The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-21 00:00:00

I"HE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 21, 1862.

portion of the electors that they should remain dis-
franchised by the non-issue of a writ. If it does
issue, it is a mere toss up whether they shall not be
disfranchised by the sovereigns of some Alderman
CARDEN, of some BERKELEY, or PRICE. All that
can be said is, that they have a chance of represen-
tation, but they have an equal chance of just the

reverse.

But what means the total absence from Mr.
BERKELEY'S speech, as well as from his motion, of
all allusion to his justly favourite remedy for the
old state of things at Gloucester ? We wonder
our contemporary, who is so hostile to protected
voting everywhere and at all times, did not pro-
pose a medal of merit to Mr. BERKELEY for
silence on the Ballot. Perhaps the hon. member
for Bristol thought a motion that the writ
should issue, accompanied with a proviso, that a
short bill should be first passed to take the election
by ballot, might be fatal to the writ issuing at all.
Possibly it might. But if we are right the old
city would sustain no material injury ; certainly
none which it does not richly deserve. Such an
old offender deserves something more than two
years' suspension of its Parliamentary certificate.
Is it to go for nothing too, that it sends a member
to the House of Lords ? Although, it is a rather
curious coincidence, that episcopally represented
cities are generally amongst the most politically
corrupt, and need the Ballot more than any other.
It is, indeed, wonderful, that with no cathedral in
it, Wakefield can make itiself such a worthy pair
with Gloucester.

We acknowledge that the Ballot would have had
but a poor trial in either of the two constituencies
just released from political penance ; yet, so con-
fident are we of its merits that we should have been
content to risk all the disadvantages for the sake of
even an unfair trial. We have a pretty clear oon-
viction, that even in these hitherto incurable con-
stituencies, it would work marvels. Head-money
is more easily talked of than worked. The danger
of betrayal, and the comparative ease of detection,
when a majority must be bought wholesale, are
too great to be lightly run. The possibility of a
Commission of Inquiry is the same under one system
as under the other, the hazard of perjury as great;
while the uncertainty of the bidder gaining any
advantage, by what ought to be made highly
criminal, would paralyse his exertions. As to the
purchase of single votes, that is, under the Ballot,
out of the question. Purchasers are not wont to
throw away their money at such an uncertainty
respecting a quid pro quo.

We certainly think that Mr. BERKELEY WAS
bound, for his own credit's sake, while descanting
so humorously on the electoral history of Gloucester,
to contrast what it had been with what it might be
under laws which place in the way of bribery
the only obstruction for which it seriously
cares. BERKELEY on electoral corruption, with-
out a word on the Ballot, was, to use
the hacknied illustration, " Hamlet" with the part
of HAMLET omitted. If the writ was to be moved
for in this fashion, better for the consistency of the
member for Bristol that he should have put the
motion into the hands of some of the steady-going
patrons of bills to evade the ballot; and to prevent,
not as they pretend, electoral corruption, but to
prevent adoption of the only known prevention.
Of one thing we are perfectly sure, that the House
of Commons would have but one reason for refus-
ing to try the ballot in these two boroughs—that it
would work too well—so well as to compel its uni-
versal adoption.
We often hear sanctimonious bewailings of the
effect of the ballot on the veracity of electors—
they would make promises and break them—they
would give votes and deny them. We should be
sorry to believe, this, but wo should la►y the chief
blame on the political highwaymen who intimi-
dated honest men into being guilty of falsehood, to
avoid injuring themselves in the latter case, or their
country, in the former. It seems, however, that
lying, and even perjury, by wholesale, are certainly
fruits of the present system. Mr. BERKELEY'S pic-
ture of the election proceedings atG loucester was con-
fessed to be correct. What then shall we say to this ?
—it relates to the petition against Sir R. CARDEN :
The petition was heard before a committee of the
house, and a number of the working classes came
forward and swore directly to the acts of bribery by
the agents of CARDEN. Some of the trading classes
swore exactly the contrary. It was a case of
fustian jacket against broad cloth. Broad cloth
won the day, and it was with great difficulty
that the committee was prevented returning
the petition as frivolous and vexatious. The
agents of CARDEN returned to Gloucester very
much glorified, and the adherents of the petitioners
returned very much disgraced and exasperated.
When the committee sat it was proved, beyond
the shadow of a doubt, that the parties who had
been examined had told the truth, and that the
class above them had sworn that which was un-
true. Yet those who hate the ballot support the
system so fertile in perjury ! We should like to
know from Lord RUSSELL whether he thinks the
ballot could work worse deceit than this.

Yesterday our readers may have remarked in
our columns another of those soul-stirring speeches,
delivered from time to time in this free country of
ours, upon the cruel wrongs inflicted upon his own
outraged and all but annihilated nationality, by
the illustrious General Count ZAMOYSKI. Now
that Poland has unhappily lost, within the last few
years, the powerful advocacy before all Europe—
in London, of the late Lord DUDLEY STUART—
in Paris, of the late Prince ADAM CZARTORYSKI—
the one cut off so prematurely and the other at so
venerable and patriarchal an age, each by his death
inflicting upon the cause with which his
name had come to be absolutely identified a
loss altogether irreparable—now that Lord DUD-
LEY and Prince ADAM have alike disap-
peared from the scene as the champions of the
injured interests of Poland in the two foremost
capitals of Christendom, we turn always with a
profounder interest than ever to listen to every
syllable that falls from the lips of the Count
ZAMOYSKI upon that same "high argument." His
is, beyond a doubt, the greatest name left to us, or ra-
ther to his oppressed compatriots, among the exiled
Polish nobility. His heart is ever open to respond
with sympathy to the impassioned yearnings for
redress ever, more or less, audible among the scat-
tered patriots of Poland. His tongue is ever ready
to give eloquent and pathetic utterance to their
aspirations for brighter days, aspirations that
mingle with their every prayer, and constitute no
inconsiderable part of the religion of their lives.
Let but the opportunity be offered during his
life-time, as offered that opportunity will
inevitably be to the Poles sooner or later—
and the sword of General Count ZAMOYSKI
will again, we may rest absolutely assured, be
as swift to leap from its scabbard and as keen to
assault the arch-foes of his fatherland, as ever his
thoughts have started to utterance upon his lips,
now that an appeal to the final arbitrament of war
is yet impracticable, as ever during this protracted
compulsory peace and endurance for himself and
his compatriots his poignant irony, winged with
wit and barbed with scorn, has been directed
against the mightiest of the oppressors of Poland.
Neyer yet has Count ZADIOYSKI spoken more

directly to the purpose than he did upon this last
occasion of his public appearance upon a platform
in England to raise his earnest and impetuous
accents in that sacred and beloved cause his voice
has so often and always so impressively advo-
cated. The meeting, as our report of the
proceedings of yesterday has already shown,
was one which took place in the Assembly
Room of the Corn Exchange at Preston in
Lancashire. The Mayor of Preston was himself
to have presided over the assembly, but that
functionary having been engaged by his re-
sponsible office as Foreman of the Grand Jury
at the Assizes at Lancaster, upon the day pre-
viously announced for the Polish demonstra-
tion, the chair was ably filled in his Worship's stead
by the Rev. the Vicar Canon PARR. The sacred
profession of the Rev. Canon PARR, in fact, accord-
ing admirably well as it happened with the holy
cause the assembly was gathered together in order
to express sympathy with ! With admirable force
and truth to the chivalrous recollections of modern
history did the Rev. Chairman avow in the course
of his opening remarks something to the effect, that he
could never think of Poland, he could never utter the
name of Poland, he could never look in vain for the
name of Poland obliterated from the map of Europe,
without remarking that the people of Poland at one
of the most supreme crises in the history of Europe
bad stood forth as the armed champions and defenders
of the imperilled liberties of Christendom. As to
Count ZAMOYSKI'S speech, a speech which consti-
tuted the glory of the whole of this Demonstration
at Preston, it was as comprehensive and instructive
as it was impassioned and enthralling. " Com-
menting," the report of the proceedings has already
told us, "upon the petition to Parliament which had
been in course of signature, and which was signed
by nearly 1,000 persons, he said he had read it
carefully through, and felt very much gratified at
finding how very well informed those who drew it
up were in the particularities of the past history
and present condition of Poland, and its relative
situation towards the rest of Europe." Afterwards,
we read " Going through the
paragraphs seriatim,
he '(Count ZAMOYSKI) delivered a concise history of
Poland—its partitions, the intrigues in reference to
it, the cruelties which had been practised upon its
people, and the violations of treaties and arrange.
ments which became a dead letter." Earnestly, by
the way, we do hope that this speech of Count
ZAMOYSKI'S may, before the present Session of
Parliament has much further advanced, be printed
at length in a pamphlet form—a copy of which
publication might be judiciously placed in the hands
of every M.P. both on the side of the Government
and on the side of the Opposition. We throw out
the suggestion to the Polish Society with an eager
hope that the hint may be acted upon be-
times. For we cannot imagine to ourselves
anything that could more directly forward the in-
terests of the glorious cause the Society has so well
at heart, at this exceptional crisis in the history of
the still living though mutilated and half-buried
Polish nationality. With what force did not Count
ZAMOYSKI in the midst of his oration at Preston
upon the wrongs of Poland quote those memorable
words of our now Premier, Viscount PALMERSTON:
" Not only had the partition of Poland been the
great crime of the age, but since 1815 the three
partitioning Powers (Russia, Austria, and Prussia)
had been guilty of a series of shameful violations of
the treaty !" Hence in effect the renowned out-
burst of 1830, when Poland was in arms, and
when amongst the foremost of her heroic
chiefs was General Count ZAMOYSKI himself,
Another, and with GoD's blessing it may be a more
eminently-successful outbreak than the last, appears
at this present juncture very imminent, indeed, if
it be not already visibly inevitable. The tocsin
is even now inaudibly ringing at Warsaw. The
inconsistent policy of the Czar ALEXANDER 11.
seems to render altogether unavoidable the descent
upon his western frontiers of that long-delayed
retribution which so many wise and cautious
statesmen have forseen more or less clearly ever
since the execrable triple partition. Among the
many Enigmas that have sat upon the throne of All
the Russias in the persons of successive Autocrats one
of the most inscrutable is assuredly the present suc-
cessor of PETER the GREAT—that bewildering
ALEXANDER IL, who, while emancipating the
serfs with an air of magnificent magnanimity, is
at the same time dealing eut with a lavish hand
a series of infernal cruelties upon the unoffend-
ing Poles at Warsaw and elsewhere. Atrocities so
hideous, so persistent, and so flagrantly unprovoked
can never, we may rest assured, pass unpunished.
As certainly as Russia and her successive Autocrats
have acted with inhuman barbarity to Poland and
the Poles, so certainly the day of vengeance will
arrive when Russia will bite the dust at the feet of
Poland Redivivus !

The Duke and Duchess of Roxburghe and Lady
Charlotte Innes Tier have returned to the Clarendon Hotel,
from Brighton.
The Duke of Rutland is entertaining a.select
party at Belvoir Castle.
The Marquis and Marchioness of Clanricarde
have arrived at their residence in Stratton• street, from
Ireland.
The Niarquis of Hartington, M.P., leaves Melton
Mowbray to-day, on a visit to the Duke of Rutland, at
Belvoir Castle.

The Earl and Countess of Belmore arrived at
the Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, from the Continent, on
Wednesday, and left for town the following day.
The Earl of Roden has arrived at the Clarendon
The Earl and Conntess of Tankerville have ar-
rived at Claridge's Hotel from Heron Court, Christchurch.
The Earl of Mornington arrived at the Pavilion
Hotel, Folkestone, on Wednesday.
Viscount Bangor has arrived at Claridge's Hotel
from Brighton.
The Bishop of London entertained at dinner, at
London House, St. James's-square, on Wednesday evening
last, the President, Deans, Assistants, Librarian, and Fel-
lows of Sion College ; the Rev. Dr. Magee, formerly of
Quebec Chapel, Portman-square (now rector of Ennis-
killen) ; and a few leading persons being invited to meet
them.

Lord and Lady Lyveden arrived at their resi-
dence in Saville• row, a few days since, from Farming
Wood, Northamptonshire, for the season.
SUITORS' FUNDS.—The annual account of the
suitors' fund, suitors' fee fund, and a small reserve or gua-
rantee fund, has been laid before Parliament, and is of in-
terest, because these funds form the chief source from
which it has been proposed to build the new courts of jus-
tice between Lincoln's. inn and the Strand. Reliance has
been placed upon the gradual diminution (to the extent of
£2,000 a-year) of the compensation annuities originating in
the Chancery reforms; but unfortunately the fund is liable
to fresh charges for salaries, pensions, and compensations.
The result is that in the year just closed these funds have
had to meet demands amounting to £217,350, which is only
£l,OOO less than the charges in the preceding year, though
£ 3,300 less than the year before that. The Chancery fees,
which form a main part of the supplies, amounted to about
£94,000, but they reached a rather higher amount in both
the two previous years.

THE YELVERTON CASE.—On Wednesday Lord
Ardmillan pronounced an interlocutor in reference to the
pursuer's motion for adjournment in order to obtain the
evidence of Richard Sloane, a witness to the alleged mar-
riage at Rostrevor. His lordship, in respect that no minute
bad been lodged for the pursuer, as appointed, and that the
pursuer did not now insist on the charge made against the
defender or his agents in putting Sloane out of reach as a
witness, and in respect that the pursuer had not claimed at
the proper stage of the case any cornpulsitor of law to en-
force the attendance of Sloane, and closed her proof in
chiefpursuer's motion for further adjournment, and, on the mo-
tion r, ued the case till Saturday, with a
view to closing the case.
of without
idthcfcetu ntdeeon reservingt right to examine him, refused the
in

THE COURT-MARTIAL ON CAPTAIN ROBERTSON,
4TH DRAGOON GUARDS.---DUBLIN, Thursday.—The court
assembled to-day. The defence of Captain Robertson was
submitted to the court, and the preceedings were adjourned.

LATEST NEWS.

AMERICA.

(PER CITY OF WASHINGTON via QUEENSTOWN.)
NEW YORK, FEB. 7, EVENING.

Seven Federal gunboats, under the command of
Commodore Foote, attacked Fort Henry, on Ten-
nessee River, on the 6th inst.

After one hour and a quarter's severe firing from
the gunboats, Fort Henry, with the Confederate
General Tilgham and GO prisoners, surrendered un-
conditionally.

The fort contained 20 guns, and offered a strong

resistance.

The boiler of the Federal gunboat Essex ex-
ploded, killing 30 persons.
The Federal land forces did not arrive until after
the termination of the engagement.

The Federal cavalry are reported to be in active
pursuit of the retreating Confederate forces.
Fort Donnellson is also about to be attacked by
the Federals.

Forts Henry and Donnellson are considered im-
portant points, as they guard the railroad con-
nection of Memphis and Columbus with Bowling.
green, and their capture would open the navigation
of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

The Burnside expedition is anchored at Pamlico
Sound, preparing for a forward movement.
General Beauregard is at Nashville.

It is rumoured at Fortress Monroe that a riot
had occurred at Richmond, at which cries were
raised for the Union.

The Senate has passed the Bill appropriating
10,000,000 dols. for the construction of iron gun-
boats, The Senate has also passed a Bill autho-
rising an additional issue of 10,000,000 dols. of
demand notes as a temporary relief until the Trea-
sury Note Bill can receive the consideration of the
Sen ate.

The House of Representatives has added an
amendment to the Treasury Note Bill, making the
payment of the interest on Government Bonds
optional in coin or paper. The amendment is con-
demned by some New York journals, and its pas-
sage through the Senate is considered doubtful.

The New York Times says that the Secretary of
the Treasury has proposed to the banks to take
from them their surplus demand notes upon ten
days' notice, giving them in exchange certificate
deposits bearing 5 per cent. interest.

FEBRUARY 8, MORNING.
The House of Representatives has passed the
Treasury Note Bill with the legal tender clause by
a large majority.
The report sent by the Europa, that the legal
tender clause had been rejected, was incorrect.
The mistake occurred through a telegraphic error
in an Associated Press despatch which was received
just as the Europa was sailing.
The New York Chamber of Commerce has passed
a resolution to the effect that no system of taxation
bringing less than 150,000,000 dols. annually is
adequate to meet the exigencies of the Federal
Government.

It is supposed that General Price will await an
attack at Springfield.
The New York Times considers the admission of
the Sumter at Gibraltar as h gross wrong to Ame-
rica, and says, "The rights of the Sumter under
the proclamation of neutrality were void after the
burning of the vessels she had captured. No cap-
ture at sea is, according to international law, legal
without the decision of a Prize Court. The Sumter
was therefore a pirate."
COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.
NEW YORK, FEB. 7, 6 P.M.

The passage of the Treasury Note Bill, and the
favourable war news received yesterday, created
great buoyancy in the Stock-market, and a general
rise in securities.

To-day stocks have continued very firm. New
York Central closed at 83i; Erie, 35.
The 7 30 per cent. Treasury notes were offered
at 99. Money easy.
Exchange extremely firm, at 1141 to 115 for
bankers' bills. Gold, 31 prem. Illinois, 57k.
Cotton dull; middling Upland, 30c.

Flour tending downwards. Wheat rather firmer.
Corn improving. Provisions quiet.

(Per Anglo-Saxon, via Londonderry and Portland.)

NEW YORK, FEB. 8.
Burnside's expedition has sailed for Roanoke
Island.

Exchange continues very firm at 1141 to 115.
Gold 4 per cent. prem.
Money abundant. Stocks flat; New York Cen-
tral, 831; Erie, 34+ ; Illinois, 57.
Cotton dull; middling Upland, 30c.