The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-30 00:00:00

re ,A. ming, Ant

LONDON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1849.

Among the most interesting incidents (if we may
so term them) which marked the entrance of the
Royal Consort into the City of London this day, was
the appearance of the following address to the citi-
zens of the metropolis—an address which was pla-
carded very widely on the walls of the capital :

" OPENING OF THE COAL EXCHANGE.
" CITIZENS OF LONDON.

" Our august and amiable Prince Albert will honour
the City of London with his presence to-morrow.
" The Prince will be accompanied by some of the
Royal Children.
" The object of the royal ♦isit will be to inaugurate a
building erected for the purpose of buying and selling
coals.

"Do the citizens of London know the perils and
dangers to which the working colliers who obtain the
coals they use are continually subjected.
" DJ the citizens of London know that, since the year
1800, more than 20,000 human beings have been killed
by explosion in coal mines ?
" Do they know that within the same period of time
more than 100,000 working colliers have died, before
they have arrived at the age of thirty-five years from
breathing the deadly gases of badly ventilated mines?
"De they know that more than 600 people were
killed by colliery explosions in 1847? Do they know
that more than 600 people were killed by colliery ex-
plosions in 1848? More than 700 people have been
killed by colliery explosions in 18491
" And yet the Government and the House of Com-
mons have refused to pass any law to prevent this whole-
sale destruction of human life.

" CITIZENS OF LONDON.

" The beloved Consort of our Queen, who visits you
upon this occasion, would, no doubt, from that genero-
sity and nobleness of heart which he possesses, if he had
the power, stop this atrocious system which daily brings
misery and desolation upon hundreds of widows and
orphans.
But our Royal Family have no such power. It is
her Majesty's Ministers, backed by a majority of the
House of Commons, who can alone amend the present
laws. And the working colliers ask you, upon this day
of rejoicing, that you will urge upon the distinguished
assembly gathered around your Coal Exchange, the
justice and the necessity of passing a law to compel an
efficient inspection of the coal mines."

Earnestly and profoundly do we trust that the
benevolent project unfolded in the foregoing appeal
may be met with a becoming response; and that the
royal entrance of that illustrious personage who is
justly termed the august and amiable Prince ALBERT
into the chief city of our Sovereign Lady the QUEEN,
will be commemorative of a beneficent change in the
condition of ono of the most industrious and cruelly
neglected portions of the community.

Europe will not very easily lose a recollection of
the weakness, the incapacity, the cruelty, and the
perfif-ly displayed by the Austrian Government. Its
weakness was so conspicuous that in the midst of an
imperial panic the councils holden at Olmutz were
compelled to call in the instant assistance of the
AUTOCRAT. Its incapacity was evinced in glaring
colours by the successive degradation of WELDEN
and WINDISCHGRATZ. Its cruelty was regarded as
so unutterably diabolical that HA YNAU, still reeking
with the blood shed in his career of vengeance and
massacre, was for a moment supposed to hove
been obliged to retreat before the yells of indig-
nation resounding from all parts of Christendom.
Its perfidy, recognisable, more or less during the
last sixty years, has been brought to light in the
most flagrant manner by the recent policy of FRANCIS
JosEru and his predecessor FERDINAND. Dis-
honoured, degraded, detested, dyed in in-
effaceable infamy, and shaken by the shocks
of revolution to its very foundations, the
Austrian Empire still exists exists by
the organized Terrorism of a Red EMPEROR, whose
emblems of authorij are the rope, the axe, and the
guillotine; whose representatives are the hangman,
the gaoler, and the incendiary; and the achievements
of whose reign are the systematised crimes of arson,
pillage, and assassination.

Yet there are mortals so credulous as to believe in
the permanence of this abhorred and heterogeneous
despotism I as if the history of nations has afforded
any precedent of the perpetration of a scheme of such
an atrocious character I So far does the wisdom of
the historian teach otherwise, that we view the main-
tenance of an empire so incarnadined with butchery
as an absolute impossibility. It is not enough to
say that its maintenance would be miraculous. His-
tory assures us that it is and ever will be impossible.
The despot and the despotism have but one
doom—destruction. The doom of the despot
is that of falling beneath the hand of some avenging
murderer—smothered in his bed, or strangled on the
floor of his apartment, or stabbed in the back, or
pierced by the furtive bullet. So invariably has this
been the destiny of the Czars of Russia, that
whenever the EMPEROR is assassinated he is bitterly,
and pointedly declared to have died " a
natural death." And the saying is true, fur the
Natural Death of a Tyrant is assassination. The
same With the despotism as with the
_despot. When
calamities have demonstrated at once the weakness,
the perfidy, the cruelty, and the incapacity of a
despotic Government—then farewell to the prestige
which might otherwise have induced millions to
obey while they cursed, to fear while they hated, to
kiss the rod they yearn to grasp as an instrument of
vengeance against their oppressors., Yea I and such
will be the fate of the Austrian Government. The'
day of its dissolution is fixed in the inscrutable
designs of OMNIPOTENCE.
From the innermost depths of our heart we shall
rejoice when that occasion of solemn retribution
shall have arrived. For the appalling atrocities
which are now perpetrated in the name of imperial
Austria upon the vanquished people of Hungary are
sufficient to cause a shudder to thrill through the bosom
even of the most obdurate and pitiless spectator. It was
rumoured only a day or so back that the arch crimes

of the German Fiend HAYNAII had carried dismay
and horror even into the Camarilla at Schoenbrunn.
So far is the rumour from proving correct that we
immediately afterwards receive intelligence that the
previous atrocities of that inhuman monster are being
emulated in depth and ruthlessness by others more
recent and diabolical. Instead of having retired
before the indignation of Europe and the alarm of
Austria—HAYNAU has been formally appointed
Governor over Hungary. As if to be agreeably
inaugurative of his Viceregal Government, the mur-
derer of Kiss, of AuLicu, and of Count BATTHYANY,
on the 20th instant caused three more assassin-like
executions to take place in Pesth, the execution of
GIUoN, Of ADANCOURT, and of Prince WORONIECKI.
Again the rope of the felon was fastened round the
necks of the noble, the brave, and the patriotic ;
again the bloodhound of Austria had his thirst for
murder partially slaked on the Tyburn or the Place
de Greve of the Hungarian metropolis, the ever
horrible scene of these catastrophes, the Holzplatz.
When the heroic commander of the Germanic legion,
that noble band which assisted in the storming of
Buda, was brought to the spot on which he was to
suffer an ignominious death, when the generous and
dauntless adjutant of DEMBINSKI had ascended the
scaffold, when the young, the valiant, the
handsome, and magnanimous Prince WORO-
NiEcKr was placed under the accursed gibbet—
it is said that even the troop of cavalry
surrounding the gallows, and guarding it with bared
swords, seemed to share with the horror-stricken
spectators their feelings of profound and visible com-
miseration. Age and youth, virtue and genius, are
alike sacrificed to the lust of slaughter, which now
appears to be uppermost in the nature of HAYNAU
and his imperial accomplices. Poor Gistox was
compelled to " die the death," although his heart
strings must have burst, almost before he was
strangled by the hangman, at the thought of his
little orphan children. ABANCOURT seems to have
met his doom with the unblenching valour befitting a
Polish warrior. But it is said that the Prince
WORONIECKI (who was both youthful and handsome),
although he bore himself throughout with distin-
guished fortitude, looked nevertheless pale and
downcast as he stood under the noose on
the scaffold. GOD knows his proud but gentle
heart had cause enough for sadness ! No
marvel that the beauty of his retinues was overcast
with pallor and dejection ! With his life closed at its
early morning, with his companions by his side about
to suffer with him an ignominious execution, with
his country in the grasp of a band of demons, no
wonder the countenance of the unfortunate was pale
and downcast ! The horrible scene closed with a
prayer uttered simultaneously by the people and the
soldiery. May that prayer be heard by the Great
GOD, who is not only the GOD of Mercy but of
Justice ! HE who will not permit any intrusion upon
his awful and infinite prerogatives, and whose voice
has proclaimed, not in thunder and lightning, but in
tones which are still 'audible, that tremendous truth—
" VENGEANCE IS MINE SAITH THE LORD !"

Although leave has been reserved to the Learned
Counsel for MARIA MANNING to place the prelimi-
nary objection to the constitution of the jury, by
whom the wretched criminal was most righteously
convicted, either upon the record, or to bring it
under the consideration of the Court of Criminal Ap-
peal, the ultimate result cannot, in any degree, be
affected thereby. The case was to all intents and
purposes finally and irrevocably decided when the
jury returned the conscientious verdict which con-
signed the wilful and deliberate murderess to an igno-
minious death upon the scaffold, as the only adequate
expiation of her enormous guilt. The arguments of
the Attorney-General and the judgment of the pre-
siding Judges were placed upon too clear and solid
foundations to permit the slightest doubt to remain
upon the question. The demand of Mr. BALLANTIXE
for a jury de medietate lingua was entirely based
upon the assumption that his client was technically
and legally an alien—that she was not entitled to the
full and unconditional rights of a British subject, and
that consequently she could claim the privilege with
which the humanity of the British law had invested
a stranger. The Act 7 and 8 Victoria,' chapter 66,
sec. 16, was, however, conclusive on the point. By
that statute it was enacted, " that any woman mar-
ried, or who shall be married, to a natural born
subject, or person naturalized, shall be deemed and
taken to be herself naturalized, and have all the
rights and privileges of a natural born subject."
The marriage was not denied, and on its celebration
MARIA MANNING became a British subject, owing
allegiance to the British SOVEREIGN and liable to be
tried by a British jury in the event of any
infraction of the laws of her adopted country.
Her entire status or condition was altered ;
she was no longer regarded as an alien, that
could be ordered out of the country at a
moment's notice. It was with her own free will and
consent, by her own deliberate act, that the change
was effected, and she cannot now complain of its
necessary consequence. When she became entitled
to all the rights and privileges of a British born
subject, she assumed at the same moment its respon-
sibilities. One of these very privileges was, that she
could not be subjected to punishment until she had
been convicted of an offence by the unanimous judg-
ment of twelve of her peers, who must be " of the
king's liege people, returned by sheriffs or bailiffs of
franchises, and of whom none shall be outlawed or
fled to sanctuary for treason or felony." No only,
therefore, had she no possible right to demand a trial
de medietate lingua, but if that demand had been
conceded the proceedings would have been absolutely
null and void, and she could not receive the extreme
punishment she had so justly merited. The Lord Chief
Baron, in delivering the judgment of the Court,
relied solely on the change of condition effected by
the marriage, and the 7 and 8 Viet., c. 66. He did
not in any degree rest his decision on the point in
BARRE'S case, a precedent, to say the least of it, of a
very doubtful character, and which, if solemnly im-
peached, would scarcely be affirmed by the Judges of
England in the 19th century.
Even should the point be carried further it could
not lead to any very great delay in the execution of
the sentence. If referred to the Court of Appeal in
criminal cases, it will be adjudicated on early in the
term, which commences on Friday next. If, on the
other hand, the objection should be placed on the
record, it would be set down for argument on the
very earliest day, and we can scarcely suppose that
two barristers of respectable standing and acquire-
ments would pledge their professional reputations to
the validity of the point by giving the necessary certi-
ficates to carry the case before the House of Lords,
the ultimate tribunal, or even that the Attorney-
General would grant his sanction to any further
appeal on a question so utterly untenable.

We cannot conclude our observations on this ex-
traordinary and atrocious case without alluding to
the severe and most unwarranted censures
attempted to be cast by a morning contemporary
upon Mr. Sergeant WILKINS for the manner in
which he conducted the case for the male prisoner. It
may appear an act of supererogation to enter upon
any justification of that accomplished and eminent
lawyer for adopting the only line of defence that af-
forded the slightest chance of escape to his unfortunate
and guilty client. An exceedingly disagreeable and
painful duty was cast upon the learned gentleman ;
he discharged it boldly and manfully. He did
not shrink from the arduous and unpleasing task.
Every unprejudiced person who listened to his bril-
liant and impressive address—an address that more
than sustained the distinguished reputation he had pre-
viously so fully established—must have felt that
no alternative remained unless he was prepared to
sacrifice the wretched criminal, whose ultimate fate
for life or death depended upon the effect of his ap-
peal. It had been clearly and distinctly proved,
beyond the possibility of doubt, that the fearful act
had been committed by one or both of the parties
then on trial ; that the murder had either been
perpetrated by the prisoners jointly, or by one of
them without the assistance and co-operation of the
other. The latter assumption was the only one that
defence, could be advanced by either of the advocates for the
client
each should
by casting necessarily
the g
guilt
It endeavourupon
t o
shield tis andownthe
other. It was the defence set
- up by MANNING him-
self at the moment of his capture, and in which he
had steadily persevered until the very last moment
It was his statement to the police-officer by whom he
was arrested. His first questions were with respect
to " the wretch," whether she had-been apprehended,

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