The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-29 00:00:00

RE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 187 t.

SIR. SCHENOKS MISSION TO ENGLAND.

FAMOUS OLD SIEGES.

"At last an Envoy to England," writes the New York
herald, with - reference to the appointment of General
-'4chenck as successor. to Mr. Motley at the Court of St.
James's. The journal, however, does not congratulate
Mr. Schenck on the honour, the relations between Great
Britain and the United States having recently got into '
such a deadlock that the appointment has the unpleasant
look of being kicked upstairs. To the Herald, neverthe-
less, the present seems, from an American iioint of view, a
favourable opportunity for pressing for a settlement of
the Alabama claims. Great Britain may have to face the
question of fighting Russia and. the United States to-
gether; and, if anything could induce the belief that
" England is about to experience a Gravelotte or a Sedan,
it would be the signs of such a fatuity." But the Herithi
anticipates no such catastrophe. " The difficulty," it
argues, "with the United States is one which can ho
settled. so easily, with a little .exercise of justice, good
temper, and good sense on the part of the British Go-
vernment, that any Englishman who talks of war must be
as obstinate as a rhinoCeros and as wise as a badger.
Foreign affairs in England just now mean Lord Granville,
and he is a statesman who will know how to do the right
and sensible thing when driven into a corner. Indeed, he,
for his own part, would know how to do it before ; but he
represents a nation so haughty and so blind to facts that
he must be squeezed right up into the uttermost angle of
the apartment before he can make his people understand
that the time for chatter is past, and that the
awful quarter of an hour of Rabelais has come
at last when that bill must really be discharged.
But there is more than the mere payment of a bill in
this question.. America, in point of fact, does not want
money, God be praised ; and she does want to establish
such relations with Great Britain as will lead to permanent
and abiding good understanding. No statesman in either
country can believe that this is 'possible as long as
Canada remains a possession of the, British Crown ; and
there is an overwhelming mass of argument to show that
there is no arrangement just now soimportant to England
herself as to be rid of the obligation to defend Canada.
Not that Canada is going to be attacked, that we know
of ; but there is now no fitness, no prudence, no pro-
priety in retaining a territory which must in the
nature of things so soon be absorbed by the Union. If
England wishes to put her house in order for European
and Eastern questions, she is bound to part with Canada
as speedily as possible. Certainly the present Prime
Minister must be alive to such considerations, for it is
not to be overlooked, though our press has not sufficiently
noticed it, that, not long ago, at a public dinner, he con-
gratulated the United States on having a country and a
Constitution that knew how to unite a continent under
a single Government.' Mr. Gladstone, in his position,
could not say in so many words, We want you to have
Canada as soon as possible ;' but next to those words he
could use none more significant of his desire to part with
so dangerous a possession ; and there is good reason to
believe that his most influential colleagues agree with
I him."

All the Year Round has lately contained an interest.
lug account of some of the most remarkable sieges of
ancient times. , " When the Romans girt up their loins to
fairly conquer Spain, one of the greatest events that
narked the war was the fifteen monthS' siege of Numan-
tia, an almost impregnable city on the Douro, near the
site.of the present Soria, in old Castile. This fortress of
lie hardy Iberians was built on a steep hill, .accessible
ally on one side, surrounded by forests, and partly
•noated by the Douro and a lesser stream. It had only a
garrison of eight thousand fighting men, but these were
ipanish veterans, skilled in the use of bow, spear, and
;word. Several consuls had attacked Nutnantia before
Q. Pompeius sat down before it with thirty
liousand foot and two thousand horse ; but disease
atacked his army, and he was compelled to offer terms
lisgraceful to Rome, to which his successor, however,
refused to accede. Soon after, another consul_all but
suerendered to the victorious Numantines his army of
twenty thousand men. The Romans, enraged at these
repulses, sent out in 133 B.C. their greatest general, Scipio
Africanus, with four thousand volunteers. Ife found the
army discouraged and demoralised, and at once reshaped
it with a strong hand. He turned all the sutlers, diviners,
and priests out of the camp ; for vice and superstition
had tainted the whole force.' He then sold all
needless waggons and beasts of burden, forbade
any soldier
.more cooking utensils than a spit
and a brass pot, ordered nothing to be eaten but
plain roast and boiled, and counselled every one to sleep
as he himself did, on the bare ground. Having thus har-
dened his army, he trained it by long toilsome marches,
countermarches, trench digging, and wall building, and
then laid waste all the territory from whence the Numan-
tines drew their supplies. With a force ot sixty thou-
sand men, and recruited by Jugurtha, from Numnidia with
some elephants and light horse, Scipio formed two camps,
and sat down for the winter to starve out the stub-
born but now straitened enemy. The town
was three miles in circumference : round this area Scipio
raised six miles of towers and ramparts, so that only the
river-side remained open. To stop any divers or boats
.gotning that way with provisions or intelligence, the
Romans faStened tree trunks, spiked with sword and
spear blades, to ropes, and let them' whirl to and fro in the
rapid current, so that to pass them became impossible.
The Numantines made several gallant sorties, but hunger
now began to strike them clown quicker than the
Roman sword. In this cruel emergency a man named
Retogenes, and five brave friends, ventured on a
daring attempt to bring the Drnacians, a neigh-
bouring tribe, to the aid of the suffering town.
These six men, with six servants, went at night to the
Roman camp, carrying broad boarded ladders. With
these they rode over the Roman works, slew some of the
guards, and dashed across to the 'Druacians Getting no
help, however, from their scared kinsmen, the brave fel-
lows rode on to a town called Lutia, where the younger
men agreed to join them. The elders, however, sent
secretly to Scipio, who, marching forty miles with incred-
ible rapidity, arrived at daybreak, and demanded the
surrender of the rash young men. Four hundred
of them being reluctantly given up, Scipio
cut off their hands and returned to his camp.
The Numantines at last grew hopeless, and offered to
surrender, but the stern Roman would grant no condi-
tions. The famine grew worse and worse ; first they ate
leather and weeds, then rats and vermin, and even human
flesh. Again they offered surrender, but claimed a day's
respite. On that terrible day the leading men of the
place slew themselves. On the third day a starved band
of half-dying people came out of the gates. Scipio
selected fifty for his triumph, sold the rest for slaves, and
levelled the city. Four thousand Spaniards had kept
the Roman armies at bay at Num.ntia for twenty-one
years. •

" But," continues the Herald, "English journals say,
Mr. Sumner has made menacing speeches. General
Butler threatens us with punching our heads unless we
part with Canada. Dignity forbids." This is too ridicu-
lous, really, for grown-up men. Mr. Sumner and General
Butler are very important and interesting persons in their
way ; but their eccentricities are not quite a sufficient
index whereby to regulate the interests and fortunes of
the American Republic and the British Empire. Such
an argument as this is to reduce English policy to the
level of Napoleonic parvenu susceptibility, and insults
England much more seriously than we should think of
doing. There are five thousand arguments in favour of
the course we suggest, and none against it except the
suggestions of a small piquo worthy of a fine lady's sou-
brette. Let the President and the English Cabinet con-
cert this beneficent measure, and everybody will applaud
them. At all events, we hope that General Schenck is
not going, like poor Mr. Motley, to march up the hill only
to march down again. There has been quite enough of that
sort of childishness.

But the siege that seems to epitomise all the horrors
of such contests, forming, as it were, the last crowning
scene of a nation's tragedy, was the siege of Jerusalem by
Titus, A. D. 70, Thetitv then contained, accordin g to Tacitus,
six hundred thousand inhabitants. About the fifteenth
day of the siege, the greatest of the Roman battering-
rams began to shake the outer wall, and the Jews yielded
up the first line of defence. Five days after, Titus broke
through the second wall, into a place full of narrow
streets, crowded with braziers' clothiers' and wool mer-
chants' shops ; but the Jews rallying drove out the
Romans, who not having made the breach sufficiently
large, were with difficulty rescued by their archers. Four
days later, however, Titus retook the second wall, and
then waited for famine to do its work within the city.
The Jews began now to desert, to the enemy in great
numbers, and all these wretches the Romans tortured and
crucified before the walls (at one time five hundred a day)
so that, as Josephus says, "room was wanting for the
crosses. and crosses wanting for the bodies." Famine, in
the meantime, was ravaging the unhappy city. Whole
families perished daily, and the streets were strewn with
dead bodies that no one cared to bury. Thieves plundered .
the half-deserted homes, and murdered any who shewed
signs of resistance, or who still lingered in the last agonies
of starvation. The dead the Jews threw down from the
walls into the valleys below. In the meantime the
Roman soldiers, abundantly supplied with corn
from Syria, mocked the starving men on the
walls, by shewing them food. The palm-trees and olive-
trees round Jerusalem had been all destroyed, but Titus,
sending to the Jordan for timber, again raised banks
round the Castle of Antonia. Inside the city the sedi-
tious grew more violent, the partisans of'John and Simon
murdering each other daily, and plundering the Temple of
the sacred vessels. The famine within the city grew
worse and worse. The wretched people ate their shoes'
belts, and even the leather thongs of their shields.
Friends fought for food, and robbers broke into every
house where it was known that corn was hidden. Josephus
even mentions a well-known case of a woman of wealth
from beyond Jordan who ate her own child. The walls
of the Temple were so massive as to resist the battering
rains for six days. so Titus at last gave orders to burn
down the gates. At last, after a desperate resistance, the
Jews were driven into the inner court, and the Temple
was set on fire 'find destroyed, in spite of all the efforts of
Titus to wive it. When the Jews first saw
the flames spring up, Josephus says, they
raised a great shout of despair, and sixteen
thousand of the defenders perished in the fire.
The final resistance was very feeble, for the Jews were
now utterly disheartened. The Romans, once masters of
the walls, spread like a deluge over the city, slew all the
Jews they met in the narrow lanes, and set fire to the
houses. In many of these they found.entire families dead
of hunger, and these places, in their horror, the soldiers
left unplundered. The Romans, weary at last of slaying,
Titus gave orders that no Jew, unless found with arms in
his hand, should be killed. But some soldiers stili
went on butchering the old and infirm, and drive n
the youths and women into the court of the Temple.
The males under seventeen were sent to the Egyptian
mines ; several thousands were given to provincial amphi-
theatres to fight with the gladiators and wild beasts ; but
before all could be sent away, eleven thousand of them
perished from famine. Altogether, in this cruel siege,
their perished eleven hundred thousand Jews. This
enormous multitude is accounted for by the fact, that
when Titus sat down before Jerusalem, the city was
full of people from all parts of Judea, come up
to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Let us
go down the ladder of time a few centuries later, till we
find these grand conquerors of the Jews themselves
besieged by Alaric and his Goths, 408. As stern and
ruthless as Prussians, the Goths at once cut
off from Rome the supplies of food, till
famine and plague could silently do the work of
sword and spear. The rations of bread sank
rapidly from three pounds a day to the merest pittance.
The rich strove to alleviate the general suffering, but in
vain. Some wretches fed, if. is said, on the bones of those
they murdered, and even mothers destroyed their children
and roasted their flesh. Many thousands of the citizens
perished, and the cemeteries being in the possession of the
invaders, the bodies remained unburied. The
plague broke out, and new forms of death appeared.
In vain Tuscan diviners promised to draw light-
ning from the clouds, and buns the Gothic camp. In
vain the Roman ambassadors warned Alaric of the
danger of the despair and fury of such a multitude. The
grim chief only smiled, and said, " The thicker the grass
the easier it is to mow." At first, greedy for spoil, and
contemptuous of Roman weakness, Alaric demanded all
the gold and silver in the city, and all the rich and preci-
ous movables. Finally he withdrew his savage troops, on
receiving a ransom of five thousand pounds of gold, thirty-
six thousand pounds of silver, four thousand silk robes,
three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and three thou-
sand pounds' weight of Indian pepper, then very scarce
and dear. Never since Hannibal marched from Capua
had Rome been so scared.

MR. ADAMS ON AMERICAN NEUTRALITY.

The Hen. Charles Francis Adams, formerly American
Minister at the Court of St. James, has been delivering
an address at the New York Historical Society, on "The
struggle for neutrality in America." The world, he said,
owed the practical adoption of the great general principle
of international law, that a nation had a right to be neu-
tral in time of war, to the long and painful struggles of
the Government of the United States. In ancient
times what is known as neutrality did not exist,
for there is no word to express it ; but the Government
of the United States was the first to introduce it
at an early stage of it existence. Washington acted in
this spirit in regard to the complications which made
their appearance in Europe after the French Revolution,
although formidable demonstrations of popular sympathy
for France were made in the States. Mr. Adams inter-
rupted the thread of his discourse to pay a special tribute
to Mr. Seward in respect to the Trent affair. He assumed
the responsibility of adhering to the precedents of earlier
times, and surrendered Slidell and Mason in " courageous
resistance to the infatuation of the hour." In contrast to
this conduct of Mr. Seward, Mr. Adams pointed to the
example of Napoleon who excused himself for plunging
into war with Prussia by the strength of the popular
feeling. Going back to the days of Washington, Mr.
Adams remarked that he had great difficulties to contend
against in the perpetual 'disagreements between his two
principal councillors, Jefferson and Hamilton, but he
succeeded in issuing a proclamation in April, 1793, an-
nouncing the doctrine of the neutrality of the United
States in the war between France and Britain. This
proclamation was virtually disregarded by M. Genest,
the young French Envoy at Washington, who
authorised the fitting out of ships at American
ports for the capture of British vessels. He was recalled
at the President's request, and the doctrine of neutrality
upheld. Another danger arose from the coldness of Great
Britain, and an angry series of disputes arose, but happily
were disposed of by treaty. After referring to many
other episodes in the diplomatic history of the country,
Mr. Adams warned those who were advocating claims on
foreign powers, which, under the instigation of political
ambition might be made a pretext for war, of the danger
of such a course. Referring to the war of
1812 and the Treaty of 1814, Mr. Adams
said that it was objected to, as settling none
of the great questions of neutral rights for the defence of
which war had been declared. Literally speaking, the
remark may be true, and yet in point of fact it is the
very opposite of truth. Great Britain, in terms, yielded
nothing of the petensions she had advanced before the
war. It is not her habit, nor the habit of any great nation
to humiliate itself unnecessarily. On the other band,
from the date of that treaty down to this moment not
a question has been raised, not a complaint made
of the repetition of any such scenes on the ocean as were
happening every day before. The barbarous practice of
impressment has been voluntarily abandoned. The
claim of a right to the services of a subject in despite of
naturalisation elsewhere has never since been advanced,
and has very lately been explicitly surrendered ; and
from being a fierce enemy to the maintenance of neutral
rights, Great Britain has gradually been becoming our
aptest scholar. Indeed, she has outrun her pre-
ceptor. For in 1856 she gave in her adhesion
to the Treaty of Par,i,- :abandoned
the piratical practice of privateering, and re
cognised the principle which she had so long
contested, of free ships, free goods. Nay, evea more than
this. In the unhappy conflict between ourselves it hap-
pened to be my particular duty to make many complaints
of her alleged violations of neutrality, the favourite mode
of replying to which was by appeals to our own construc-
tion of neutral doctrines.

Mr. Adams was listened to throughout with the greate,t
attention, and at the conclusion of his address a vote of
thanks, proposed by the Hon. Mr. Evarts and seconded
by Wi:liarn Cullen Bryant, was unanimously adopted.

THE • PRINCE OF WALEs.—The Prince of Wales,
accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel A. T. Ellis, arrived
at Gunton, near Aylsham, on Monday night,• having
posted from East Dereham, as the guest of Lord Suffield.
The present is the third visit of his Royal Highness to
Gunton for the purpose of shooting through the preserves'
of Lord Suffield. The whole of the country-side is
covered with snow. The visit is expected to last till Satur-
day, when his Royal Highness will rejoin the Princess at
Sandringham.
Two Boys DROWNED.— On SatuMay, two boi s
named Frederick and Robert Massie, sons of a labourer
at Mlll of Kinuoir, near Huntly, Scotland, accompanied
their mother part of the way to that town, the road to
which skirts the Deveron. On returning home by them-
selves they had gone upon the ice in the river, which
broke under their weight. No assistance being at hand,
both of them were drowned. The boys were not missed
till the afternoon. Search was immediately made, but
the bodies were not recovered, till Sunday morning.—
Scotsman.

CANADIAN FlSllEDX.—Calladiall papers state that
the catrlf of herrings. haddock, pollock, &c., on the Bay
shore of Nova Scotia has been very good during the past
season. The United States' fishermen being excluded
from the coast fishing, the local fishermen, whose appli-
ances are not equal to those of the States fishermen, were
more than usually successful. Within a coast range of
four or five miles the fishermen sold the Americans 2,000
dols. worth of fish. At Port William they sold them
10,000 dols. worth of fish, dried and pickled. The price for
the former was 3 dols 50c. per quintal, and for the latter 3
dols. The fishermen are preparing to go into the blutinus
extemively next season.

BREAKFAST.—EPPS'S COCOA.- -GRATEFUL AND CON-
FORTING.—The very agreeable character of this preparation
rendered it a general favourite. The Civil Service Gazette rc
marks :—" By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which
govern the operatiopi of digestion and nutrition, and by u
careful application of the fine properties of well-selected cocoa.
Mr. Epps has provided our breakfast tables with a delicatelv
flavoured beverage which may save us many heavy doctor-
hills." Each packet is labelled —JAmcs EPPs tt Co., Gomm,-
pathic Of.finists, London. Also, makers of Epps's Cacaoine, a
very thin evening beverage. —Advt.