The Sun.
London, England, 1847-10-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
ItS.OM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
CHRONICLE.—The continental progress of Mr.
Cobden could not have terminated more appropriately
than with the banquet given in his honour in the free
city of Hamburgh. Similar assemblages, in every
country that Mr. Cobden has visited, have vied with
each other in expressing their admiration of the
champion of free trade, and their adherence to the
cause of which he is the representative. But few or
none have been so qualified as Hamburgh, by the two-
fold experience of protectionism and of commercial
freedom, of ruin and of prosperity, to corroborate by
their own example the soundness of the principles
the spread of which upon the continent of Europe
will be henceforth imperishably associated with Mr.
Cobden's name. Few cities in the course of the last
half century have experienced such strange vicissitudes
as Hamburgh ; and none ought to be better able to
appreciate the blessings of peace, as well as of commer-
cial freedom. No place of any importance was so ut-
terly ruined by the most audacious, the most compre-
hensive, and,the most strictly enforced system ofprotec-
tion which the world has ever beheld--that of Napoleon
himself. In 1814 the population of Hamburgh was re-
duced to about 60,000 inhabitants. It is now more than
double that amount, and the recovery of the city in every
other respect has been in a still higher ratio than the
increase of its population. There is nothing surpris-
ing in all this, for the natural advantages of Ham-
burgh in its position and territorial independence are
so great, that it may be said to be almost impossible
for it to evade its destiny as the centre of a gigantic
commerce. Many a place with scarcely less remark-
able natural advantages, has seen its prosperity
throttled by the absurd legislation, or crushed by the
dead weight of the country to which it was attached.
But an individual city, allowed to legislate for itself,
and consult for its own interests, is pretty sure to find
out quickly what those interests are, and to avoid the
calamitous and too often irremediable errors which
mar the prosperity of more complex and extensive
communities. Hamburgh, at all events, has had,
within the memory of living men, experiences which
it is impossible that she should forget; and there is,
therefore, the less likelihood that she could be induced to
listen to the seductions of the charmer of the Zoll-
verein, charm he never so wisely. It does not follow
from this that Hamburgh is, or will be, a whit less
imbued with the feelings of German nationality than
communities which suffer themselves to be com-
mercially led by the nose. Hamburgh has always
regarded herself as an integral part of Germany, and
so long as she retains a voice in the deliberations of
the Diet, she is not likely to forget whatever alle-
giance she rightly owes to the great federal com-
munity of which she is a distinguished member. Her
territorial independence, and her maritime position,
secure to her an immunity from the consequences of
the follies of the German Diet which states more
inland cannot boast of; and it is therefore most un-
likely that she should ever seek to be more or less
a part of Germany than she is. So far from her
ties of intimacy with the rest of Germany being
lessened or impaired, they will be perpetually ac-
quiring new strength from the increased in-
tercourse which the improvements in locomo-
tion by sea and land are producing all over the
Continent, and no where more than in that
Germany, whose worst diseases and defects—klein-
stadterei and remoteness from maritime influences—
are in process of rapid cure, under the beneficent in-
fluence of railroads. The merchants of Hamburgh,
and her citizens generally, have no doubt a strong
sense of the benefits which they derive from their in-
tercourse with England. It were strange, indeed, if
the present generation could be insensible of advan-
tages which their forefathers have known how to avail
themselves of for so many hundred years. But had
there been any possibility that the modern Ham-
burghers could be less awake to their own interests
than their predecessors in less stirring times, Napoleon
took care to give them a lesson which they can never
forget. He saw plainly, by a glance at the map,
that Hamburgh was incurably and indefeasibly, by
pure necessities of neighbourhood, the commercial
friend of England, and the storm of his wrath
fell heavily upon it and upon the other Hanse
towns, which, in his frenzy, he was wont to call an
English colony. Up to 1803 Hamburgh had profited
by the Revolution, and by the extension of the
French Republic. But from that time to the over-
throw of Napoleon it was a doomed city. Its wealth
was confiscated, its population scattered, and the
grass grew in its streets. Just as a man must lose
Isis liberty awhile, if he would learn perfectly to ap-
preciate its blessings, so has Hamburgh learned, by
bitter experience, to value liberty of commercial
action, as the keystone and safeguard of all other
liberties. The Hamburghers have likewise an abiding
faith in the principles from which their prosperity
arises, and they feel instinctively that if they have
the firmness not to join the Zollverein, the Zollverein
will be forced in the long run to come over to their
aide. They endure, indeed, some petty annoyances
from the restrictions which Governments less wise
than their own impose upon the traffic of the Elbe.
But they are not the people to succumb to such paltry
persecutions. They have, as we said, a faith in their
destiny, and they are right. It is not too much to
say, that as the Elbe may be called the Thames of
Germqny, so it is in the inevitable course of things
for Ham burgh to become its London. Some great
commercial capital Germany must have, and no city
can rival Hamburgh in its aptness for that office.
But it is not by retrograding to the policy of the
Zollverein, instead of setting an example to it, that
the way to this supremacy is to be prepared. It
is worthy of notice, that the geographical posi-
tion of Hamburgh, which gave Napoleon so much
uneasiness, had at a much earlier period an extraor-
dinary influence upon the destinies of Europe. It
was in Hamburgh that the Hanseatic League first
took its rise. The history of modern commerce and
modern civilisation commenced, in fact, in the self-
same city in which the living apostle of commercial
freedom has just terminated his continental triumph.
Any one who will follow Napoleon's, in this respect,
most admirable example, and commence all historical
And political speculations on a geographical basis, will
perceive that this precedency of Hamburgh was all
but inevitable. It was, so to say, geologically and
geegrephically foreordained, ever since the earth as-
sumed its present shape. There were the mouths of
the Elbe and the Weser on one side, and of the Hum-
ber and the Thames on the other, smiling encourage-
ment at each other before ever a naked savage had
proceeded in his frail boat to ascend the waters which
he was the first to explore. We cannot regard it as a
mere accident that Mr. Cobden's continental mission
has terminated amidst such associations. May the
event be of happy omen for the spread of the doctrines
whose seeds he had been scattering among the na-
tions, and may he live to behold the triumph of those
principles, not in the laws and habits ofEngland only,
but in those of the whole civilised world.
TIME S.— Notwithstanding the energy with which
the Legislature has gone to work for the cheapening
of law and justice, there are some instances in which
a most exorbitant price continues to be charged for
those commodities. Our police report of yesterday
furnishes a curious case of legal extravagance, which
is rare in these days of expedition, when a few hours
and :a few shillings will sometimes give a man as
much law, or, at all events, as much justice, as would
formerly have cost him many weeks and many pounds.
The practice of making heavy professional charges is,
however, not yet quite lost to the legal fraternity, by
tome of whom, when an opportunity offers, the old
habit is eagerly, resumed. Happily for the vestry
clerk of St. Mary's, Newington, a dunghill was
suffered to remain on the premises of one of the
inhabitants of the parish, and the nuisance having
been nosed, steps were very properly taken to get it
removed. 'She neighbours had only detected a taint
in the atmosp'aere from the offending heap, but to
the legal adviser of the parish the accumulated
feculence was redolent of fees. A complaint was
made before the magistrates, and order for the
abatement of the dunghill obtained, when the proprie-
tor of the too odorous compound consented at once
to clear it away. Two trustees of the parish wit.
messed the cee
of removal, al4 so delighted
were they with the
Preimptitude of the proprietor of
the disagreeable
the office of sca-
venger for the good OA-assafaing
wised he should haw, neighbours, that they pro-
to pay. It seeme,
however, that a dunghill caunnog
disposed of in this{
expeditious and economical int be
if a parish at-
torney has once got scent of it. le
a short time the
own,9r of the ex-nuisance receives
a pounds bill of
which choests
z is
amounting to upwards of twenty pouil
called upon to hand over to the governors
diens of the parish, for the expenses inculild pal;
naturally alarmed at the amount, and declines to eshe.s
charge it unless he is positively compelled.. It cer.
tainly does seem most astonishing that such
le
matter as an objectionable dunghill was handed
over to the parish lawyer, when it is clear
that the beadle was perfectly competent to deal
with the business as effectually as could be desired.
Pad the latter functionary been invested with power
to )make a temporary colleague of the dustman, the
afeeeir would have been disposed of in the most speedy,
econe`alical, and sati,factory manner. Instead of this
proper bourse
. being adopted, the case was sent in to
e office of the attorney, where the operation of
Mounting up a huge bill of costs on this mere mole-
hill of? dungheall was rapidly performed. We should
like to see a copy a the document which has been
so reasonably complained of by the party to whom it
was sent in. We cannot conceive what the nature of
the ,items must have been to have reached the com-
paratieelyienormous sum of between twenty and thirty
pounds, We have searched in vain through the
standard authority on costs, but Dax says nothing
about donhills. If they cannot be legally removed
withouta otonstrous outlay, after they have once in-
truded their vapours offensively under the noses of the
neighbours, they post undoubtedly deserve a treatise
all So themseiyee. We and it difficult to imagine a

bill of costs headed " Yourself and your dunghill," i
interspersed with the customary charges, for " at-1
tending you thereon," and winding up with the
ordinary item of " Term fee, letters, &c.," apropos
of the litigated manure. If a certiorari instead of a
wheelbarrow had been necessary to its removal, the
cost could not have been greater than that which has
been incurred. The process of taxing, which was
left to the discretion of the magistrate, materially
diminished the amounts in the two cases brought
under his notice, for one was reduced from 241.85. to
31. 14s. 4d., and the other dwindled from 211. 15s. Bd.
to twopence under three pounds. It is said, however,
that the difference will have to be made good out of
the pockets of the rate-payers, who will soon take
alarm at the adoption of sanitary regulations if there
is so much expense attendant on getting them en-
forced. In the two cases we have noticed there seems
to have been no opposition raised to the order for the
removal of the nuisances complained of; yet, though
prompt compliance was yielded, the disappearance of
two dunghills was not effected at a less charge for
law expenses than five-and-forty pounds. The sug-
gestion made to the magistrate, that the bills he had
just taxed would prove instructive if forwarded to the
Sanitary Commission, is one that will, we hope, be
acted on. The want of improvement with a view to
health in many of the metropolitan parishes, may in-
deed be easily understood if the costs of taking away
two dunghills in St. Mary's, Newington, are a fair
criterion of the expense that the adoption of sanitary
regulations may entail.

MURDER OF THE COUNTESS OF
GOERLITZ.

The following report of an atrocity which is re-
garded as in some respects a reproduction of the
journal
called crime, is taken from the German
called the Spectator. The crime seems to have been
kept quiet, as the intelligence has not appeared in any
of the chief German papers. In the not very. clear or
coherent report of the Spectator, comparisons are
made between the publicity given to the proceedings
in such cases by constitutional governments, and the
very different system pursued in Germany; after
which it proceeds as follows :—the tragical death of
the Countess of Goerlitz, burnt to death at Darmstadt,
has-recently-thrown-ail the higher classes of the Ger-
man aristocracy into deep consternation. This event
has given rise to the strangest as well as the most
contradictory conjectures ; many persons were of
opinion that the Countess had committed suicide, but
this was not generally believed, as the circumstances
rendered such a supposition highly improbable.
Even supposing the Countess to have been de-
sirous of committing the rash act, it was not to
be believed that she would choose the most pain-
ful, and, till now, unprecedented means, and the bare
attempt of which would, one would suppose, be enough
to arrest her in the act. Some persons, and among
others one of her intimate friends, M. Zamp, at first
supposed that her death was caused by accident, but
all concur in rejecting this opinion. The Countess
has been burnt to death near her secretary, close to a
bell rope. Thus it is quite impossible for death to
have seized her so suddenly as not to have left her
time to pull the bell and procure assistance. But the
supposition either of suicide or accident has given way
to that of assassination ; and, from the result of the
first investigation, this version acquires a greater
degree of probability. The Judge d'lnstruction, M.
Purgold, has found twenty-six very important evi-
dences of culpability, and has requested the Court to
have the affair thoroughly investigated; but the tri-
bunal, after a private conference, has declared the evi-
dence to be insufficient, and has rejected, in conse-
quence, the continuation of the inquiry. The decision
appeared strange, and excited general discontent.
We have it in our power to make known some of
this evidence, collected in the course of the prelimi-
nary inquiry. It is well known that for some time
past, though living under the same root; the
Count and his wife never saw each other. On
the evening before the event, a gentleman passing
before the Count's house perceived a smell of smoke.
He, however, went on without paying further at-
tention to the circumstance; though, on his arrival at
the house whither he was going he mentioned it to
several persons. Thus, since the smell of fire was
perceived in the street at five o'clock, it is more than
probable that M. Goerlitz, who was at home, must
have smelt it before ten. Count Goerlitz, who was
not in the habit of thinking much about his wife, was
in very great apparent uneasiness about her. He
said, and his servants have repeated it, that the
Countess was in the habit of shutting herself up in
her own room every evening. N otwitbstanding, at
half-past eight, he sent the only domestic present to
find another, to inquire of him if he had no news of
the Countess. When the servant acquitted himself
of his errand, the wife of the latter exclaimed—
" Great God I is the Countess burnt ?" What a sin-
gular event. What a singular coincidence between the
exclamation of the woman and the explanation of the
event, which, according to the Count, took place about
an hour and a-halt afterwards, and was discovered by
him. How explain the affirmation of the Count
that at this hour the Countess always shut herself up
in her own room, when she could be nowhere found,
if he had not himself looked into his wife's room ?
Did it require the interval from half-past eight till
ten to make up his mind to force open the door—since
he had two servants with him, the wife of one of
whom had even expressed her fear the Countess
might be burnt. When the fire was discovered, at
ten o'clock, the Count sent for the physician Stegmaur,
and at ten the door was opened in the presence of
several persons, when every one was obliged to draw
back on account of the smoke and vapour which came
forth, the Count alone excepted, who cried out
" There is my wife I" Love has quick eyes. The
autopsy has not taken place, because the Court for-
bade it. He hastened to obtain leave to have
his wife interred. The instruction has not as-
tained whether the door was fastened on the
inside or on the outside. No key has been found.
If the door was closed on the outside, no doubt
can be entertained of the cause of the death,
and, unfortunately, this fact is too well proved ;
if closed on the outside, the absence of the
key is explained ; if on the inside, what has become
of it ? This evidence gives birth to so many con-
jectures, that it alone necessitates inquiry. The cause
of the fire has not been discovered. There was
neither stove nor candlestick in the room. If it be
supposed that somebody ignited the fire and then left
the room with the candlestick, the fact is still more
easily explained. The Countess had been bnrnt by
the flames, before her secretary. No other article of
furniture has been burnt. The head, neck, and part
of the arm were carbonised. It is supposed the un-
happy woman, after being murdered, was placed over
a small stove, where she remained for some hours.
Before the door was opened the stove had been taken
away, another position given to the victim, and the
event assumed the colour of an accident. From the
preliminary inquest, it is conjectured that the fire was
ignited to hide a murder by strangulation. If the
tribunal of the Court wishes to maintain public trust
its
in decisions, the evidence given in must be made
public. It is remarked that Count Goerlitz, who
lived on very bad terms with his wife, has now as-
sumed a very different sentiment. He often visits
her grave, and covers it with flowers. We are igno-
rant whether he is desirous of influencing public
opinion, ur whether he really yields to a feeling of
sympathy which has declared itself very late ; but
time will unfold the mystery which now envelopes
this affair.

DEATH OF CAPTAIN JAMES BOXER, R.N.—lt is
this week our painful duty to announce the death of our
much respected townsman, Captain J. Boxer, who ex •
pired at his residence, Snargate-street, Dover, on
Tuesday morning last, aged 69. Captain Boxer was a
genuine specimen of the true British sailor, and had seen
much hard fighting in early life. He entered the navy
about the year 1791, and retired from it on half-pay at
the close of the late French war. He was made a post
captain in the year 1813; was one of the retired cap-
tains whose pay was lately increased to 20s. per diem ;
and we regret he was not longer spared to enjoy this
increase. When a boy, Captain Boxer sailed with Sir i
Sydney Smith, and was taken prisoner by the French,
along with that gallant officer, who was much attached
to the subject of our memoir, and interested himself in
his advancement. Deceased was mate of the Tigre, and
commanded a gun-boat at the siege of St. Jean d'Acre
(by Buonaparte), and in the expedition to Egypt; was
lieutenant of the Pompei, at Copenhagen; commanded
the Skylark at Walcheres ; and, in company with the
Locust, engaged a flotilla near Calais, destroyed one
vessel, and captured another, in 1811.—Dover Chronicle.
GENERAL INSPECTION OF THE 63D REGIMENT._
This regiment, which arrived at Chatham garrison on
the 29th Augast last, from India, after an absence of
nineteen years, was inspected on Thursday, the 7th inst.,
on the general parade ground of the barracks, by Major-
General George Brown, KH. C. 8., Deputy Adjutant-
General of her Majesty's Forces. The inspection being
concluded, the Major-General addressed the officers and
menc__cf the regiment, observing that some of the ac-
uut.re raenta and dress of the troops were not strictly in
ce with thae regulation laid down for the regi-
that efficient static)!
acco
ments of the line
from him ; but, deisselsivolitnheatththate
nraeigitdimefenrt was not nproatiisne
andlatheontrary, from report, and owing
ctoleadrraunnekeenfrnoemss
the
ship:
svTinber of defaulters since the
no
brought them home, has
consistently with his duty,
been such, that he could no
allow furloughs to any man o the regiment, or leave of
satisfactory report
garrison of their
captains,
of
absence to any of the officers, unti
is made by the commandant of the efficiency, good order, and discipline.
the regiment on parade was 1 major, 10
lieutenants, 6 ensigns, 4 staff, 31 sergeants, 17 gutmaiZse'rsB,
and 575 rank and file, including 260 •recruits.
CURIOUS ACCIDENT AT TROWELL.—AS two men
were returning to Ilkeston from Nottingham Goose Fair
on Monday night, when near to Mr. Eaton's lime works,
Trowell, they quarrelled; a scuffle ensued, and both fell
into the canal. One of the men was an excellent swimmer,
and found no great difficulty in reaching the bank; but
bis opponent, unfortunately, was not possessed of that
tact, and must have sunk to rise no more, had not the
other jumped in again and rescued him.—.Noitinghang- I
fhke amardianf