The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-24 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, OCT. 24, 1862.

The members of Parliament are performing their
autumn duty of giving an account of their steward-
ship in almost every part of the country—Castle
Hedingham and Colchester, Glasgow and Green-
wich, not to mention the orations of Lord PALMER-
STON, Mr. GLADSTONE, and Sir G. C. LEwfs—and
all of them, with the exception of the reticent
Premier, seem to look to America as the topic of
their speeches. Lord PALMERSTON'S two subor-

dinates take almost opposite views of the main
question ; Mr. GLADSTONE in his ardour and en-

thusiasm declaring that JEFFERSON DAVIS has
made the South a nation, and given it an army and
navy; Sir GEORGE, on the other hand, deep student
as he is in the NIEBUHR school of sceptical history,
can believe nothing of the kind. It may be so,
sooner or later, but the historical doubter finds
himself most at home in present political doubt—
the South is not yet a nation.

That Mr. GLADSTONE has the greatest number
of followers can hardly be doubted. Some foolish
errors of the North, the successful fighting of the
the
South under great difficulties, the distress of our
cotton operatives, themagicrnienifdeec, t
o f
general the word
"independence," on English
im-
pression that an Empire comprising the whole
continent of North America would be unfavour-
able to the independence of other nations; all
these things combined with the remembrance of
the bullying and sharp practice of the States of
late years, have combined to create in this country
a growing good feeling towards the Southern
cause; hence we find Whig and Tory, borough
and county members all leaning more or less
strongly to the South, and a few even supporting
the policy of speedy recognition. As the rule,
however, the neutrality, we have rigidly observed,
is the policy that finds general favour.
" The quarrel does not belong to us, in Heaven's
name let us keep out of it "—has been the sentiment
expressed in various forms by most of the speakers.

That demand we, too, on the whole, quite concur
in. There are, we acknowledge, the strongest humani •
tarian reasons for recognition—that is, in one aspect
of the case ; in another we shall presently advert to,
just the contrary. We can hardly doubt that re-
cognition of the South by the great Powers of
Europe would speedily bring the war to a close. It
does not seem to us likely that, as some have thought,
irritation with Europe would m/ke the North more
Obst
at.
There are too many there who, with
gold ita present enormous premium, and the tax-
, gatherer ready to k c
fIE at the door, not to men-
numerous tion the a:liai.lies in mourning for
the thousands of the
pretext to withdraw fro would be glad of a
m the
struggle.
. j
uggle. The udg-
ment of a number of friendly
an
nations
would be hailed as a happy
grouti forartial
able peue and Mr, Lvicolai vioul an honour-
-3 / d and htklt hib

It would be, therefore, conspicuously unfair, now
that the North has begun to use the weapon, which
all lovers of human freedom in England told them
they ought to use from the first, if we should now
intervene, and by recognition turn aside the
stroke of Northern justice from Southern crime.
The North might justly feel, through a long
course of its future history, that England, the
avowed and sincere enemy of slavery, stayed the
hand of the North when it was uplifted to
smite the monster. History justly censures our
ancestors for forcing slaves on American colonists.
History would as justly censure our preventing the
abolition of the evil when so fair an opportunity had
offered. We are, therefore, especially bound now
to give the North the fullest and fairest scope. Let
her work emancipation to the uttermost. Let her
try, late as it is in the war, whether she can gain
the confidence of the coloured people. Let her call
on the loyal blacks to quit the service of their dis-
loyal white oppressors, and enlist under the Federal
banner ; let the South find that, while by a system of
terrorism it has silenced all Unionism in its slave
States, it cannot silence the Union sentiment in
4,000,000 of its population, if the Union, to that
four millions, means freedom, and Secession means
slavery. Englishmen of all persons in the world
are bound to regard the black Americans not as
chattels but as persons—and, as persons to admit
their right to be heard on the subject of secession.
When, therefore, the question now comes before
the four millions in this form, " Will you be free in
the Union or slaves in Secession ?" we ought to
demand that the four millions shall have a fair

opportunity to express their opinion.
The North will now have difficult work, it is
true, to give effect to its proclamation, but the dif-
ficulties will vanish fast, if the new policy be firmly
persisted in. In the Revolutionary war no fewer
than three of our commanders adopted the emanci-
pation scheme, and found it one of their most
effective devices. JEFFERSON said that, under Lord
CORNWALLIS'S hands, Virginia lost 30,000 slaves.
The North has far better opportunities of giving
effect to its purpose than CORNWALLIS had, and we
only hope that it will pursue that purpose gene-
rously towards the loyal black, relentlessly towards
the guilty slaveholders. More signal retribution the
justice of Heaven could hardly inflict than to de-
prive them of their slaves, the wretches who have
plunged a continent into a horrible war, solely that
they might preserve slavery, and extend it far and
wide over halt North America.

One of the last parliamentary proceedings of
the Dandy Radical so long popular among the
: electors of Finsbury as M.P. for that metropolitan
borough, was the inquiry instituted by him as to
the number of then reported infanticides ! The paper
moved for by the late THOMAS SLINGSBY DUN-
COMBE was in due course laid upon the table of the
Legislature. It revealed, in the shape of certain
reliable and very terrible statistics, an appalling
spread of depravity among large classes of our me-
tropolitan population. It told tales of seduction
and of child murder, of licentiousness and cruelty,
almost incredible for their frequency. It was
noticeable in the first place that the instances of
infanticide numbered up in this lamentable parlia-
mentary return, were those that had been subjected,
each in turn, at the date of its discovery, to the
scrutiny of a Coroner's Inquest. From the secrecy
that may not unreasonably be supposed to accom-
pany the perpetration of this miserable crime, the
inference naturally drawn from the above conside-
ration is—that, great though the number , of
cases of infanticide brought under judicial
and medical investigation before the coroner,
countless other cases were successfully huddled out
of view, even during the same interval of time to
which Mr. DUNCOMBE'S Parliamentary record re-
lated, were never heard of at all, never brought to
light, never subjected to even a passing suspicion.
Since the date to which we are referring, the date
upon which such a startling flood of light, thanks
to the late M.P. for Finsbury, was thrown by order
of Parliament—the crime of infanticide, so far from
diminishing, has very largely increased. The late
respected Coroner, Mr. WAKLEY (once upon a time
Mr. DUNCOMBE'S colleague in the representation of
Finsbury), though he had frequently occasion to
comment in strong terms of horror and dismay to
the recurrence of this very atrocity of child-murder,
of the strangulation, or suffocation, or mortarleemoalleiem-
ing of newly-born infants—never to our
tion deemed it incumbent upon him to speak in
language of such unmeasured abhorrence of this
wide-spread iniquity as his successor, Dr. LANKES
TER, has very recently within the brief
period of
hia tenure of office in Middlesex. Scarcely a single
day, as he tells us, can pass by without his receiving
a MUMS to preside atone or more inquests upon

Again, there is a well known system, for
years and years adopted in France, in con-
nection with the beneficent edifices set apart
there for the Infants Trouves. The simple device
of the bell and the turn table ! In Paris the cases
of infanticide during the use of that system were
far less frequent than they have for a long while
been here in London. Objections might be raised,
nay, objections have been raised before now against
the importation to England of this very simple but
very ingenious device of the bell and the turn table
—upon the score of its being an encouragement to
licentiousness ! Objections as valid might apply to
the benevolent designs set on foot by generous
and gentle hearted philanthropists like that humane
Old Salt, Capt. CORAM. So long as the noble insti-
tution of the Foundling Hospital is flourishing
down yonder at Bloomsbury, it is idle to talk of the
mere fact of provision being made for bastard chil-
dren—being an injudicious, nay, more, a positively
pernicious species of benevolence, insuring the ac-
cordance of aid and encouragement to profligacy.
While the Foundling Hospital remains extant
among our charitable institutions as a Foundling
Hospital, it is idle to raise that kind of objection to
the adoption, at any rate the experimental adoption,
of little adjuncts like the bell and turntable. What-
ever else might be said as to the effect of its being
brought into operation here in London (if but for a
while), it would quite clearly and for an absolute
certainty render inevitable the diminution of the
number of cases of infanticide. As to the closing
of those nightly haunts of vice, which afford
beyond all denial such frequent opportunities for
seduction, the dancing saloons and similar places
of public entertainment—worse than whitened
sepulchres, gilded lures to guilt—that is a wider,
ampler, and more comprehensive precautionary
measure, upon the advantages of which it is
not in any way necessary here to dilate. Enough
for our present purpose, for the enforcement of
the ideas that have thrust themselves upon our
attention, if we add not another word to what we
have already here written to the end that something
at least may be attempted, with a view to diminish
in future the number of annual instances of infan-
ticide
in the cities of London and Westminster.

TAXATION IN AUSTRIA.—At the sitting of the
Australian Chamber of Deputies on the 18th the Minister
of Finance presented a new bill based on the one before
withdrawn for increasing the taxes for three succes-

sive years. In doing so he stated that the deficit for
1862 would be twenty-five millions less than was at
first calculated. The year 1863 would commence with
22 millions in hand, and no recourse would be had to a loan
to cover the deficit, particularly if the proposed increase of
the taxes and the bill on the Bank should be approved of
by the Chamber of Deputies. According to the new bill,
the extraordinary addition to the direct taxes established
by Imperial ordinance on the 13th May, 1859, would be in-
creased as follows for 1863, 1861, and 1865 :—The land tax
to be carried to five-twelfths of the ordinary imposts, and
the tax on houses, trade licences, the contribute arsi e cern-
tnercio of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and the income
tax, to be d€.ubled,

Major Bruce, of the King's County Rifles, was
nearly lost in a gale on Lough Dearg last week. His
yacht Lurline, caught in a tremendous gale on Thursday
night, was driven aground and abandoned. The Major,
Mr. Hutton, and the crew got into the small boat, and
after an hour's hard rowing amid the billows reached a
small island, where they were obliged to remain all night.
Some valuable articles were left behind in the yacht and
lost.

SUSPECTED MURDER AND MUTILATION.—Consi•
derable excitement has been caused in the usually quiet
district of the Thorne Levels, during the past week (says a
Manchester contemporary), by the disco very of the body of
a female in a ditch, under very suspicious circumstances.
On Thursday last, as some children were gathering black-
berries on the edge of a ditch which separates the farms of
Mr. H. W. Godfrey and Mr. Charles Makins, on the Low
Levels, in a very lonely spot between the Low Bank and
the Hatfield Waste Drain, they saw an object which caused
them to call the attention of some labourers in a field ad-
joining, and, on their reaching the place, they were horror
struck to find the body of a female in a very advanced stage
of decomposition. She was lying in the bottom of the ditch,
with both her arms cut completely off, and they were no-
where to be seen. No weapons of any kind were found
near her. Information was at once given to Sergt. Gibson,
of Hatfield, who proceeded to the spot. Mr. J. J. Little-
a ood, surgeon, of Thorne, was also summoned to make a
professional examination of the deceased. Her name and
address aro at present unknown. An inquest was held at
Black Bull Inn, Levels, en Saturday last, before Mr. Mar-
ratt, the district coroner, but, after hearing the evidence
that could bo produced, it was adjourned to the 4th Nov.
next. From the depositions taken, and from certain other
facts which have come to the knowledge of the authorities,
very little doubt is entertained that the deceased met with
her end by foul means. The police aro taking steps to find
out her name, and where she comes from, and also the
whereabouts of the suspected murderer, and it is hoped
their efforts will be successful.
DESTRUCTION OF A BARGE BY FlRE.—Yester-
day morning, between the hours of two and three o'clock, a
most destructive fire broke out in a barge belonging to H.
Dudin and Sons, Springall'e-wharf, Bermondsey-wall,
which caused a general alarm. The barge was laden with
a cargo of spirits and lucifer-matches. A man named Henry
Steed was so severely burnt in cutting away the ropes that
his removal to Guy's Hospital was rendered necessary. The
barge was eventually removed and fastened to a buoy in the
middle of the river, but the fire could not be extinguished,
and the cargo was therefore destroyed and the barge eunk.
EXHIBITION SALE.—A sale took place yesterday
at-the Auction Mart, by order of the Imperial Commission
of the French department, of a choice and remarkable
assortment of wines, spirits, and liqueurs, from all the de-
partments of France and Algeria, which have been selected
from the finest vintage of the last 50 years, and comprising
above 300 dozens of Maconnais, Beaujolais, Bordeaux,
Rhenish, `'ins du Midi, and other superior wines of every
description. In Maccranais, the prices ranged from 13s. to
445. per dozen. In Beaujolais, from 265. to 365, and in
Bordeaux, from 28s. to 365. The sum
per dozen in each
case was exclusive of duty and all other charges, which
have
to be paid by the purchaser.
THE AMERICAN WAR, NEW YORK, OCT. 4.
R A. Wittlians, of this city, received a letter from an
andh a asking i
New o f
York
officer of Garibaldi's army, tendering the services of 4,000
or 6,000 soldiers and 200 officers, to
fight for the Union,
e y can
arrive f
N ewreYadoyrkeqwuoiuplpd dee.ngTagheeythwemill.
T
have no difficulty in leaving Italy, as they have taken no
part in the latl demonstrations,-29rano Leaer.