The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-15 00:00:00

stifled, nearly vomitting,utterly nauseated in one of
our small, inconvenient, crammed-full, unventilated
Halls of Justice, who has not sighed before now for
the robust and healthful air of even some nearly
barbarous antiquity. Almost for that Arcadian
Epoch sung by Dryden—

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

It is a disgrace to our civilisation that such things
can "be"—"overcoming us" less " like summer
clouds " than like pestilential vapours from the
nether halls of Rhadamanthus, and certainly not
" without our special wonder." A noble benefactor,
in every respect, will be the man who sweeps clear,
not any Augean stable, but our English Halls
of Justice—bringing all the various courts of law
together upon one spot, and housing them there
under the roof beams of one Stately Palace. Let
us hope that something practically tending to
bring about this good result may at length next
session be attempted in real earnest. The site
has already been selected—the requisite funds are
already in our possession—all that is now needed
is so to apply those funds judiciously upon that site,
that the Laws of England may at last have a
fitting home in some grand and lofty pile worthy
of being pointed to as our Palace of Justice.

Austria and Prussia are both in their respective
ways bestiring themselves to obtain their object—
Austria is aiming to obtain recognition by Hun-
gary of a sham Constitution, Prussia is proving her
Constitution to be a sham. The latter will be a
lesson for the former. If the Hungarians needed
any further proof of the folly of parting with old
national constitutions for paper ones octroyed by
Royalty, she may now appeal to the example of
the Right Divine King of PRUSSIA; nor can we
doubt that the Prussian example will have its
weight with the great Magyar people in inducing
them to stand firm by the demands of the DEAR
manifesto. We are told that the EMPEROR is to
be Crowned, the Diet to be assembled for that
purpose, and then Hungary is to be left to fill up
her place in the Austrian Reichsrath at her
pleasure. How the Diet can be persuaded to
crown the King without his swearing to observe
those laws, which are the undoubted law of the
land, but which the centralising Germans so de-
test, is the question. "We cannot imagine that
one year more of illegal imperial despotism can
have reconciled the Hungarians to the surrender of
their venerated constitution, or induced them to
accpt in its place the paper trumpery of Count
RECEIBERG ; and, till we see the contrary, we shall
believe that they will set the timid Prussians an
example, following which would raise the latter
marvellously in the scale of nations.
The King of PRUSSIA has committed, in-
deed, a great royal crime. He has resolved to
be a despotic revolutionist. The Prussian
constitution is not, indeed, a very old one, but he
found it in existence, and swore to maintain it, and
govern by it. He has, indeed, always shown himself
somewhat restive under it, and he has magnified
theßoyal power and prerogative in silly ceremonies,
and in language quite as childish. Still there was
his oath, and we suppose oaths have a right as
Divine as that of the Hohenzollerns to be despots.
This obligation he has shamelessly, irreligiously,
immorally, repudiated. He acknowledges that
what he has done is unconstitutional, and he might
have added, convicts me distinctly of perjury. Yet
he coolly persists in defying the nation's rights and
the obligations of oaths, that he may force on the
taxpayers of Prussia the maintenance of sixty
thousand more soldiers than they wish for, as the
instruments of his despotic will and pleasure.
The nature of this coup d'etat is unfortunately
but too clear. It has not even disputable legality
as a temporary screen. The Prussian Upper
House, composed chiefly of poor nobles, mere re

I cont nominees of the Crown, is, in regard to the
Budget, in a similar position to our House of Lords.
The King of PRUSSIA lays his Budget before the
Lower, not before the Upper House; the Lower
1 House sends it with such modifications as it sees fit
to the Upper House. There it can be rejected as a
whole, as a money bill can by our House of Lords,
but it cannot be amended. The Upper House knows
nothing, indeed, formally and legally, of any budget 1
but that which is sent up to it by the Lower House.
Yet in this case the Prussian Ministry instigated
the Upper House to amend the budget, by voting
the one originally offered by Ministers to the
people's representatives. This was confessedly
illegal, The act was, as it was unceremoniously
voted by the Lower House, null and void, as being
beyond the competency of the Prussian Lords. Yet
this illegal act is made by the infatuated monarch
the reason for
doing what is, if possible, still more
illegal—determining to keep up an army vastly
thinks safe, and more costly
than it chooses to pay
larger than the country
for. If this be not the sic

solo sic jubco style of should like
government, we

to know what is.
The Prussians have now a hard struggle before
them, if they intend to secure the respect of Europe.
Thus far they have done well—will they succumb
in the last trial? Their last Parliament voted for

.he 841130 policy as their present one. The KING

oa nf ivmi
eawl s , looking
at
familiar
t o tthhe:il a
tf
er or md a tyh
de philosophic
to
fpeOs
si no
rt
OwEN, taking each of them into account simply
as a smoother or less hairy sort of ape, grandson to
the baboon and cousin-german to the gorilla—we
should be almost disposed to claim for theirprotection
in future in instances like those which are occuring
from day to day in Basinghall•street, and in others
of our noble Courts of Law—our stately Halls of
Justice—we should almost be inclined to claim for
their protection in these distressing instances the
operation of MARTIN'S Act. For, if anything is,
this certainly is something very like Cruelty to
Animals. One of the most eloquent passages ever
penned, even in his masterpiece—the magnum opus
of his " Critical and Historical Essays"—by Lord
MACAULAY, was, beyond any doubt of it, his de-
scription of the Black Hole at Calcutta. The de-
scription occurring in the early part of his noble
essay on Warren Hastings. But Lord MACAULAY
need not have gone all the way to the banks of the
Ganges in order to find a theme of this character
upon which to dilate in words of burning scorn
and indignation. The horrors of the kind repro-
bated there by his pen of fire, were concentrated, it
is true, into the narrow compass of one hideous
night. But, when this night was passed, the worst,
at any rate, was over ; the evil was done with, so
far as related to its endurance by a living creature.
Here the evil is, no doubt, in one sense, most mer-
cifully diluted. But it is an evil that though diluted
is not restricted in its application to any one isolated
group of individuals, being applied systematically,
it almost seems, to crowds of many persons, during
the lapse of many years, to the learned and un-
learned of many successive generations. It has
flourished from time immemorial—going back
probably, far beyond the days of the Wittenage •
mote : though our remote ancestors had happily
the wholesome practice of living very much
out of doors, even when sitting for the administration
of justice, or when prostrating themselves in
Druidical worship, among enormous boulders, in
wide open plains, as upon the giant plain of Salis-
bury, still rendered picturesque by the fragments o
Stonehenge. Standing, elbowed, crowded, ha