The Sun.
London, England, 1870-02-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDO', TUESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 15, 1870.

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Uongress the brief note in which the receipt ox iur.
Elsa's communication was acknowledged, whilst
suppressing the " observations" whereby that com-
munication was answered. The arguments of
both Ministers were put in the same form,
and should have received the same treat-
ment. In one sense the omission was of little
importance. In this time of the fourth estate it is
impossible for the Minister of one country to withhold
what another Minister chooses to publish. Lord
CLARENDON inserted the entire correspondence in the
London Gazette. This resource, however, his
lordship considers disadvantageous, for as the corres-
respondence was really not official, its publication
must have " a tendency to prolong discussion, and
not to allay irritation." These fears were scarcely
realised. Th ecorrespondence excited no great atten-
tion, and in a day or two was entirely forgotten. The
public are weary of debating a question which is
as old as it is profitless ; and the press generally
displays no groat anxiety to further examine a con-
troversy in which the American Government has no
fixed position whatever, but alters its demands
according to the pressure at home, and the prospect
of extracting concessions from the English Govern-
ment.

ALLEGED MURDER ON WESTMINSTER
BRIDGE.

A man named Charles Dobbs, a porter in the Indian
Office, has been apprehended charged with the murder of
a woman named Louisa Overy, with whom he cohabited.
On Saturday night a person named Morgan was
passing over Westminster Bridge between eight and nine
o'clock, when he saw the prisoner and a female standing
near the parapet on the south side of the bridge. They
were quarreling, but he did not hear what was said. Just
after he he had passed he heard a cry of " A woman over-
board," and, on looking up, saw the prisoner with his
hands up and the woman gone. The prisoner ran off, but
was pursued and captured. Another witness deposed to seeing
the woman put one of her legs on the parapet. He thought
it was a joke, but the next moment she was gone, and wit-
ness said to the prisoner, ".You might have saved that
woman," and he replied, " I could not save her." The un-
fortunate woman was heard to scream from amongst the
-blocks- of ice by which she was surrounded,
but assistance was impossible. The prisoner was
visited on Monday morning in the cells by an
inspector, when he made a statement to the effect
that when he went.home on Saturday night he found his
wife—as he calls her—excited by drink. In the course of
the evening she visited two public-houses, and was very
disorderly in her conduct. On reaching Westminster
Bridge, prisoner said, " I'll race you over the bridge."
They both ran, when the woman passed him by a few
yards, and jumped on the parapet in front of him. He
tried to catch hold of her clothes, but was too late. He
then ran towards home to inform his landlord of what
had taken place. Before Mr. Elliot the prisoner
said he would call evidence to shew what a
violent woman the deceased was, and his landlady
deposed that the woman was often excited by drink, but
the prisoner was a quiet, well-behaved man. Mr. Elliot
ordered a remand, as the body has not yet been recovered,
agreeing to accept two good.bail in £lOO each.

THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times thinks that Lord Carnarvon'has done a public
service in calling attention to the relations between the
Mother Country and the Colonies; but the good he has effected
consists principally in the proof he has elicited that the
Colonial Office has not any serious offences towards the
Colonies to answer for. This is the impression we receive
as much almost from his own speech as from Lord Gran-
ville's reply, and we are glad that the criticism
of our present colonial policy has at last been under-
taken by one who has some knowledge of the
subject, and who speaks with the responsibility of
past and, we hope, also of future office. For several weeks
a large number of people have been quite in a fever about
the colonies. It has been alleged that these noble depen-
dencies have been treated with contumely by the Colonial
Minister. Lord Carnarvon seems to have approached
the subject with a wish to be critical, but as
he examined it, his common sense and official
experience shewed him how frivolous were the com-
plaints of which he had made himself the mouthpiece.
This discussion entirely confirms us in the opinions we
have from time to time put forth on our colonial relations.
We have not thought it right to encourage a factitious
enthusiasm for what is called a more intimate union with
the colonies, which means the adoption of a clumsy and
impracticable political machinery ; and we have expressed
a belief that the present system does, by its very
pliancy, produce a mutual friendliness which rigid
1.-litical bonds might perhaps stifle. This opinion is
supported by the chief speakers in the House of Lords ;
though Lord Derby doubts whether the present relations
could be maintained in time of war. Peace, however, is
the normal state of England, and still more of the British
Colonies ; for, with the exception of Canada, which may
soon assume an independent position, there is no colony
which has any reasonable fear of invasion even were the
Mother Country at war. For the present, and so far as
we can see into the future, the state of the world is such
that England and her colonies need not subordinate
their relations to the necessities of a military and naval
alliance.

The Standard declares that a debate upon the colonial
question on which the speakers deliberately avoid saying
anything about emigration or New Zealand is certainly
open to comparison with that imaginary representation of
" Hamlet " where the part of the Dane is omitted.
Great and most satisfactory as has been the growth
of public interest in the general question of the.
relations of the colonies to the mother country
within the last few months, it is indisputable
that the colonial question means for the mass of the
public, in the first place, those two questions of emigra-
tion and New Zealand. The question which these men
have assumed to be settled is again upon the order of the
day for discussion, and to our thinking the fault and the
failure of Monday's debate in the Lords is not that it
should have been confined to the general question of the
relations of the colonies to the mother country, but that
it died out without any expression of opinion—or at
least in one case but a summary One— from the met
most qualified to speak upon so great a subject.
Put into plain words, Lord Granville's statement is simply
this : " We have these colonies ; they are a great nuisance;
they cost us money ; they swell the military and the civil
service estimates. Unfortunately, we cannot decently
tell them to shift for themselves; we cannot give them
notice to have nothing more to do with the British Empire ;
but we can contrive, by telling them that they are free to
go, by suggesting that as soon as they arrive at manhood
they ought to go, by emphasising the bother and the trouble
they are to us, to deaden if not to destroy their sense of
loyalty, to encourage corrupt demagogues to advocate
separation, and to produce such a general sense of uneaki-
aess and apprehension that the colonists may at last de-
sire to know the worst, and with our aid withdraw froir
their allegiance to the British Crown. To that end the
best efforts of myself and colleagues shall be directed."
This is the policy of the Government. We heartily echo
Lord Carnarvon's eloquent protest against it as a cheese-
paring policy in point of money, a spendthrift policy in
point of national honour, and a course fatal to the highest
and best interests of the country.
Mr. Hardcastle, says the Daily Noes, obtained leave
last night to bring in a Bill to remove the Minority Clauses
from the Reform Acts. A faint objection from the Oppo-
sition side of the House brought Mr. Gladstone to the
rescue, and his declaration against the Clauses will be
received with general satisfaction throughout the
country. The minority representation, as Mr.
Gladstone remined the House, represented no
policy and no opinion of the House of Cora•
mons. The Reform Bill went up to the House
of Lords without it, and it was only the fear lest
the bill should fall through for that year which induced
the House of Commons to accept the scheme when the
Lords sent it down. By its operation it has simply driven
the people of the great towns into a closer political organi-
sation, and a greater obedience to party leaders and party
necessities, than they ever exhibited before. The scheme
was one of those imaginary barriers against democracy
which induced the House of tords to pass a democratic
Reform Bill. Its sole use was over when the Lords had
consented to let the householders into the Constitution,
and it will probably be sacrificed without any great regret.
even by its authors. There will, of course, be a little
lamentation over it in a select circle of doctrinaire
politicians whose love of an expedient is in inverse
ratio to its simplicity or its utility ; but the public will
be glad that a new-fangled interference with the old
and simple rule for counting heads has vanished
from the statute-book. Minorities are over-represented
as it is. The uneven distribution of members to popula-
tion gives two-thirds of the House of Commons to a smaL
minority of the people ; and while that anomaly exists,
this attempt to diminish even the present inadequate
representation of the great towns is an insult to the under-
standing of the people. The Government is only fulfilling
its hustings pledges in consenting, to sweep the absurdity
away.

The Pall Mall Gazette considers one of our great difficulties
in governing Ireland lies in the task of separating our
friends from our enemies. With open hawkers of sedition
and those who have been duped into overt acts of treason,
there is not much trouble or embarrassment ; but besides
these there are many sentimental " nationalists" with whom
it is hard to deal. Irishmen should understand that they will
not thrive by threats. This simply means that we are bound
to assert our existence as a ruling power by force if neces-
sary, and force must be at hand when it is challenged.
They themselves by this time must be surely wearied of
hearing the clogs bark who are unable to bite, and
we have given them reasonable guarantees that
we mean, without being frightened into the proper
disposition of mind, to redress the grievances
they bring before us. But they can bring them
without the offices or the intervention of the mock patriot
the mock nationalist whom they occasionally send to Par-
liament, and who so often tries to get there without
success. The Fenian unattached is a most insidious mis-
chief for Ireland. His function is always to seem the
thing he is not. It is his business to be unfaithful to the
loyalty he professes in one place, and false to the wild
professions of patriotism he makes in another. The Fenian
who has been sworn behind the door of a public-house to
wage war against Great Britain is at least an intelligible
if not a very imposing character. The rhetorical Fenian,
safe in his own skin, but as infectious as a leper, is a fay
less wholesome or pleasing object. It will be a happy day
when the Irish people give little attention either to th•
confessed or the disguised traitor.

• The Telegraph, in discorsing upon royal sports in India,
observes that fox-hunting has had its bards, who have eni•
balmed the recollection of many a famous ran in rhymes
that delight the Quota' and Pytchley , 1:ut; if the " grey
boar" were chased in the glades of England; Mr. Freeman
would have been an. M.F.H., an,l the Net Laureate
would have composed hunting F3fg, in honour of
that mighty quarry. The %t.eak points of fox-
hunting are, that the astute littls beast which
affords so much pleasure to his pursuers •is artifi-
cially preserved, and that his strength and cunning
seem so very much out of proportion to the
elaborate and overwhelming array of men, horses, and
hounds assembled for his destruction. It is not so with
" pig-sticking ;" for the wild boar in an inveterate and
formidable plunderer, who grubs up the Hindoo's sugar-
cane and rice. It is a most useful deed, therefore, to ride
him down ; but to do it needs, besides a steady horse and
a sure hand, manhood and courage ; and the odds are not
so much against the pig as to leave the pursuit without its
element of fair play. The fox has nothing on which to
rely but his speed and his stratagem—he is powerless at
close quarters; but, like a Japanese Daimio, the old
boar carries a couple of scimitars, and he knows
how to use them with deadly effect upon horse or man.
Woe to the rash hunter who comes within reach of those
crooked ivory knives ! "If thou be hurt with horn of
hart," says the old ballad, " a barber may thee save ; "
but it adds ominously, " if thou be gashed with tusk of
boar, it brings thee to thy grave." Those who know the
nature and power of the various jungle beasts hold the
charge of a wild boar worse than that of a tiger. Your
tiger is, no doubt, a " fearful wild fowl ; " but he will
often turn in mid-onset from a shot, and, once past the
hunter, he seldom comes back again. 'When the boar
makes up his mind to fight, however, it is like the Old
Guard at Waterloo. He comes on with short
angry grunts, snout down, and bristles erect, and neither
knife nor spear can easily stop him. Moreover, he has a
horrible instinct where to find the soft parts of his enemy,
and one of his oblique " upper-cuts " in. the groin gives
the surgeon work that is too likely to end with a job for.
the undertaker. Nor need it ho forgotten, in a comparison
of fox-hunting with pig-sticking, that Reynard is good for
'nothing when he is dead, whereas your wild boar in the
right season furnishes some noble dishes to the sylVan
board. Caput apri is lauded in the old Christmas chant ;
and a ham of the accursed beast," properly dressed with
sauce piquante, is, as Sir John Falstaff said of Dame
Quickly, " a thing to thank God upon,"

THE NEWSPAPER POSTAGE : ENGLAND

AND COLOMBIA.'

A Post-office bill just issued notifies that henceforward
the postage on newspapers addressed to the United
States of Colombia and forwarded by the French packet
will be fixed at the same rates as are chargeable upon
newspapers for the West Indies andplaces in Central Ame-
rica generally, by French packet, viz., twopence eachpaper
not exceeding four ounces in weight, with twopence addi•
tional for every four ounces in excess. No alteration will
be made in the postage on newspapers for the United
States of Colombia by British packet.