The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-13 00:00:00

THE ARMY AND NAVY.

The Broad Arrow says : His Excellency the Right
Hon. Lord Napier of Magdala, G.C.8., Commander-in-
Chief in India, has been suffering at Peshawur from a
slight attack of fever, which has detained his lordship on
the frontier longer than was intended.—The Military
Secretary will not hold a levee at the Horse Guards on
Tuesday, the 14th inst.—The United Service Gazette
Sys :—The First Lord of the Admiralty returned to
Whitehall on Thursday. Mr. Baxter. M.P., the Finan-
cial Secretary to the Admiralty, is still absent from his
official duties, and the date of his return is uncertain.—
The Army and Navy Gazette says :—The post of a Naval
Aide-de-Camp to the Queen has been placed at the dis-
posal of Mr. Childers by Captain Richards' advancement
to flag rank.—Captain Sir F. Leopold M'Clintock is now
the senior officer for promotion to the Active List of
Rear-Admirals.—Prince Arthur may be expected to arrive
home from Canada with the Ist battalion Rifle Brigade in
H.M.S. Crocodile about the second week in July.—
Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Symonds, K.C.8., will, it is
reported, resign the command of the Channel Squadron
in about a fortnight. The name of his successor is
not positively known, but that of Vice-Admiral
E. G. Fanshawe has again been freely mentioned.—.,
Orders have been issued for the withdrawal of all the
officers and subordinates of the army departments from
Australasia. One officer will be left temporarily in each
colony—viz., Victoria, Western Australia, New South
Wales, and New Zealand, to settle all claims against the
Government, and to make arrangements for the future
payment of pensioners.—By the death of Major-General
C. E. Wilkinson, Royal Engineers, Colonel G. Wynne
becomes a major-general;_ Lieutenant-Colonel and
Brevet-Colonel A. H. Freeling, a colonel; and
Captain and Brevet-Major E. M. Grain a lieu-
tenant-colonel in the corps of Royal Engineers.—
Major-General W. Munro, C. 8., who has been selected to
succeed in the command of the troops in the West Indies,
will leave England in the course of a few days for Jamaica
to assume his command. There is every probability that
Sir Hope Grant will be appointed to the command
of the Aldershot Division on the retirement of Sir James
Scarlett. Colonel W. A. Middleton, 0,13., Assistant
Adjutant-General, will succeed Major-General Gloucester
Gambier, C.B-, as Deputy Adjutant-General of Royal
Artillery at the Horse Guards. Viscount Teippletown,
G.C.8., will succeed Sir G. Buller, G.C.B. ' - as Lieu-
tenant-Governor of Portsmouth and General Command-
ing-in-Chief of the Southern District.

MR. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P.—lt is said that a great
improvement is observed in Mr. Bright's appearance.
He receives few or no visitors at Llandudno, as he wishes
to avoid all exciting topics of conversation, and to enjoy
as much repose as possible.
THE INTERVIEW AT EMS.—It will be long before
the elucidation of the Ems mystery takes place. A
private despatch from Flensburg to a French paper de-
clares that the interview bore no relation to the affairs of
Gallicia, but that the two sovereigns would have b^en
more likely to discuss the question of North .Schlesu
On the other hand, it is affirmed that the Emperor :In%
King did not dwell on any particular subject, but merely
touched upon all matters of public importance in a general

JUNE 13, 1870.

THE WEST INDIA AND PANAMA
TELEGRAPH.

The New York ,Herald of May 31st publishes letters
from the West Indies announcing that Sir Charles Bright
and officers had arrived at Kingston, Jamaica, to make
preparatory arrangements for the laying of
the cables which are to unite the West
India islands and the -South American Continent.
with the United States and Europe. British operators
and signal men were expected at Kingston, where a large
portion of the cable had arrived on the 10th of May.
Great preparations are being made by the press for the
supply of telegrams. One proprietor proposes that in
order to have telegraphic intelligence his subscribers must
add five dollars to their subscriptions. The British
steamer Suffold, which was expected with a por-
tion of the cable on board, was to remain on
that station to visit the cables when neces-
sary. Her head-quarters will be at Kingston.
Sir Charles subsequently left Kingston for St. Thomas,
where he was awaiting the arrival of the Dacio, respecting
whose fate such sinister rumours have been set afloat. It
is anticipated that the telegraph line will be in working
order by August. Other means of communication
are being pushed forward in the West Indies.
The Kingston correspondent says :—" It is cur-
rently reported that the :Pacific Mail Steam-
hip Com pany are willing to call at this port going to and
returning from Aspinwall, if the. Government will pay
a subsidy of £6,000 towards the expense. It is doubt-
ful if the proposition be accepted. It is stated
that the Foreign Office in London will take the
£2,000 subsidy from the Spanish company carrying
the British mails between St. Thomas, Santiago de Cuba,
' and Habana and give it to the Royal Mail Company, if
they will put on a steamer from Jamaica to Santiago de
Cuba and Habana, and thence to New York in time to
connect with the British mail packet going to Europe, and
to this Al be added the subsidy contemplated by his
Excellency Sir John Peter-Grant, governor of this island,
for the encouragement' of the fruit trade and reduction in
price of provisions.

THE WEEKLY PRESS.
MR. GOLDWIN SMITH AND MR. DISRAELI.

Hoity-toity r What a row ! exclaims the Saturday
Review. Mr. Disraeli has, so Mr. Goldwin Smith says,
called Mr. Goldwin Smith " a social parasite," and Mr.
Goldwin Smith by way of retort; calls Mr. Disraeli " a
stingless coward." And we are informed that on some
previous occasion Mr. Goldwin Smith saluted Mr. Dis-
raeli as " a statesman of easy virtue," whereupon Mr.
Disraeli retorted by characterising his opponent as " that
wild man." All this is very amusing—for people will be
amused by gross personalities—to the world of bystanders,
but by no means so amusing to the friends of these masters
in polite literature, and in the art of unpolite vitupera-
tion. The friends both of Mr. Smith and Mr. Disraeli
will mutter the old line—

"Who would not weep if Atticus were he ?"
There is not much to be sure of Atticus in either the ex-
Cabinet Minister or in the ex-Oxford Professor, but there
is much for those who value the reputation of public men
to be ashamed of. Passing by their previous encounters—
in which, as it seems, Mr. Goldwin Smith began the bad
habit of calling names—there is this- to be said of the
past, that both the Premier and the Professor put their
names to their strong talk: On the present occasion
the Right Honourable novelist fired the first
shot, by stigmatising his old foe under the
thin transparent veil of a scarcely disguised fiction.
Up to last Tuesday everybody felt that Mr. Goldwin
Smith had been treated in a very unbecoming way, but
they knew also that it was not for Mr. G. Smith to vindi-
cate himself. Let others do it, as others had indeed done
it amply. Mr. G. Smith ought by this' time to know
that there is nothing so ridiculous as to fit on a
fool's cap which a spiteful foe presents to
you. Mr. Goldwin Smith made exactly that
false move which Mr. Disraeli wanted him •to make.
Mr. Disraeli was in the wrong—Mr. Goldwin Smith
would not leave him there, and has put himself in a worse
wrong. He says that Mr. Disraeli's affront is " sting-
less,' and then he shews that he has been stung to the
:wirweirtirttrgreat pain anti agony. 'huts
more melancholy than all, he talks about " a coward,"
and about Mr. Disraeli " answering for his words." Mr.
Goldwin Smith has not, we are sure, acclimatised himself
to revolvers and the bowie-knife, and therefore we had
;rather think that he is talking nonsense than threatening
`pistols. Meanwhile, when in a very poor business like
this one party forgets what is due to good taste and
the other what is due to good sense, the cynical world is
apt to laugh with the one and at the other. In this case
we may regret, but cannot wonder, which way the laugh
goes.

KING MAKING IN SPAIN.
It would be difficult, says the Spectator, to imagine a
political scene more bizarre, more nearly approaching the
grotesque, than that which is now transactine, itself in
Madrid. The representatives of the people of Spain are
there trying to bind themsetues by law to evolve a king
from the depths of their moral consciousness. The throne
of Spain, once so great, has been rejected by prince after
prince—by the experienced old politician Ferdinand of
Coburg, by the boy Duke of Aosta, by the venerable old
soldier General Espartero, and, it is believed, by the old
bi..t not venerable -Regent'Serrano. Should ordinary ex-
perience prove any guide in Spain—and we frankly con-
fess it seldom or never does—it would follow that all
candidates now before the public will be rejected, and
that the election will fall either to somebody hitherto
overlooked, or to some man bringing recommendations
which overpower dislikes. Three solutions are possible :
the King of Portugal, Marshal Prim, or the unknown
prince; but of all, the most probable is the election of the
dynasty of Braganza by a two-thirds' vote to the sove-
reignty of Iberia. It is not, in our judgment, the best
solution ; but it is the one which may best pave the way
towards the ultimate end, the reconstitution of the Penin-
sula in the form which its traditions, its manners, and its
geography alike seem to suggest.
THE CHURCH'S ALTERNATIVE.

The John Bull thinks the National Society has a for-
midable alternative to face at its annual meeting on
Wednesday. In Ireland the Church was disestablished
and disendowed without quarter asked or offered. In
England it would seem to be the policy to invite her to
purchase temporary toleration by the surrender of the prin-
ciple for which alone the Church really exists. A Church
without a faith is a monster which has no right to live.
As Churchmen, we have ever found the annual meeting
of the national society rise alike above party feeling and
diplomatic leading to stand simply and firmly on the
principles of their charter and their Church. May it be so
again ! One thing is clear. If the charter is to be vio-
lated, it had better be surrendered; let the society dis-
solve itself and cumber the ground no more. It may live
and do good service to God and man without Parlia-
mentary grants, but it cannot live to any good purpose,
it can never be other than a name of hissing and con-
tempt, if after fifty years devotion to " promoting the
education of the poor in the principles of the Established
Church," it shall now accept a bribe to vote that no child
shall be required to receive any religious in-
struction in school or elsewhere. If we must fall, let us
fall with our principles untarnished, our arms in our hands,
and our 'banner over our heads. Happily, men of this
spirit are a long time in falling.