we not to demand it of him in regard to
Hungary. Neither the legal nor the moral right
of Hungary to her independence can be doubted.
Our Government only professes wine old-fashioned
creed about the integrity of the Austrian empire;
but even they cannot deny that its old integrity
was always, legally, one which acknowledged the
independence of Hungary. Let them act on this
plain fact, and advise at Vienna accordingly.

ALLEGED MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE

OF WALES.

The following absurd story appears in the Ame-
rican Waverley Magazine:—
" The Prince of Wales, who has been alluded to,
but not as a lost sheep, though he will be lost to the
view of that portion of the public who will attend
to the ceremony at the World's Fair, the cause of

his absence from which does not spring from the

Prince's desire of seeing foreign countries—it is no

'rom his approaching marriage with a Danish Prin.

cess, nor does it arise from his love passages at
Windsor; but the reasons for his absence are now

sufficiently manifest. The Prince of Wales is al-
ready married; the ingenious eldest son of her
Majesty is, at the present moment, and, indeed, for
the last six months has been, married to a fair sub-
ject. The enthraller of the Prince's heart and re-

cipient of his truth is a beautiful Hibernian lady
whom he met and fell in love with during the pe-
riod of military training at the Curragh of Kildare
in Ireland, where his Royal Highness had appro-
priated to him, a little removed from the main lines
of tents which formed the encampment, a neat hut,
with a pretty little garden attached to it. Though
he had everything to make him comfortable there,
during the idle day and evenings, he sometimes can-
tered off to see some of the leading gentry of Kil-
dare, whose domains fringe the great plain on
which the Prince was stationed. To one of those
houses in particular, and which was inhabited by a
family of ancient and almost historic standing, his
horse's head was oftenest turned ; and his visits

became so frequent that they ceased to be formal.
Nothing was suspected by the Prince's men-
tors until one afternoon two young ladies galloped
over the green sward, pulling up in front of the
Prince's hut, and the alacrity with which he came
out to meet them, and his particular manner to the
younger one, attracted the attention of an officer of
high rank, who happened at the moment to be call-
ing on the Prince, and who, being a veteran in love
as well as in war, fancied he saw something more
than the mere politeness of a young prince to a

young lady. The visits were repeated, and they
were also seen riding about the country. However,
to cut the story short, in a certain little church, not
many miles from Newbridge (the next town to the
Curragh), there were, one fine morning, united in
in matrimony two young people; one of them was
the lady in question, and the other the heir appa-
rent to the throne of Ureat Britain, the only other
parties being, besides the clergyman, a brother
officer of the Prince and the bride's brother,. The
late lamented Prince Consort was made aware of
the fact just before quitting Ireland, when they
visited the Lakes of Killarney in the autumn. By
the Royal Marriage Aet, I need hardly say, such a
union would be unlawful ; but so wrapt up in his
beautiful Irish bride is the Prince that this journey
of his to the East, which was determined upon
before the Prince Consort's death, was suggested
by the latter as a means of weaning him from his
foolish attachment, upon the principle of out of
sight out of mind.' But nothing will do; the
Prince's heart, untramelled, fondly turns towards
a certain old mansion on the confines of the Cur-
ragb, and which holds what to him is dearer than
the British Crown! The fair object of his thoughts
almost daily receives a letter under her youthful
and Royal lover's hand.

It is stated that her Majesty has signified her
intention to confer the Military Grand Cross of her Osrder
of the Bath on his Highness the Viceroy of Egypt, aan
important services rendered by him
acknowledgment of the imp
to this country.
special display of the
CRYSTAL PALACE.--A
great fountains and waterfalls will be given at four o'clock
to-morrow (Wednesday).
DEATH OF SIR R. G. THROCKMORTON.—We
have to announce the death of Sir Robert George Throck-
morton, which took place on the 28th of June at Hereford-
street, Park-lane, in his 62d year. The deceased baronet
was the son Mr. William Throckmorton (brother to the
seventh baronet), by the only daughter of Mr. T. Giffard,
of Chillington, and was born in Queen-street, Mayfair, in
1800. He marrried, in 1829, the only daughter of Sir John
Acton, and succeeded to his uncle in 1840. From 1831 to
1835 he represented Berkshire in 1 arliament, and in 1813
was elected sheriff of that county. The family is descended
from Sir John Throckmorton, who was -Under-Treasurer of
the Exchequer in the time of Henry IV.
GENERAL BUTLER ON HIS DEFENCE.—The New
Orleans Delta publishes a letter of General Butler, refer-
ring to his previous order respecting the women t
city :—" Head-quarters Department of the Gulf,
Newofhe Or-
leans, May 16.—Sir,—There can be, there has been, no
room for misunderstanding General Order No. 28. No
lady will take any notice of a strange gentleman, and a
fortiori of a stranger, simply in such form as to attract
attention. Common women do. Therefore, whatever
woman, lady or mistress, gentle or simple, who, by ges-
ture, look, or word, insults, shows contempt for, thus at-
tracting to herself the notice of my officers and soldiers,
will be deemed to act as becomes her vocation as a common
woman, and will be liable to be treated accordingly. This
was most fully explained to you at my office. I shall not,
as I have not, abated a single word of that order ; it was
well considered ; if obeyed, will protect the true and modest
women from all possible insult. The others will take care
of themselves. You can publish your letter, if you publish
this note and your apology.—Respectfully, BENJ. F. BUT-
LER, Major-General."
CAPTURE OF THE I'ATRAS.—HuII, June 28.
The following details of the capture of the steamer Patras,
belonging to Z. C. Pearson and Co., of this port, are from
one of the crew, and may be relied upon as
thoroughly
trustworthy:—The Patras left Havannah on the 2 Ist of
May, and, falling in with a gale of wind on the 26th, the
captain found himself obliged to run in for the land, for the
safety of the vessel. At 345 on the raorningofthe2fi7rtihnga
vessel was sighted, which immediately commenced
into the Patras. She put n', boats out, and showed no sig-
nals. The Patras, which was at anchor, got under way
and proceeded northward. The vessel which had fired into
her did not, however, attempt to follow. At 445 a sail
was sighted ahead, which proved to be the Benville-inan-
e
of-war, and which, when staci
tl
The Patras then hove-to, tmd wasny neaeradre d
dozen armed men, who put out in a cbfirbeyd aabosubtota.
asked utter. The officer in
charge of the party the captain for the ships papers,
which were handed to him without comment. The captain
then formally tookpossession
was, at the time of of the vessel.. The Patras
her capture, about 35 miles north of
Charleston.
under escort to New captain,l(ork carpenter, andsfcoothkewcere sent
in number, were sent to , while thei rest
iltid put on board the
18
Port Roythe
James Adger. All hands had to live' between decks among
the seamen, and the rations were dealt out to them the
same as the crew of the vessel. Shortly afterwards they
were transferred to the Vermont line-of-battle ship, where
they remained till the Ist of June. The rations here de alt
out to them were poor, and no sleeping accommodation was
provided. The were put
yßeeville, and on
the 2d left Port Royal for Philadelphia, reaching
the evening of the 6th. On the Bth they quitted the on
en-
vine, and took the train for New York, where they arrived
on the following morning. On the 10th 11 of the crew
embarked on board the Europa for England, and reached
Liverpool on Sunday last. ,