The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-10 00:00:00

Box Office open from 10 till 5.

NEW ROYALTY THEATRE
Dean-street, Oxford-street.
THIS EVENING, A LESSON FOR HUSBANDS After
which, CAMELIA ; Camelia, Mdlle. Albina di Rhona. Fol-
lowed by a New and Operatic Burlseque, by J. H. Tully,
Esq., entitled THE VERY EARLIEST EDITION OF IL
TROVATORE ; or, Who Killed the —. To con lude with
A NICE QUIET DAY.—Commence at half-past 7.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.-
Last 10 Nights of "The Colleen Bawn"—Triumphant
Success of the grand Equestrian Pantomime.

THIS EVENING, and during the week, to commence
with Dion Boucicault's Drama, 'ME COLLEEN BAWN.
New and daring Scenes in the Circle, by the Eclipse
Artistes, nightly hailed with thunders of approbation.
Concluding with the Grand Comic Pantomime of
JOHNNY GILPIN'S RIDE TO EDMONTON.
SPECIAL NOTICE. .A GRAND JUVENILE MORN-
ING PERFORMANCE will take place on SATURDAY,
Jan. 11, at 2 o'cluck, for the convenience of families residing
at a distance. By the kind permission of the Commandant,
Colonel Crutchley, the Boys of the Military Asylum, with
their Juvenile Band, will attend.

Stage Manager, Mr. W. Searle.

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS,
AND FINE ARTS GALLERY.
Triumphant Success of Mr. Marshall's Grand Christmas
Entertainment, "THE ENCIFANTED HASH " (SECOND
EDlTlON)—Wonderful Transformations—Every Evening
at a quarter-past ten—in addition to the following Comic
talent : Mr. Frederick French, the great Shakesperian Bur-
lesque Vocalist, Mr. Wood and Son, Mr. J. G. Forde, Miss
Harriet Coveney, and Miss Greene.

Grand Selections from
LA TRAVIATA and TROVATORE,
at ten o'clock,
By Miss Russell, Mr. Herbert, Signor Tivoli, and full Chorus,
Musical Director, Mr. Jonghmans.
Admission—Hall, 6d. ; Stalls and Balcony, ls.

CANTERBURY HALL.-VICTOR JULIEN
" THE FLYING MAN " Every Evening at half-past
Nine o'clock.

T H

E 0 X F O R D,
6, OXFORD-STREET,
OPEN EVERY EVENING.

Selections from Verdi's Grand Operas, " Ernani," "Simon
Boccanegra," and "Macbeth," by Miss Russell and Madame
Enderssohn ; Messrs. Albert, W. Morley, Greene, and
C. Greville. Full Band and Chorus.—Conductor, Mr. F.
Jonghmans. Solos by Mr. Viotti Collins (the great English
violinist). And other Vocal and Instrumental Entertain-
ments, the Comic portion by Messrs. Sam Collins, E. Mar-
shall, M. P. Foster, W. Randall. and Miss Harriet Coveney.
Hall, 6d.; Stalls and Balcony, ls. ; Private Boxes, 10s. 6d.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tun DAY.—Morning, Bh. 55m.—Afternoon, 9h. 33m,
To-MORROW. -Morning, 10h. Bm.—Afternoon, 10h. 44m.

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, JANUARY 10, 1862.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
51-I..ighest since noon yesterday.
46—lowest this morning and during tho night.
48—this day at noon.
•

BAROMETER-29.83.
WlND—South-Westerly; light, with fine weather, but
damp.

4-$
114-
•-•%,--347
134 A o 1;
0 I ,
• r.

TII E SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, JAN. 10, 1862.

In one thing at least we were not mistaken—.
Mr. SEWARD could not settle the affair of the
Trent as a diplomatist. The long letter, the dis-
play of Yankee acuteness, there must be. What-
ever Mr. SEWARD'S soundness of judgment as a
politician, it was quite impossible to leave his
acts to show it—he must have it out; he must
write as if he held a retaining fee, while he had to
act as the head of a department. In due time we
shall have an opportunity of commenting on
this display of forensic ability, and doubt
not that it would furnish matter for several
columns of comment, if Englishmen would but
tolerate discussion of a settled business.
The conclusion is that with which we hold our-
selves chiefly concerned. All objectionable reason-
ings and asertions in an American Secretary's letter
can be answered at leisure. They do not require
the dispatch of regiments and ships of war. A little
of our Minister's thought and time, and a little
extra work for the clerks in the Foreign-office, will
suffice to meet all Mr. SEWARD may do in that
line. Lord JOHN RUSSELL is, therefore, quite right
in accepting the business conclusion—" the placing
the prisoners at the disposal of Lord LYONS, and
asking his lordship to indicate a time and place
for receiving :them." That was t']e act we
required—the comments and explanations might
go a long way in the wrong direction, and the
sacrifice to wounded vanity might be very well
borne with. The act would be the standing evi-
dence that the other act, which it ieverscd, could
not be repeated ; that, as for instance, in the matter
of the Eugenia Smith, Lord JOHN would be enti-
tled to write that the case of the Trent would,
as a thing of course, rule also the second case. The
precise rights of belligerents, and the claim
of mail steamers to special immunities, are points
over which lawyers may yet chaffer as long as they
please, provided we take care that our own steamers
are safe from plunder at the discretion of popula-
rity-hunting commanders, during a republican civil
war.

But what in the world can be the meaning of
Mr. SEWARD'S detaining the Rebel Commissioners
in custody after his letter to Mr. ADAMS, to inform
us that Captain WILKES acted without instructions,
and yet begging " the British Government to
consider the subject in a friendly temper.
If this declaration meant anything, it
meant that Captain WILKES had done us
a wrong, for there could be no need, other-
wise, to volunteer the information that the Govern-
ment had not ordered him to seize the men. If,
then, he had done us wrong, the common sense, as
well as logical sequence, of the statement was, that
Mr. SEWARD was prepared to do us justice.
i
Instead of this, the men wrongfully taken were
detained as if the Government had ordered the out-

rage; and not only that, but, unless report be false,
they were treated meanwhile as felons. Congress
certainly asked that this should be done. Four
Persons, whom a Government confessed it had
seized in a way it was ashamed to order, treated
by it as felons!

It is difficult to imagine any other motive than
spite overreaching itself. These men were very
clever old political opponents of Mr. SEWARD'S
party. They were, we are told, almost the Achi-
tophels of the South. Mr. SEWARD owed them a
grudge as opponents whose cleverness had beaten
him, and had no doubt caused him and his party
infinite trouble and expense. A naval bailiff of his
had seized them by an illegal process. So, never
mind the illegality, he had got them, and he would
vex them as long as he could. If they had the
longest heads, he had the strongest chains ; and his
having rivetted them in defiance of law, was of
little consequence, so long as he could punish
their brains by galling their ancles.

It seems unaccountable, to Englishmen at least

that Mr. SEWARD could allow his countrymen to
make such fools of themselves as they did at Bos-
ton, New York, and even in the Senate, if his case
was so bad, that he had to write to England pro-
testing that he " did not order the deed." Did he
really expect that, as our children sometimes hope
to get off by telling us of a naughty thing they have
done, but that they are " sorry for it"—we should
allow him to enjoy the benefit of his naughti-
ness, and be content to accept a kind of intimation,
that -whatever feckless commanders might do, the
American Government would never "instruct" them
to do, what must bring a foreign war on the coun-
try? Could he expect that auy Government would
allow an act to stand, on the very ground that its
own Government wrote post-haste, to say it was in
excess of its instructions ? The idea seems too
ludicrous to mention ; since it would be but for any
Government to give its instructions to an officer,
and to say with a knowing look, there is all I tell
you to do—and every commander might become an
ocean-plague only second to a pirate. Mr. SEWARD,
of all men in the world, could not expect such
absurd license as this.

And yet Mr. SEWARD allows his countrymen to
play the harlequin in their joy at the " defiance of
the British lion." Governors, judges, lawyers, as
well as mobs and mob orators, were permitted to
have a full run in the line of abusing and defying
England, and boasting that America would never do
what Mr. SEWARD knew must be done. After his
first letter to Mr. ADAMS, although he had not the
manliness in it to offer redress for the acknowledged
excess of instructions by his officer, he could Raver
have held np his head amongst the Governments of
the world if he had refused to restore the
prisoners. Yet he made no signs at home!
He kept the prisoners till the last moment,
and he seemed, to all his own people, to be
determined to keep them. They took him at his
seeming; and in consequence they almost got him
into the position of being hardly able to surrender
the men without a quarrel with thousands who had
committed themselves to the defence of what he had
in truth actually done—defence of keeping what
was not justly his.

Was not Mr. SEWARD really dishonest 11 We are
compelled to ask the question. Did he not mean, if
we would put up with it, to keep the prisoners—in
common phraseology, to try it on. If he did, this
was but low chicanery ; if he did not, we have good
reason indeed to complain, since he put us to the ex-
pense of showing that we did not mean to be imposed
upon. We have had to thank Louis NAPOLEON
for many a tax retained, and many an addition
to our Income-tax, this time we shall have to
thank Captain WILKES and Mr. SEWARD. Let
our people fully understand, that if the Income-
tax be not reduced next year, it will be due, not
to the unavoidable consequences of a foreign war
,between other peoples, bnt to Captain WILKES
having committed an atrocious outrage, and to Mr.
SEWARD'S not having had the courage to proffer us
redress at the same time as he'acknowledged
the wrong. Taking, indeed, the broadest view of
things, we do not know that we have susta;ned a
political loss at all—we have probably gained what
is equal to the cost. We have taught Americans
that we have done with submission to their cease-
less insults. We have taught them that Canada is
not theirs whenever they may fancy to annex it.
We have shown them that we expect decent treat-
ment, and will put up with no other, and hence, it
may be, that we have destroyed the germ of future
wars.

As interesting a speech and meeting as we have
had occasion for some time to record will be found
notified in another part of our impression of this
evening. The speech is the speech of Lord STANLEY,
M.P. for King's Lynn. The meeting is one which
took place on Tuesday last at Kirkdale. The in-
auguration of an Industrial Ragged School in that
locality was the occasion, both for the address and
for the assemblage. And it was but fitting that
Lord STANLEY should have been the one selected to
inaugurate this new charitable institution at Kirk-
dale seeing that his distinguished father,
GEOFFREY Earl of Derby, was the one not only to
lay the foundation-stone (on the 18th of August,
1860) of the building just completed, but that he
was the one also who gave the very site on which
the new schools have been erected. These schools
have been built upon a scale sufficient to afford
accommodation to no less than seven hundred poor
ragged children—five hundred of whom have
already been there gathered together.
At the outset of his very earnest and
eminently practical remarks in the inaugural
address delivered by Lord STANLEY on Tuesday,
the noble lord admirably well observed
(would that many among our more garrulous legis-
lators would bear the remark well in mind during
the coming session, and act accordingly)—that "It
was not a wise thing to make speeches for speeches'
sake, or to exhaust in mere words the energies
which ought to find a vent in action." Adding,
" They were met there for a practical purpose—
that of bringing before the public the object of an
institution which was intended to help those who,
from circumstances, were unable to help themselves
—those who had no educational or social resource
to fall back upon, but who were dependent upon
the assistance which such an institution as that was
peculiarly intended to afford." Not only "in-
tended to afford," the noble lord might with reason
have said, but—such an institution as that with-
out which there was nowhere discernible any ap-
preciable means of affording it. Indeed Lord STAN-
LEY argued pretty much in that way a little later on
in his speech of Tuesday, when impressively insist.

lug upon it that not two per cent. of the children

already gathered together within the walls of this
Industrial Ragged School at Kirkdale, could have
been induced to enter any other kind or description
of school whatsoever. In asserting this much, we
may rest perfectly satisfied that his lordship is not
speaking in any way at random. Lord STANLEY
is never given to exaggeration. His assertions are
generally within the mark. And we may always
rely upon it that his words are uttered at the dicta-
tion of his own honest conviction. Sensibility he
has, but it is always subordinated to his judgment.
His mind is essentially logical and reasoning. His
imagination never runs away with him. When,
therefore, for example, we find him distinctly
putting the fact before us in this manner, to the
effect that not one in fifty—in other words, not ten
out the FIVE HUNDRED Ragged Children now en-
rolled in the Kirkdale School he was inaugurating
on Tuesday—would ever have come within the
reach of instruction through any other kind of
eleemosynary educational institution, we may be
quite certain of two things—First, that the speaker
means literally what he is saying; and
Secondly, that in saying it he is, as usual
with him (to repeat our former expression)
talking strictly within the mark. Granted which
—the truth thus well brought home to us assumes
to itself a magnitude singularly weighty, and
appears in a guise strongly and signally persuasive.
A home truth thus put, a solemn fact thus
enunciated, will be found to surpass im
measureably in its influence all the graces of
oratory and all the charms of rhetoric. Speak-
ing of the ragged school generally Lord STANLEY
evening—"It was a school in
observed on Tuesday

which the pupils were drawn from the lowest class
of society, and who, so far from having anything to
hope or rely upon from the influence of home, were
too often in the midst of unhappiness, of pauperism,
of disorder, and of vice." The noble lord remarking,
in addition to this, that " Industrial schools went
hand-in-hand with Reformatory Institutions." At
the utterance of which words, " Reformatory Insti-
tutions," Lord STANLEY might well recall to mind,
with a sense of generous exultation (particularly
remembering that he is as yet but in the
dawn of his manhood) that he himself was among
the very first of those" who took upon themselves
the establishment of reformatory institutions, before
even the question of subdividing them had arisen.
At that time," he said, " he well remembered the
objection with which they were met. It was said
to them, You propose to reform children who have
fallen into crime, but you do nothing for those help-
less and neglected ones who have resisted tempta-
tion.' They could only answer that they con-
sidered the proposal was good so far as it
went, but they admitted that it did not
reach the root of the evil. If, however," Lord
STANLEY now remarked, " they would open
their eyes, they must see that there was a large
class of our juvenile population who obtained a
living by crime, and who were separated from those
who existed by honest labour; and it was in the
interest of this former class," he added, " that re-
formatory institutions were originally designed."
That Lord STANLEY, in commr.n. with so many
other philosophical and philanthropical observers
of the present age, should regard the establish-
ment of Industrial Ragged Schools as •onspicuous
amongst its best and most propitious features,
can certainly not be deemed—particularly after this
reminiscence—as in any way wonderful. It would
only be matter of surprise if the noble lord had
chanced to view the matter in any other light. For
the beneficence of the operation of the systems both
of Ragged Schools and Reformatory Institutions
can hardly, in truth, be in any way exagge-
rated. We have had sufficient time now during
which to note the effect of their operation since the
period when they were first set aping in real
earnest ! Since the daydream of old JOHN
POUNDS the Cobbler, was first in a fair way to be
realised ! A beautiful and benignant project
springing out of that daydream that, while it was
intensely, and essentially, and literally "penny
wise," was as certainly anything but "Pounds
foolish." The good seed sown originally in the
filth and squalor and ignorance of the most densely
populated of the back slums of our great cities, has
since then increased and multiplied benignly
throughout the length and breadth of this Christian
land. And assuredly not the least notable illustra-
tion of the development of this humanising class of
institutions—institutions at once charitable and
educational—has been just signalised by the able
speech of Lord STANLEY upon the inauguration of
the new Industrial Ragged School down at Kirk-
dale.