The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-27 00:00:00

THE SON, LONDON, THURSDAY PIVENING, NOVEMBER 27, ISM

death—she was guilty of the heinous supple-
mentary crime of endeavouring to fis her
own deed of blood upon an innocent man, and that
too an old man close upon ninety ! The extrava-
gant, inconsequential, incoherent, statement de-
livered in at the close of JESSIE M`LACIILAN't4 trial

—led eventually, it will be remembered to a secret
inquiry, instituted by order of Sir GEORGE GREY,
an inquiry conducted within closed doors at Sir
ARCHIBALD ALISON'S chambers at Glasgow, as
Sheriff of Lanarkshire, conducted there by
Mr. YOUNG, the Scotch Solicitor-General--
the proceedings of this secret supplementary
investigation never yet have been made public in
any way. And yet leading, as we all know, to the
extraordinary result of the commutation of JESSIE
M'LAUCHLAN'S sentence from one of death to one
of penal servitude for life ! No wonder can it be to
any one that under the circumstances, old Mr.
FLEMING, the one accused by the convicted and
condemned murderess, should have earnestly de-
manded a public inquiry in regard to himself so as
effectually to clear himself from the possibility of
any further suspicion. With what result his appeal to
the Home Office has been made, our readers will have
perceived on perusing the answer vouchsafed to that
appeal by Sir G. GREY'S Secretary, an official letter
which we gave .to the public in our impression of
last evening. Repelled peremptorily by the Home
Secretary—old Mr. FLEMING has now but one
alternative—namely, to appeal to Parliament.

We do not purpose to discuss just now the whole
question of fortification, but merely to notice a plau-
sible fallacy of the moment. Our readers well
know that we think the money spent on them, if
needed for defensive purposes, might have been
used far more effectively. And, when we look at
the vast sums being now sunk on Portsdown Hill,
and glance away north, to our population sinking
in feebleness, fever, and famine, through the want
of adequate relief, we confess ourselves to be amongst
those who do " sigh" at the sight of the Portsdown
works. At this time they seem like monuments to
the memory of the starved. Future generations
will say, we think, " Better have fed Lancashire
than have built miles of defences, at the best of dis-
puted value, and which by that time will, we cannot
doubt, bear the name of—" PALMERSTON Follies."
Bat letting all this pass, an influential contem-
porary, yesterday, abetted the PALMERSTON ex-
penditure, and expenditure always seems pleasant
to it, by an appeal to the part which fortifications
have played in modern wars. We do not dispute
the part they have played, but one overlooked fact
vitiates the inference in nearly every case, The
fortifications referred to were nearly all of them of
the class for which, with General BURGOYNE, we
have always contended, in contrast with the class
on which Lord PALMERSTON is now expending our
eleven millions. He is building fixed forts at an
enormous cost—to prove the value of which our
contemporary adduces the resistance made by ex-
temporized works !

The Crimean war is appealed to. Surely it was
the extemporized not the fixed fortifications, which
held the allies so long at bay. The improvised
earthworks of Todleben caused all the serious diffi-
culty, and after these were carried, the similar
works to the Russian left of the city. The walls of
Delhi were no doubt the ready defence of mutineers
who perhaps might not have had ability to do what
we certainly could have done, in throwing up earth-
works—but at Lucknow nearly everything was
created, as wanted, by our own men, and the ene-
my's works presented no difficulty to Lord CLYDE.
We are pointed to the Quadrilateral. It really
teaches nothing ; for while no one wishes to deny
the difficulty of capturing strong defence► occupied
by an army, Louis NAPOLEON turned back from
them, only for the same selfish reasons which
led him to desert us in the Crimea, when we
had become strong enough to compel Russia to
better terms than were convenient to himself. He
saw all Italy tending to unity. He wanted to keep
her weak and subservient; to govern her through
statesmen of the RATTAZZI school, so he found a pre-
text in the displeasure of Prussia, and his army left
the Mincio and his fleet the Adriatic.

As the latest examples of all, we are referred to
the Americans. Washington, Vicksburg, Fort
Darling, Yorktown, are all rendered tributary to
preying the value of the Portsdown brick and mortar.
Why, the whole of these fortifications were non-
existent when the war broke out ! They prove our
case. The interest of Lord PALMERSTON'S eleven
millions sterling, if saved, would have left the
nation so much wealthier, and so much better pre-
pared to throw up earthworks wherever they might
be most available against the enemy. The North
had not sunk millions in interest of money, when
called on to fortify its political capital. The obsti-
nacy of Lord PALMERSTON, and the unpardonable
weakness of the House of Commons, have now made
it almost too late ; but the course of the American
war has certainly strengthened our preference for
the plan of the able and experienced general who
urged that we should create our fortified works
when we wanted them. That, we believe, will
never be. The knowledge that we have an army
of navvies, as well as of soldiers, that we, sooner
than any country in the world, could cause defences

to spring from the ground, is quite sufficient to keep
an enemy chary of attempting to place his guns on
our bills. Our navvies ready to make an extem-
pore fort, when and where wanted, are worth far
more than all the PALMERSTON forts—or follies.
They are as valuable, in their way, as our volunteers
and regulars.