The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-11 00:00:00

cal prisoners by the Northerns is a disgrace to their localities like that which has just become the scene
civilisation. However they may resent the wish of of this deplorable catastrophea greater display of
the South for independence, and dislike to become vigilance on the part of the inspectors employed by
a free but smaller State, it is inexcusable to treat as the Paving Commissioners.
felons men who only differ from them on a grave
political question.
What brought the subject, however, before the
House of Lords is the fact that some British sub-
jects had shared this wretched imprisonment, and
had lain for some time, confined on suspicion,
while trial was refused them. Worst of all, they
had been required to abjure their allegiance to
Queen VICTORIA, and to swear allegiance to the
United States before they would be indulged with
a trial ! The explanation is on the whole satis-
factory, since, so far as Lord RUSSELL could ascer-
tain, there were real grounds of suspicion ;
in cases where it was proved that suspicion was
groundless, the parties were liberated, and in ne
case was the oath of allegiance knowingly exacted
from a British subject. Lord LYONS had watched the
cases closely, and redress appeared to be easily and
promptly obtained. While nothing can excuse
such inhumanity as Lord CARNARTON described,
still it is not the business of England to interfere
with it. If Mr. LINCOLN chooses to rival King
BOMBA. in regard to political prisoners, he
will surely enough have his reward. All
we can ask is that Englishmen shall
not be imprisoned from mere ill-will, nor
subjected to unnecessary cruelties without proof
of their having violated the laws of the country
and the duties of neutrality. It is an unfortunate
thing that between Americans and us the proof of
nationality is not patent in language, complexion,
or features. Some cases of hardship may arise out
of this uncertainty, but it is only fair to confess that
Mr. SEWARD does not appear to have, knowingly,
imprisoned, ill-used, and compelled to objectionable
oaths any individual whom he knew at the time
o be a British subject.

Peaceful as Lords PALMERSTON and DERBY pro-
pose that the session should be, it is impossible to
compel all combatants to ground their arms. Least
of all is it possible in the Church Rates battle, the
prelusive skirmishing on which begins to-night.
During the recess Sir John TRELAWNY avowed his
policy, and it is one which appears to us both fair

and manly. The Speaker gave his casting vote
last year for the consideration of some other plan
than unconditional liberation. The honourable

gentleman gathered, be said, from the debate that
such was the wish of a great number, probably a

majority, as some who voted with Sir JOHN TRE-
LAWNY had expressed themselves favourably to a

modification. One of Sir JoHN's chief supporters
Mr. BRIGHT himself, suggested the possibility of

abolishing the power to levy compulsorily, but of
leaving the parish vestry, and all the machinery of
laying and collecting a rate intact. Lord EM MY
has suggested the same plan. Many of the strongly
pro-rate party declare this equivalent to the aboli-

1862 threatens to become frightfully remarkable
for its multiplicity of extraordinary accidents.
Hardly had the new year begun when all England
was appalled by the tidings of the burying alive of
200 miners, men and boys, in the new Hartley Col-
liery Pit. Scarcely had we realized the full horror of
that wholesale calamity, when a telegram from the

immediate neighbourhood brought the intelligence
of the hideous, but it was a comfort to think, in-
stantaneous destruction of an unhappy lady crushed
to death among the whirling machinery of an iron

factory. And now, almost within bowshot of our
office where we are writing, and as recently as one
o'clock yesterday there occurs an accident as eccentric
of its kind, and as deplorable in the agonising
mutilations caused by it, as any of which there has
been record for a long while past. It is the strange-
ness of these catastrophes, the unusual circumstances
characterising each in turn, that render them so
peculiarly entitled to more than passing considera-
tion as accidents of a wholly exceptional kind.
Exceptional, of course, strictly speaking, the two
dreadful calamities just particularised only are in
regard to the circumstances attendant upon them.
Not at all exceptional, unfortunately, either of
them in their origin. Often and often before
now we have had to relate the death
by suffocation of men and boys sud-
denly trapped in a coal-mine.' Often and

often we have had miserable occasion to mention

as of recent occurrence the entanglement, and
death by mutilation, of poor factory girls among
the cogged-wheels and whirling straps, and throb-

bing pistons of the machinery in our mills and
factories. It is exceptional now, however, that two
hundred men and boys should have perished toge-
ther at " one fell swoop" in a coal-pit—as the
other day down at New Hartley. It is excep-
tional again when the female destroyed by
unguarded machinery in an iron foundry is not a
poor factory girl engaged there at her work, but a
chance holiday visitor, and that visitor the wife of the
owner of the works thus at once the scene and the
cause of her awful death by mutilation. The poor
lady thus fatally entangled in the machinery by
the trail of her garments, not in the recent case
being doomed to death (as has not unfrequently
happened before now even among the humble fac•
tory operatives) by the absurd use of crinoline—
the victim the other day, upon the occasion referred
to, being, in point of fact, as was certified
particularly at the time, a member of the Society
of Friends. It was merely, therefore, we repeat,
in consideration of the circumstances attendant
upon them that the two frightful casualties we have
been just now commenting upon can be regarded
—as by reason of their unusual circumstances they
certainly can be regarded—as exceptional.
Not so is it, however, in reference to the
singular and peculiarly deplorable accident of yes-
terday, across Waterloo- bridge, down in the
Waterloo-road, hard by Stamford-street. There
the accident, both in its origin and in the
circumstances attendant upon it from first to last,
was essentially exceptional. A distraint for rent
—a tankard of porter—a closed door—an endea-
vour to force an entrance through that closed
door—a crowd in the street suddenly collected
together to watch the course of events in this
miserable little disturbance—these are the preli-
minaries ! Suddenly an iron grating in the pave-
ment gives way under the unusual pressure of some
thirty chance spectators, men, women, and chil-
dren. Occurring as the accident did in the Water-
loo-road at the point indicated, when the grating
and the pavement around it gave way abruptly,
the victims of the casualty were not precipitated in to
the depth of an ordinary area or coal cellar. They
dropped down an abyss of some 35 feet to the level
of Stamford-street—the mutilations caused by their
descent so far, pell-mell, and all huddled together,
and battered afterwards by the falling rails and
flagstones, being something lamentable even to read
the descriptions of. Broken limbs, fractured skulls,
here a crushed pelvis, there a spine all but dislo-
cated, these and other wounds of a more or less
frightful character at once gave ample employment
to the surgeons in the surrounding hospitals. As
upon the occurrence of every unusual accident, of
every accident either unusual in its origin or in its
attendant circumstances (and here it was, as we have
said, distinctly and obviously both) one of the first
thoughts naturally enough is—how the recur-
rence of anything of the kind can possibly be pre-
vented. It is easy enough to recognise in
the instance of the accident at the New
Hartley Colliery that the evil of the single
shaft system was the source of that dread
calamity, and that by rendering imperative
by Act of Parliament the working of any coal mine
in the United Kingdom with two shafts instead of
with one shaft, no two hundred men and boys can
by possibility be trapped again as those poor fel-
lows were trapped the other day down in Northum-
berland. Again, in the instance of that poor lady's
death so soon afterwards in the immediate neigh-
bourhood—the remedy is obvious upon the instant,
it is the same remedy that,we so often have insisted
upon as requisite, viz., the due and proper " guard-
ing" of machinery. But in regard to the casualty
that took place yesterday afternoon in the Waterloo-
road, nothing more can be suggested unhappily
than a greater display of vigilance in regard to the
security of our streets, particularly in dangerous

tion of the rate, which, however, in an important
sense it is not, since it leaves to Churchmen what
many of them demand so loudly, the right to tax
themselves. If they demand this right and then
refuse to pay the tax, they would convict them-
selves of obvious hypocrisy.
Sir JOHN TRELAWNY, however, maintains that
there is no practicable modification of the rate, but
that it must be abolished. Believing, therefore, his
bill to be the one which must be eventually carried,
he places it once more in a position of advantage.
He lays it before the House at the earliest pos-
sible day. As, however, the Speaker's decision
throws the onus of producing a measure of
compromise, on the party to which the Speaker gave
his vote for that purpose, he will give them full
time to introduce their scheme or schemes. What
they are, we well know. There are indeed but
two modifications of any importance proposed—
one would make the rate an owners' rate, the
other would in one way or another exempt Dis-
senters. The advo2ates of these respective me-
thods will have full time, before Easter, to
put their proposals into the best shape they can,
and to lot the House debate them. Sir JOHN
TRELAWNY will thus show that he does not in
the least flinch from the position he has so long
and honourably maintained, while he also shows,
that if he does not modify his abolition proposal
himself, he is open to the suggestion of any work-
ing arrangement which others can offer. But he
cannot offer one himself, or allow what he believes
the right proposal to wait on the possible failure of
the compromise party to produce their scheme.
The Government have announced their intention
to propose nothing. Mr. DISRAELI has demanded
t of them, but the fate of Mr. WALPOLE'S well-
meant proposal is certainly no great inducement
for a rival Government to try its hand on corn-
mise. Few men could be animates • - -
conciliating spirit than the tr•--"er for attabridb
University, and when-
seems to us little ilitelY ue could not succeed, it
that any other Home
might as well try his own hand.
Sec-
retary be more successful. Mr.,,DIS:ABLI
We should
certainly like to see hi-
taken so prominent a - bill. He has
&Art in the opposition to
Sir JOHN'S that it. -
(night fairly be asked of him
to show what).-
. in practice he is prepared to stand to.
A
as he must be esteemed, can hardly be
et off with taking no responsibility like some pri-

vate member.
What the course of the Church-rate struggle this
year will be, it is impossible to predict. We do not yet
even know whether the Opposition now responsible
for bringing forward a bill will fulfil the duty which
honourably belongs to them, or whether they will
leave the Abolition Bill to fight its way without a
rival. if they do, they deserve to see it carried not
only in the Commons but in the Lords. To Mr.
BRIGHT'S proposal we can see no objection. It gets
rid of the objectionable feature of the rate—the
coercion for religious objects, and leaves the Church
its accustomed processes. If neither this nor any
other be proposed, then Sir JOHN TRELAWNY ought
to be allowed to settle the question once and for all.

Mr. COWPER would really seem to have, some-
how or another, set his heart upon destroying, as
effectually as possible, the sylvan beauty and
seclusion of Kensington-gardens. Twice he has en-
deavoured to cut up the turf there, under the green
vista of the avenues of trees, by marking •ut a
new horse ride—a horse ride that, first of all,
actually bisected the gardens in the most barbarous
manner—the second trial of the horse-ride now
threatening to skirt the gardens by the dry moat
or .thereabouts : not content with that reiterated
adventure for the advantage, not of "the million,"
but of " the upper ten thousand," the Chief Com-
missioner of Public Works is now resolved upon
carrying a straight line across Kensing-
ton Gardens and Hyde Park from Bayswater
to Kensington Gore. His design is to have
constructed there a sunken road—bridged over
here and there, and occasionally as under the old
fashionable horse ride of liotten Row tunnelled
out. A temporary convenience this will be of course
during the Great Exhibition—but while merely a
temporary convenience, we fear certain to be
afterwards, for Kensington Gardens especially, a
permanent disfigurement. What possibly can be
the reason of this mysterious antipathy apparently
entertained by Mr. COWPER in respect to the
charms of the picturesque seclusion of those beau-
tiful sylvan haunts ?

The Duke and Duchess of Roxburghe leave town
on Friday for Brighton.
The Earl of Hardwicke arrived at his residence
in Portman-square last evening from Wimpole Hall, Cam-
bridgeshire.

Viscount and Viscountess Campden have arrived
at Claridge's Hotel,

The Viscountess Guillamore and the Hon. Cecilia
O'Grady have arrived at Eaton-place from Rockbarton,
her ladyship's residence in Ireland.

DISEMBARKATION OF THE CROWN PRINCESS OF
PRUSSIA.—Orders have been received by Commodore Sir
F. W. E. Nicholson, Superintendent of Woolwich dock-
yard, to prepare the landing accommodation at the Custom-
house, Gravesend, for the disembarkation of her Royal
Highness the Crown Princess of Prussia on Saturday next.
Her royal highness will embark on board the Victoria and
Albert, at Antwerp, on Friday, the 14th inst. The follow-
ing communication on the subject has been received by Mr.
Bryant, mayor of Gravesend, from Commodore Sir F. W.
E. Nicholson :—"Sir —I have to inform you that her Royal
Highness the Crown Princess of Prussia and suite will
arrive by her Majesty's yacht, Victoria and Albert, at
Gravesend, from Antwerp, on the 15th inst., and will land
at the Custom-house in boats. I have further to acquaint
you that it is
her Majesty's wish that no flag should be
hoisted, or other honours paid on this occasion, the landing
being as private as possible, without any authorities being
present to receive her royal highness."
THE MURDER BY A YOUTH AT BECKENHAM.—
The youth, Andrew Maynard, who stands charged, upon
the coroner's
inquisition, with the wilful murder of Henry
Holland, a youth 17 years old, at Beckenham, under cir-
cumstanc:s already reported, was finally examined yester-
day before the county magistrates at Bromley. The magis-
trates committed the prisoner for trial at the ensuing county
assizes at Maidstone, upon the minor charge of " Man'
slaughter."

The extreme cold
frost has set in, the thermometer last night going to 24 deg.
HE vv EATIIER.—MALTON, Sunday.—lntense
broke the telegraph wires on the Melton
and Thirsk. Railway yesterday. The northern bird, the
crossbill, has appeared, upwards of a dozen having been
captured here,