The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-28 00:00:00

cess.

President JOHNSON'S difficulties appear to be
somewhat lessened, owing to a coalition of the
political parties of the Republicans and Conserva-
tives, who are both members of the Democratic
side. A change has been made in the post of Col-
lector of Customs for New York, by the substi-
tution of the Hon. PRESTON KING for Mr. DRAPER.
This alteration is said to have been made at the
suggestion of Mr. SEWARD and of Mr. THURLOW
WEED, and is regarded as a public aknowledgment
of the junction of the parties. The PRESIDENT'S
position, which had been weakened by the open
dissensions in his Cabinet, is now much stronger,
and it is to be hoped that he will turn his increased
power to good account in promoting the pacification
of the country. Fortunately, now that the first
fever of excitement is over, President JOHNSON
appears to be sensible that there is something more
to consider than the mere violent suppression of
outward disturbance, and that if he hopes to rule a
great and populous country he must exercise some
measure of temperance and conciliation. We may
judge of the temper of some American politicians
when, remembering the famous compansation
clause, we find that the objections raised to the
PRESIDENT'S policy by some members of his
Cabinet are that it is too lenient. The PRESIDENT
has, however, probably learned by this time
that the excessive vehemence of Northern
partisans is ill-calculated to give confidence or sta-
bility to his Government, or to restore the flagging
spirit of commercial enterprise and prosperity.

It is unfortunate that the interests of trade
should receive a severe shock at a crisis like the
present in the discovery of defalcations to an im-
mense amount committed by a banker in Wall-
street. The firm was a well-known one ; but so
great has been the amount of property abstracted
by the missing partner that it has been suspended.
The loss is variously estimated at from two and
a half to five millions, involving several other
bankers and brokers. The system of fraud must
have been going on for some time, since it has
been carried out by means of large issues of forged
gold certificates, as well as the abstraction of
funds and securities. Combined with the recent
embezzlements by bank officials, the effect of this
discovery on the share market has been serious.
The Americans are now reaping the conse-
quence of the low tone of commercial
morality which has for some time prevailed among
them. So long as it is thought a fine thing for a
man to be heavily involved, and a large bankruptcy
is held to be more respectable than a small one, we
cannot be surprised if a man passes from a system
of credit without foundation to actual embezzlement
when the temptation is strong and the opportunity
favourable. To become heavily involved without
any hope of repayment of creditors is only another
form of appropriating other people's property, and
the great temptations which the expenses of the war
have put in the way of contractors, officialt, and
others, have been too great to be resisted by men
who had not sound principles of commercial honour
and honesty to protect them. Such events as this
suspension are very much to be regretted at any time
from the vast amount of suffering which they entail,
and the injury they inflict on credit, but they are
especially lamentable when the heavy expenses of
the war have already pressed so heavily on the
country, and when the task of rebuilding the com-
mercial prosperity of the country is sufficiently
arduous.

We are sorry to find that in spite of the recent
changes the Mayor of Mobile has publicly declared
the testimony of blacks against whites to be invalid.
This is one of the worst features of the old slave
law, and it should certainly be forthwith abolished.
The Provisional Governor of Florida, in a speech
at Jacksonville, remarked that
.the extinction of
slavery by the operations of the war had given the
negro every privilege enjoyed by the whites except-
ing suffrage, and this he said would be a subject for
discussion in the convention which he proposed 'to
authorise for the re-organisation of the State, and
the revision of its constitution. The question of
negro suffrage will be one of the political features
of the time in America ; but while the principle is
sound enough, its application should be deferred
until the negro has emerged from the state of igno-
rance and subjection to which long oppression and
injustice have reduced him. Among the quick,
energetic people of the States, every reform must
be at once applied and carried out ; but they must
learn the wisdom of caution and moderation if they
would harmonise conflicting elements.

It seems as if we were never to hear the last of
the extraordinary affair of CONSTANCE KENT, and
whatever is told or elicited upon inquiry still leaves
something unsaid, and the mystery remains un-
ravelled in its completeness. The unhappy girl has
made a further confession, which will, no doubt, be
read with interest, and may serve. to throw further
light upon the dark and dreadful deed. The most
inconsistent part of the affair is that she declares
that she was treated with the utmost kindness, and
th
be atrocious taken bletakweonrkaledvay
thus whatever motive she might have had to commit
stelifnigihirt
.herl
to the commission of the '
deed in a spirit of revenge
or a fit of jealousy ; but why
she should have mur-
dered the inoffensive child
without being actuated
1 by these feelings is, indeed, most marvellous. At
the same time, the particulars which she gives coin-
cide strangely with the events at the time of the
murder ; and in this last confession she is most
minute in her details and decided in her statements.
If she really acted in the manner she described she
must have possessed great ingenuity, and the other
inmates of the house were very destitute of pene-
tration or acuteness. It is impossible to peruse
these revelations without thinking that the whole
of the inquiries which took place at the
time of the Road murder were conducted in an in-
complete form, and that greater vigilance from the
outset might have set the matter sooner at rest. In
many respects it would have been much more satis-
factory if a " judicial inquiry" had been instituted
at the recent trial of CONSTANCE KENT, for we
should have been able to gain a mor.: definite idea ,

of the mysterious affair, but this was precluded by
the circumstance of the prisoner pleading " guilty."
It must, therefore, for the present remain in its
incompleteness this confession of CONSTANCE KENT.
Many will doubtless accept it as full and sufficient,
but some will be found who will desire yet further
particulars. At any rate, the descriptions which
are given in this last version of the affair seem in-
conclusive in some respects, as in the instance of the
night-dress for example. It seems very incompre-
hensible that she should put it into the drawer,
where it would be so readily detected and excite
suspicion, and still more strange that it should
have been really examined and escaped comment
when she herself, upon further observation, deemed
it necessary and expedient to destroy it. Putting
aside these discrepancies, the story which the pri-
soner relates is comprehensible enough, and the
affair was so wrapped in mystery at the time that
it was not likely that it would ever be made per-
fectly plain. A more painful occurrence has sel-
dom, if ever, taken place in the annals of crime,
and fearful as have been some of the incidents con-
nected with the recent murders, it is to be ques-
tioned if the Road House tragedy does not still
bear its sad pre-eminence as the most mysterious
and distressing event of the kind which the present
generation has witnessed.

LITERATURE.

Major Jack Downing. One Vol., pp. 256. Frederick

Warne and Co.

Anyone who relishes orthographic humour will be
fit to die of laughing at Major Jack Downing.
For ourselves we will acknowledge at once, quite
frankly, that the facetiousness of " P'liceman X.,"
that the oddities of " Artemus Ward," nay, that the
whimsicalities even of the renowned " Sam Slick,"
of Slickville, have ever been all but beyond our
endurance—at any rate for anything at all like con-
tinuous reading. The humorous comes to us al-
ways the most delightfully when it comes covertly,
slyly, dryly, cordially—tickling us into laughter !
It is alien to our fancy, it is beyond our powers
of appreciation, when it comes to us—upon the broad
grin ! When_ it comes to us not with a merry
twinkle of the eye, but with a blatant guffaw (or
horse-laugh, as we may say) pealed to us through
a horse-collar ! A jokemaster of this openly
avowed character is, for oursebres at least, pretty
nearly as dispiriting as one of those most incor-
rigible bores occasionally to be met with in society
—your persistently Funny Men ! Fellows who are
always lying in wait for the concoction of a pun,
creatures who are the loudest laughers at their own
jests, men who are for ever poking fun at you, with
an obtrusive forefinger, just in between the small
ribs—farceurs who are everlastingly, in season and
out of season, dragging their inane jocularities in
by the head and shoulders ! Some people
there are who evidently enjoy this sort
of thing. We don't. Popular with others
the Funny Men may be—not with us.
Facetke done to order—in cold blood—with
a sort of malice prepense—are, for us, anything
rather than exhilirating—are for us, in truth,
dispiriting to the very last degree. So it
has been always in our regard with reference
to that awful product of the late Mr. Thacke-
ray's dullest and drearest notion of the droll
—that detestable ass, Policeman X. Where the
drollery of it lay, we never, for the life of us, could
conjecture! Cockney solescisms, bad grammar,
and execrable spelling, no more conveying to us any
sense of the genuinely ludicrous in writing, than
the beating out from a cracked piano of a hideous
jumble of discords could convey to us a sense of the
humorous in music. Of all kinds of make-believe
fun in this way, the Yankee is, perhaps, every-
thing considered, about the best. As—all things
considered—the vulgar. illiterate Cockney lingo
(lc la Policeman X.) is about the very worst. And
Sam Slick, among all the Yankee drolls who have
C Ter breathed and talked and written, stands forth,
as we may say—facile princeps—nemine contradi-
cente. Yet even with regard to Sam Slick a very
little of him somehow goes a great way. We can
read him enjoyably only in snatches. We take him up
to put him down again. If we read him continuously
for any length of time the grin provoked by him
must inevitably, by the simple force of re-
action, relax into a yawn ! Yet Sam is a droll
fellow, too, in his way. And so for that matter,
likewise, is Mr. Artemus Ward. And so, too, is
Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville Militia.
Some may go the length of actually delighting in
the latter's whimsicalities— as many do in the
whimsicalities of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward.
For those who really relish Sam Slick and Artemus
Ward, Major Downing cannot but be welcome when
he comes to them thus bearing in hand these his
latest lucubrations.

Convention Between Great Britain and

Greece.

(REUTER'S EXPRESS.)
ATHENS, Aug. 19.

The following document has just appeared:—
" Convention between Great Britain and Greece as to the
judgments given by British Courts and Tribunals in
lonian Lawsuits prior to the Annexation.
"Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland and his Majesty the King of the
Hellenes, desiring to regulate by a special convention tho
effects to be produced in Greece by judgments or sentences
passed previous to the annexation of the lonian law-
suits, have appointed as their plenipotentiaries, to wit :
Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, the lion. Edward Morris Erskine, her
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to his.
Majesty the King of the Hellenes ; and his Majesty the
King of the Hellenes, the Sieur Pierre Brailas Armeni; his
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Councillor of State, officer of
the Royal Order of the Redeemer, Knight Grand Cross of
the highly distinguished Order of St. Michael and St.
George, who, having exchanged their full respective
powers, and found them to be in good and proper form,
have agreed upon the following articles :
"Art. 1. All judgments or definitive sentences delivered
in Turkey or in countries beyond the pale of Christendom
prior to the 21st May (2d June), 1864, the date of the an-
nexation of the lonian Islands to Greece, by consular tribu-
nals or British courts, between lonian subjects or between
lonians and the subjects of any other State, provided they
had at that time acquired the authority of an adjudged cause,
shall be valid as well in Greece as before the Hellenic con-
sular authorities abroad, without revision of the ground of
the lawsuit. They will be clothed with the executory form
by the Hellenic judicial authority before whom execution
shall be demanded, without any other formality than the
production of an authentic copy of the judgment or sen-
tence, at the end of which the Ambassador or Chargé
d'Affaires of her Britannic Majesty at Constantinople shall
have appended the words, definitive, and passed as a
matter adjudged,' with the date and his signature. Their
execution shall take place at the suit of the interested
party, in the forms and by the ways and means authorised
by the Hellenic laws, or, if any mode is specified in the
wording of the judgment or sentence, then by that mode,
provided it be not contrary to the laws of public order in
Greece.

"Art. 2. Tho definitive judgments or sentences delivered
by the British courts and tribunals, under the above-men-
tioned conditions, which should not have acquired the
authority of an adjudged cause up to the date of the an-
nexation of the lonian Islands to Greece, shall be declared
provisionally executory by the Hellenic tribunals, and put
in execution, notwithstanding all appeal, upon the produc-
tion in each case of an authentic copy, having the visa of
her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador or Charge d'Affaires
at Constantinople, and attesting that it is definitive and
provisionally executory, but subject to appeal or opposi-
tion, or to any other duly specified cause. But if they are
subsequently assailed by the course open, the Hellenic tri-
bunals shall decide.

" Art. 3. Lawsuits commenced and not concluded before
consular tribunals or British courts before May 21 (June 2),
1864, shall continue their course before the Hellenic tri-
bunals.

" Art. 4. The present convention shall continue in force
forilve years, reckoning from the exchange of the ratifica-
tions. When that poriod has expired, judgments or sen-
tences emanating from British courts and tribunals, which
shall not up to that timo have been put in force by the Hel-
lenic tribunals, shall no longer enjoy the advantages con-
ferred by the present convention, but will retain all their
other effects according to the Ilellenic laws.
Art. 5. This present convention shall be ratified, and
the ratifications exchanged at Athens within the space of
six months, or earlier if possible.
"In token whereof the respective plenipotentiaries have
their arms.
convention, and appended thereto the seal of
"Done at Athena the 14th (26th) July of the year of
grace 1865.
(signed) " PIERRE BRAILAS ARMEN/.
" i. M. ERslina."