The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The name of Colonel Sykes is not a good
omen for an attempt to draw attention to a substan-
tial evil. That gentleman is in the habit of promul-
gating such eccentric notions as to the virtues of the
Taeping robbers, and he has sometimes shown him-
self so careless or credulous as to the authenticity of
the stories which are from time to time told him,
that we shouldnot have much hope of getting a hear-
ingfor a grievance which comes only from the sources
whence Colonel Sykes derives his information.
Yet the question which he put to the Attorney-
General on Thursday night is one which must
sooner or later, receive very serious consideration.
It is necessary that it should be thoroughly under-
stood whether crimes committed by Europeans
in the interior of China are or are not punish-
able, and adequately punishable, by the European
authorities in that Empire. We have insisted upon
the Chinese recognising the sacredness of European
life. We will not allow a Chinese magistrate, how-
ever far from any consular establishment, to take
cognisance of a crime committed by a European.
Whatever may be his malpractices, if a European
brigand be a thousand miles up the country, plun-
dering, burning, and slaying, still the magistrate and
people of the distant province can do no more than
overpower him by a gentle resistance, bind him
firmly, and send him down to Shanghai. It is true
that popular feeling has sometimes proved too
strong for treaty rights, and that European robbers
in the inner waters have been put to death summa-
rily. It is also true that in extreme cases, where
the offences have been very heinous, the mandarins
have tied their captives so tightly with sharp strips
of bamboo, and have sent them down so slowly
and in such narrow cages, that their revenge lost
little by their observance of European rights. In
these instances of breach of treaty, however, re-
clamations were always made, and the too excitable
populace or the too careful mandarins were always
punished. It is looked upon as the most important
birthright of every European in China that he shall
not be accountable for any offence he may commit
to a Chinese magistrate. His character as a foreigner
is an immunity from Chinese law. The question put
by Colonel Sykes is, whether he thereby becomes
absolved from all law and all punishment. The
answer of the Attorney-General is correct so far as
it goes, but is far from satisfactory. His explana-
tion was that " Europeans who commit in China
what would be crimes in this country, if they could
be caught and the facts proved against them, are
amenable to the Consular authorities in China and
also to the Colonial Court at Hongkong." No doubt
this is so, but probably no one in the House of Com-
mons knew what the powers and procedure of these
consular authorities are, or what is the uniform
issue of a prosecution in the Court at Hongkong.
We know nothing of the case quoted by Colonel
Sykes; but we do know of a case, and a very much
stronger case, which was recounted in our columns a
few days ago, and which is in many respects more in-
structive than the robbery mentioned in the House of
Commons, It will be remembered that a European,
well known, as it would appear, at Shanghai, was
proceeding in his boat up the river. This river, which
is notvery wide, was crowded with market boats, and
no doubt the passage was also impeded by the floating
residences which the Chinese moor upon their waters.
The European was in haste as Europeans usually are ;
he would brook no delay, he fired off his fire-arms,
loaded with ball, to give warning of his approach and
to signal the market people to get out of the way.
One woman's boat was more embarrassing to him
than the others. Very likely the woman, with the
stolid obstinacy of her race, would not give way till
the last moment. The European went on firing his
signals. Here the evidence is a little doubtful.
It is affirmed that the European lost his temper and
fired directly into the boat which had angered him.
Certain it is that he wounded the woman, and that
the woman died of her wound. We will not believe
that the man committed a ruthless murder. Enough
that he was firing recklessly close over theheads of a
crowd of market people with intention to terrify and
not to kill them. But he does kill one of them. In
the eyes of every one of those Chinamen he has com-
mitted a wanton murder ; in the judgment of the
calmest European he has certainly committed a very
aggravated manslaughter. In England he would
probably have been punished with five years' penal
servitude. What happens to him in China, where it
is all-important that the people should have confi-
dence that we act with justice ? This man is, as the
Attorney-General says, " caught" and the facts
" proved against him." He is summoned before the
Consular Court at Shanghai. The Consuls, upon
occasions of this nature, take to themselves, we
believe, two assessors, who are always merchants
of the place, and the jurisdiction is limited to im-
prisonment for twelve months. We are not in-
formed what the proceedings were.upon this occa-
sion, but the result was that the man was fined
1.00, and sentenced to be deported from Shanghai.
This was the justice which the Chinese population
got at the hands of the Europeans in Shanghai—
a fine of £25 and an injunction to go away for a
time from the neighbourhood where he had made
himself so obnoxious ! Really it would seem as
though there was something more than a lawyer's
periphrase in the Attorney-General's expression,
" Europeans who committed in China what would
be crimes in this country." There are consuls
and we are 'glad to say that some of them are
British consuls—who have acted with promptitude
and severity in cases of this kind, and have put
forth all their power, such as it is ; but the case we
have now quoted is a specimen case of the class ; this
is how such offences are generally heard and decided
by European Consular authorities and their assessors.
The Attorney-General, however, rightly tells us
that this man might have been sent down to the
Court of Hongkong, where he might have been tried
either for manslaughter or murder, and, if convicted,
adequately punished. This is a remedy, no doubt.
A Chinese market-woman is shot either in wanton-
ness or in recklessness by. a European. Her own
magistrates are not allowed to punish the criminal ;
but her relatives may carry him before a Consul,—
we have seen with what result,—or they may gather
together the witnesses of the transaction and go with
the offender down to Shanghai, and thence may
take the next mail steamboat, if there should hap-
pen to be room, and steam, at costly charges, seven
hundred miles down to Hongkong, where they may
institute a prosecution against the offender in the
Queen's Court The Attorney-General states the
law as it is, and this is what the law is. But even if
we were to suppose this a case in which not a mar-
ket-woman whose wealth is all contained in a string
of copper cash, but some rich Chinaman, Had been
murdered and that his relatives were determined to
follow up the matter. Let us suppose the case to be
proved at last before a Hongkong jury. We believe
there is no instance, and could be no expectation, of
a full conviction. Some years ago the Chinese Cus-
tom-house officers attempted to stop a sailing vessel
in the Shanghai harbour which was leaving con-
trary to the Customs'regulations. The master fired
his revolver into the boat and killed one of the

Chinese Customs' men. This case was carried to
Hongkong—the master was tried, the facts clearly
proved, and the prisoner was immediately acquit-
ted. The jury, no doubt, thought they were quite
right. They were members of a mercantile body re-
sident in China, and it was very natural that nothing
should suffice to convince them that any Chinaman,
no matter under what pretence, should be allowed to
interfere with a square-rigged vessel. It wasno doubt
their honest conviction that the master was acting in
his right in shooting the man who would have boarded
him. So they would probably think to-morrow ; but
whether we blame them or not, it will not alter the
facts or the practice, past or future ; and, although
we do not care to blame them, we cast much blame
on the system which makes them the judges in such
cases. We cannot believe, with Colonel Sykes,
that the Chief Justice of Hongkong has ever de-
cided that he has no jurisdiction over crime committed
upon Chinese territory, but we think we have shown
that, practically, his jurisdiction can have very little
terror to prevent the commission of crimes there.
Is it not time, then, that our Law Officers should
be able to tell us, not what a mocking burlesque of
justice we have establishedin Hongkong and Shang-
hai to cheat the Chinese with a semblance of pun-
ishment for crimes committed upon them, but
rather that some plan really has been adopted for
protecting these poor people and for vindicating our
own good faith ? There has been a general expec-
tation for some time past that something was about
to be done. We were told of a travelling consular
judge, who was to be armed with large powers—a
scheme which seems rife with difficulties. It would
be perhaps more feasible to get the Chinese Govern-
ment to establish by its own authority a European
court for the trial of Europeans according to fixed
and civilised laws. Or, perhaps, the marauders who
commit these offences outside the limits of the
Treaty Ports might be made subject to martial law,
and subject to court-martial on board the ship of
war on the station. We have no special plan to
push or favour, and, indeed, we see great difficul-
ties in forming any scheme which shall be effective
and free from great objections; but we owe it to
ourselves to make some attempt to remedy the utter
powerlessness to do justice which the Attorriey-Ge-
neral so naively admitted to the House of Commons
on Thursday last. One of these homicides will
rankle in the memory of a Chinese province for
scores of years ; and if we had no higher motive to
induce us to suppress them, we ought to think how
expensive they are, for they have been at all times
the raw material of China wars.

HERALD.—There is a report afloat about the re-
lations between this Government and that of Mr.
Lincoln, which, for all we know, may be well
founded, but which really seems so absurd that we
can scarcely credit it. Mr. Seward is supposed t 3
have gathered courage from the seeming pusilla-
nimity of Lords Palmerston and Russell, and to
have put a strained construction on the alarmist
speeches which have been published to the world in
the course of the debates in the House of Commons
on the defences of Canada. Imagining that Eng-
land just now is in a yielding humour, and disposed
to make almost any concessions for the sake of
peace, he has chosen the auspicious moment to put
forward demands whichbut a short time since would
have been scouted with indignation, and which at
any time are ridiculous. He urges, we are told, that
as the South has no seaports left, the Confederate
navy is a fiction; that, as the majority of the
S
Southern States have been overrun and conquered,
it is preposterous on the part of any European
Power to recognise the South any longer as a belli-
gerent. Mr. Seward, we are informed, has de-
manded that henceforth the common privileges of
refuge, repairing, and coaling, shall be refused in all
the ports of Great Britain and her colonies to
such vessels•as the Shenandoah and the Stonewall,
which are to be treated as pirates, and regarded as
common enemies. We trustthat no English states-
man would entertain for a moment such a sugges-
tion as this. In the first place the Confederate
States are not yet utterly cut off from communica-
tion with the outer world along their thousands of
miles of coast line. The greater part of the Florida
shore, with its numberless inlets, is open. There are
harbours on the Alabama and South Carolina coast,
with which ocean cruisers and blockade-runners can
still communicate. The seaport of Mobile is not
yet in the possession of the Federals. In the
second place, if the whole coast of the Confede-
racy were hermetically sealed, there would be no
reason in law why she should not have a navy.
Switzerland might have one if she were so inclined.
Ownership, and properly commissioned officers, are
all that is necessary to authorise ships of war. And
there is nothing, moreover, to hinder the Confede-
rate Government from issuing letters of marque to
any extent it pleases. By the new international
law of Europe, " privateering is and remains
abolished," as far as regards the maritime powers
of this Continent. As the Americans refused to
agree to this article of the Convention of 1856,
privateering continues legal as between American
belligerents or in any contest between Americans
and Europeans. There is no reason whatever why,
as long as this civil war lasts, we should refuse to
recognise Confederate vessels of war. If we concede
this principle we must be prepared to go much
further. We must admit that we are fairly respon-
sible for the depredations of certain ships which
were notoriously launched from British ports, and
fitted out by British merchants. We must refund
the millions that were sent to the bottom of the
ocean by the triumphant cruises of the Sumter, the
Alabama, and the Florida. These were. either Con-
federate ships of war or they were " British pirates."
It is impossible to characterise them by any inter-
mediate designation. If the demand respecting
Southern cruisers seems opposed to the accepted
principles of international law, how shall we desig-
nate the modest proposal that the Southern States
shall no longer be recognised as belligerents on
land ? We suppose that no one in his sober senses
would presume to moot such a question, unless he
had the strongest reason for believing that the Go-
vernment which he addressed was reduced by its
fears to such a point of abject apprehension
that it was disposed to make any sacrifice of prin-
ciple for present safety and future immunity from
attack. The Southerners, forsooth, are not belli-
gerents, because their enemy has overrun a large
portion of their territory, and cooped up their chief
armies within a space of a few hundred square
miles. By the same rule the Americans of the re-
volutionary war were never belligerents until they
had compassed the surrender of Burgyone. The
French in Spain were not belligerents after Vit-
toria ; nor was Napoleon a belligerent when he
drew up by the forest of Soignies and bade defiance
to the world. Lord Russell, for all we know, may
be frightened into refusing to recognise the belli-
gerent status of the Confederates in the field.
General Grant cannot ignore the fact that General
Lee is in front of him, nor can General Sherman be
oblivious of the existence of General Johnstone.
The battle is pending, and the future is undecided.
To attempt to throw a weight into the scale at such
a critical conjuncture would be something worse
than ridiculous, it would be infamous. Even sup-
posing that the British Government consider it con-
sistent with their dignity, and becoming their posi-
tion in the world, to be " ever strong upon the
strongest side," it would be as well that they should
wait until it is clear which side is the more likely to
win. As well tell Galileo that the sun went round
the earth, or issue another "Pope's bull against the
comet" as tell 300000 men who are struggling man-
fully in the field, and have not yet been beaten,
that they are not regarded as belligerents. If the
Federal Government has really preferred such
absurd demands we cannot suppose that
even Lord Russell will yield
to them. He will
have an opportunity of writing a letter in reply,
and we trust that he will not be slow to avail
himself of it. His letter-writing powers are
a cause of terror to sobermmded people when
they are called into play on some subject in which
Lord Russell has placed himself so egregiously in
the wrong that the long-winded rhetoric with which
he attempts to furbish up the blunders places him
and his country on a more ambiguous position than
before. In reply to the arrogant demands of a Fede-
ral Minister he has an opportunity of retaliating
which a statesman of polemical instincts might be
eager to seize upon. The burnings and ravages of
Sherman, s victorious progress might give occasion
for a homily on the amenities of civilised war. It
might be asked whether there is any reasonable
prospect of conciliating the Southerners, and wooing
them back into the Union, but the process of laying
waste their property, ruining their townships,. mas-
sacring their citizens in cold blood, and ravishing
their women. It might be urged that a drunken
stump orator as Vice President of the Republic, a
mad Methodist preacher as Governor of a State, are
not exactly the kind of functionaries to whose rule
the South is likely to submit without a murmur. It
might be mildly insinuated as a clincher to the ar-
gument, that the religion, or morality—call it what
you will—of the Unionists has developed into a
phase in which ferocity has become a cardinal
virtue, and a thirst of undiscriminating vengeance
taken the place of the Decalogue, in w'hich the
gentle maxims of Christ have been supplanted by a
code to which the theory and practice of Attila and
Genseric may pale, and the angel of mercy has
given place to a demon of the pit. With regard to
such a war, so carried on, Englishmen can express
no feeling but one of utter abhorrence.

JEWEL ROBBERY.—Yesterday morning, when Mr.
Walker, jeweller, 321, High Holborn, proceeded to
open his shop, he discovered that a robbery had been
committed on his premises. Examination proved that a
number of articles had been abstracted from the shop win-
dow, where they. were arranged on show. The police wero
at once communicated with, and active steps taken to trace
the burglars. •