The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-14 00:00:00

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Mr. PARTRIDGE will hardly regard it as a tribute
to his surgical skill when he observes the serious
revival of the old rumours about a rifle ball being
yet embedded there in GARIBALDI'S wounded ankle.
The decision of the Professor, as to there being no
bullet whatever in the wound, will be remembered
to have been all along most distinct and positive.
At any time, under any circumstances, a man with
the experience and the professional aptitude of Pro-
fessor PARTRIDGE would scarcely be likely to prove
in any way mistaken in regard to a question in
itself of such exceeding simplicity. Under the
actual circumstances of the case here referred to,
however, a blunder of this kind was, obviously, in the
highest degree improbable. Professor PARTRIDGE
having traversed the whole distance dividing Lon-
' don from Varignano, for the purpose of giving his
professional opinion as to the state of the illustrious
patient in that fortress in the Gulf of Spezzia,
would be certain to have a profound consciousness,
at the time of his expressing his deliberate view
as to the state of the wound and the probabili-
ties as to the recovery, that he was speaking in
the presence and under the vigilant observation
of his professional brethren both at home and far
and wide over the European continent. What
opinion he did express, we know. If it was de-
cisive upon any point, it was certainly decisive as
to the fact that, in Professor PARTRIDGE'S
judgment, there never had been any rifle-
ball whatever left in the shattered ankle of GARI-
BALDI by the lamentable shot fired at the Hero,
with such, unfortunately, good aim, by one of the
Bersaglieri confronting him and his armed fol-
lowers upon the heights of Aspromonte. The bul-
let had, he considered, glanced away from the joint
after tearing the flesh and shattering the bones, or
at any rate, one of the bones (or to be still more
accurate, one of the extremities of one of the bones),
the inner side of the malleolus of the tibia of the
right leg. Yet, after all the interval which has
elapsed since Professor PARTRIDGE went from this
country to the Gulf of Spezzia, there examined the
ankle of GARIBALDI in the Fortress of Varignano,and
then pronounced this deliberate opinion as to there
being no bullet left there in the Hero's most serious
wound for extraction—the Times' correspondent
from Italy,this morning, revives the old story about
the Italian Doctors being yet in doubt as to whether
there may not be still an ounce or two of lead re-
quiring extraction ! Had it been actually thus all
the while, it is hardly probable that Professor
PARTRIDGE would have been so positive, or that
General GARIBALDI would have found his suffer-
ings in the interim so greatly alleviated. The
wound itself would scarcely have exhibited so steady
an improvement. The doubt would not have re-
quired so long a period to elapse before its revival.
Even now we should not be left in any uncertainty.
Convinced though we are of all this, we cannot but
think that Professor PARTRIDGE would complete
whatever good has yet been accomplished by him
in this matter—if not in healing GARIBALDI, at the
very least in assuaging the anxieties felt here in
England in the Hero's regard by his multitude of
admirers and sympathisers—by (however briefly)
addressing himself in plain words to the enuncia-
tion once more of his own formal, and positive, and
deliberate opinion as to there being no rifle ball
then in the wounded ankle, admitting of, or rather
absolutely requiring, extraction thus tardily. His
opinion to this effect (he may say) has already been
made public by him. Admitted: yet still now
that these old ugly rumours about the bullet are
revived, it would be in the highest degree unsatis-
factory and consolatory to the personal friends of
GARIBALDI in this country, if that already avowed
opinion were. upon mature reconsideration, reite-
rated. The ghost of a doubt in the matter might
then, would infallibly then, be laid at rest—and
this by a very few more words written under the
hand and over the signature of Mr. PARTRIDGE.

" Fifth month of the reign of Terror" is the date
of a lady's letter from New Orleans, just forwarded
to a contemporary by an Englishman. From her
description it seems, indeed, to be a reign of terror,
half humorously diversified, however, by the great
battle between General BUTLER and the Ladies.
Sad enough are some of the stories of feminine
suffering ; but we are pretty confident that the
Lawyer-General, if he would speak out his heart's
grievances, would own that he was as much annoyed
es the ladies themselves. Although absolute master
of the place and its inhabitants, he finds himself,
no doubt, completely outwitted by the never-
failing ingenuity of the weaker sex. The General
has gained himself a European name by his famous
proclamation, though, strange to say, his fellow
Yankees all treat it as an excellent joke, and seem
rather to praise than blame him for it. It is indeed
quite probable that the proclamation was not in-
tended to bear the construction which the South
and Europe put upon it; but one thing is certain,
it ought not to have been susceptible of such an
interpretation. To issue a document which most
naturally meant that respectable women were to be
surrendered to the brutal passions of the soldiery if
they ventured to exhibit their detestation of their
presence, was an inexcusable insult, not to New
Orleans only, but to the civilisation of the age.
One can but be struck, however, in perusing this
letter, with its illustration of very old lessons—the
punishment of crime by criminals, and the readi-
ness of sufferers to complain of sufferings not worse
than those which they have so ruthlessly inflicted.
New
Orleans
has been a very hell on earth in
regard to slavery". The stories of slavery there, of
slave gangs standing for sale, and of the treatment
of the poor negroes, which have been told us by
witnesses whose credibility was beyond question,
h• We well knew ourselves a
are revolting enong
captain of an English merchant vessel, who sailed
a
thither with a crew, among whom were four
coloured British subjects; on his arrival these men
emain in the vesse, they
were not even suffered to r
ken to the gaol,l badly
were seized, handcuffed, ta
used, and not placed on board the vessel again till
apses of their impri-
the captain had paid the exP
of owning a
sonment, and all for the felony
ractice has
coloured skin ! This atrocious p
continued notwithstanding the remonstrances
of the British Government. cc The Federal
Government could not interfere wits the laws
of a Sovereign State." Surely the
Government is rightly served in finding hat the
State Secedes from Federal
,
this slough
~
a,l aveh its sovereignty. It is ,
olders and slavery which is now tortured
by the encouragement General BUTLER gives to its
slaves.

The General,
ladies, pits their slaves against them. He has
it appears, overmatched by the
made these poor creatures, who before could not
call their black skins their own, so saucy
that they
take French leave of absence for a few days, re-
turning at pleasure, without fear of the lash ; that
they tell of the concealed arms of their masters, and
carry information to the General who protects them.
All this, by-the-bye, is somewhat contradictory of
he stories we are told of negro affection for
their proprietors, and their fondness for the relation
between them of cattle and proprietor. One of the