The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-25 00:00:00

BERKS AND HANTS.

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It appears that a new route will be opened next month
between London and Bristol, tna the Berks and Hants Ex-
,elision line, which was opened last month for traffic. It
1 understood that three down and two up trains will run
daily by the new route between Paddington and Bristol,
and thus remove some complaints respecting the working
of the traffic.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.

StlA RE MARKELYESTERDAY

It is just made known that an accident occurred
to the Irish mail train on its way up from Holy-
head on the morning between the 18th and 19th
inat•P by which the passengers arrived late by
nearly five hours in London, having had the nar-
rowest possible escape from destruction. While
running at full speed the train ran against an empty
coal-truck, standing upon the main up-line, at a
Point 3.1 miles west of Chester. The truck was
broken to fragments, and the remains of the body,
dislocated from the whole under-carriage and
Nvh, els, were projected right across the six-foot and
the down line, and without once touching ground
hurled into the sunk fence at that side of
the line. The engine and almost all the train
Were thrown off the rails, and went ploughing
and thumping along through ballast and sleepers
for a considerable distance. The engine-driver
promptly shut off steam. One axle and pair
of wheels of the ruined truck had got in
under the smoke-box end of the engine—the axle
doubled up, one wheel under the boiler and the
other ploughing into the ballast and across the
bleepers, luckily, nearly midway between the rail.
1337 this accidentally-produced, but powerful break,
tlitled by large fragments of the iron frame of the
'waggon impacked between the driving-wheels and
framing, &e., of the engine, the train was brought
to a standstill at a moment when further forward
1110vements of even 50 yards would have hurled the
°fttriages over the brow close to which they ram,
and into a deep siding next the up line. The engine
Was greatly shattered, the buffer beam and both
eYlinder and casings knocked to pieces, Bze. That
the few passengers (not above 12 or 15) should have
e
sQaPed with only shakes and bruises was attribut-
able solely to the small momentum of the nearly
empty train, and to the singular chance of the
truck axle having got doubled up as described, and
become a break.
f. °tie of the passengers from London to Manches-
ter
` by the 5 o'clock express train on Saturday night,
gives the following account of the accident near
Stockport :—" We were about 23 minutes behind
time when we left Crewe station, and travelled at
What Seemed to me an extraordinary speed to Stock-
Port, stopping only for a short time at Alderley.
The tickets were collected at Stoekport, and the
train was quickly in motion again. We had scarcely
'Passed Heaton Norris when we again rolled along
at
a very great speed ; the carriage which I occu-
rled began to oscillate, ran off the line, and fell
:t° a deep trench, leaning with one side towards
steep embankment. My travelling companions
1441 myself had not yet moved, when an en-
gine rushed past us, and we heard immediately
afterwards a tremendous crash. On getting
" of our compartment we found that out train,
;Which consisted of the guards' van (following.
..°ltuediately behind the tender), one second-class
and three first-class carriages, had been run into
and broken by the pilot-engine, which had been
was
close behind us. My carriage, which
wan the last, as well as the last but one, was most
Providentially quite thrown off the line before the
Pilot-engine came up, and we thus escaped, corn-
tPara tiv,
I.y speaking, unhurt. I air sorry to.say
h
the passengers of the other two carriages met
with a 'very different fate. The third first-class
carriage was broken to atoms, as well as the second-
c_lass carriage, with the exception of the compart-
era nearest the van. The seats of this partition
b Were pressed together, and two unfortunate pas-
engers Were Buffeting the most excruciating
pains until we succeeded in breaking up the
carriage, and rescuing them from their awful
Position.
This took fully half an hour, owing to,
buspect, a want of a suitable supply of tools.
uur engine, tender, and guards' van seemed to
rian to have remained on the rails; anyhow they
Were standing quite erect, and had apparently
nattered no damage. My impression, as well as
that of some of my travelling companions, is that
the
last carriage left the metals first, dragged with
it the one before it : at all events, the other two
carriages or their remains were scattered on the line
after the collision. The cause of our running off
the rails appears to me to have been that we tra-
ve%( d with a very light train at too great a speed."
On Tuesday morning, shortly after 5 o'clock, as
a Passenger train was passing through the Oakshaw
Tunnel, on the Cleekheaton line, it was -topped by
an obstacle in the form of a quantity of debris, which
had fallen from the roof of the tunnel. The sieden
Shock caused serious injuries to passengers, nearly
30 being more or less cut. The tunnel is about 300
Yards long, and some seven feet had fallen on the
track of the metals. The passenger traffic was
interrupted during the day, the passengers being
landed at each cud at the tunnel and carried on by
engines also et each end.

23. Ed,

ORDINARY SHARES AND STOufk.S.

Importing tea without colour on the leaf pre-
°tB the Chinese passing oil inferior leaves as in the usual
kinds ilorniman's Tea is uncoloured, therefore always
good aiaft Sold in packets by 2,280 agents.

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, DECEIII3ER 25, 1862.

Business don,

104 i i

1081 1

75 4}
65
354

108 7/
13* *

91i
105 i

MR. LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION 412V13
CONGRESS.

(From the Daily News.)

The Morning Post of yesterday published the
following statement in its second leading article :
" A resolution has been carried in the House of
Representatives by a vote of 95 to 47, declaring the
Emancipation Proclamation to be unconstitutional
and unauthorised."

This is an extraordinary misapprehension. The
very contrary has happened. The telegraphic
announcement was that, " in the House of Repre-
sentatives the resolution condemning President
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as unconsti-
tutional and unauthorised was laid on the table by
a vote of 95 to 47."

A motion to " lay on the table" is what is called
a " killing motion," and the house, in deciding that
this resolution shall be laid on the table, so far from
condemning the proclamation, supports it by a
majority of two to one.

We commend this fast to the journalists, who
have been stating that the proclamation was with-

drawn.

MR. EVERF.T7 01V 7HE DISPUTES 01
ENGLAND Turn- AMERICA.

Mr. Everett has just given a curious chapter of
diplomatic history in the New York Ledger in re-
ference to the charge of the limes, that the affair
of the Trent was " the last and most intolerable of
a series of studied insults offered by the United
States to Great Britain," and that "England was
treated with much rudeness on the question of the
fisheries of Nova Scotia." Mr. Everett says that the .

limits of the right of the United States to fish in the
waters that wash the coast of the British provinces
were prescribed by the treaties of 1783 and 1812,
and by the convention of 1818. United States citi-
zens were constantly seized for alleged violations of
the treaty and the convention. Sometimes these
seizures were admitted to be unjustifiable by the Bri-
tish authorities. The matter was disputed by United
and British Governments invariably in a friendly
spirit. The dispute was whether the United States
fishermen should approach within three miles of
the shore or within three miles of a line drawn
from headlands. The former was the United States
interpretation, and the latter the British. In the
convention of 1818 the United States renounced the

liberty to take, dry, or cure fish within three miles
of any of the coastr, bays, creeks, or harbours of the
British provinces not included within limits, but
they did not consider that this excluded them from
such arms of the sea as the Bays of Fundy and
Chaleurs.

In 1852 a British naval force was ordered to the
fishing grounds, and Commodore Perry was sent to
protect the United States fishermen. The inter-
course of the naval officers was amicable, and the
affair ended in friendly explanations. The only
charge of rudeness ever made during the Nova
Scotia fisheries dispute was made by the United
States against Great Britain, and the person who
made it is one of the pet Southern Confederacy of
the Times. Mr. Mason, chairman of the Committee
of Foreign Relations in the United States senate in
1852, and now a Confederate agent in England,
expressed himself on the subject of the British
naval force at the fishery grounds as follow:

" I had supposed in this civised age, and between
two such countries as Great Britain and the United
States, that, were it the purpose of England to re-
vive ber construction of the convention, and require
that it should be enforced, ordinary national cour-
tesy would have required that notice should have
been given of that determination on the part of
Great Britain. But, sir, when no such notice is
given—when, on the contrary, the first intimation
that reaches us is, that Great Britain has ordered
into these seas a large naval force, for the purpose
of enforcing this alleged right—l know not in what
light it may strike senators, for it strikes me as a
far higher offence than a breach of national cour-
tesy—as one of insult and indignity to the whole
American people."

So deep was the feeling of the patriotic senator
on the subjeCt, that he was led to say further :
"If there be official or satisfactory information
to the executive that this extraordinary naval
armament has been ordered by Great Britain into
the North American seas, for the purpose of exe-
cuting instantly the construction which Great Bri-
tain places on the convention, I say the American
people will demand of their executive that all the
torte of the home squadron shall be ordered there
instantly to protect American fishermen. . . . If
I may be told there is danger of collision, I would
answer at once there is no danger; but if there
were, it becomes the executive immediately to re-
sent that which can be only looked upon as an in-
dignity and insult to the nation."
In 1841 Mr. Stevenson, the United States Minis-
ter iu London, addressed a note to Lord Palmer.
ston, Foreign Secretary, complaining of the treat-
ment of United States fishermen. His lordship sent
it to the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia.
That official returned it with a case for the law offi-
cers, the chief point of which was this query :
" Have American citizens the right, under that
convention, to enter any of the bays of this province
to take fish, if, after they have so entered, they pro-
secute the fishery more than three marine miles
from the shores of such bays, or should the prescribed
distance of three marine miles be measured from
the headlands, at the entrance of such bays, so as to
exclude them ?"

Sir John Dodson and Sir Thomas Wilde, the lavr
officers, decided that the distance should be measured
from the headlands. " Curiously enough," says Mr.
Everett, `► the word headlands does not occur in the
convention." The Melbourne ministry went• out of
office about this time, and Sir Robert Peel came in.
Lord Stanley (Earl Derby) was colonial secretary,
but he was so dissatisfied with the law officers'
opinion that he did not communicate it to the
British American provinces for 15 months, and
then he told them that no interference of the Im-
perial Government was required. Soon after this
a United States fisherman was seized in the
Bay of Fundy. Mr. Everett and Lord Aberdeen,
the Foreign Secretary, entered into the most friendly
correspondence on the subject, and at length his
lordship wrote a most courteous despatch, in which
he said that though be considered the British con-
struction of the convention was the correct one, yet
her Majesty's Government were not insensible to
the advantages which would accrue to both coun-
tries from a relaxation of the exercise of their right,
and that they were prepared to direct the colonial
authorities to allow United States fishermen to fsh
in the Bay of Funely ; and trusted that this conces-
sion would be followed by the reduction of the duty
on colonial fish in American ports. Such is the
history of the question of the fisheries of Nova Scatia,
which, according to the Times, was one of a series
of studied insults offered by the United States to
Great Britain.