The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-30 00:00:00

remonstrate against the boundless insolence of
these subaltern tyrants, woe to him ! He is im-
mediately put to the rack. Starvation being added
to sorrow, and the influence of a deadly climate
to ill treatment, 35 bodies out of 200 have been
in a few months cast as prey to sharks ; for in
the Isle of St. Joseph the prisoners have no other
cemetery than the sea." These statements, he
adds, were not contradicted at the time. As re-
gards the allegation that three of these prisoners
are liberated galley-slaves, and four of them
repris de justice, it but confirms the fact that in
French Guiana political and criminal prisoners are
herded together. But is the allegation made
against these men true ? There is no proof of it ;
on the contrary, there is a strong presumption it
is not—for the allegation would appear to be
preferred in order "to assist in an estimate of the
characters of the men from whom the ranks of the
Republican party are recruited," it being notorious
that the transported victims of the coup d'etat in-
cluded men of all parties, Legitimist and Orleans,
as well as others. The assertion that the prisoners
in question were condemned by courts-martial or
commissions, if true, affords the strongest pre-
sumptive proof that they were not fairly tried, as
they allege ; and for the small mortality adduced,
it only goes to show how human nature will some-
times bear up against a pestilential climate and
the cruelty of the oppressor. Many facts
and arguments could be adduced in addition to
these furnished by Loris BLANc, but we fancy
the reader is already satisfied that the defence
has received its coup de grace, and he will not care
much to know why previous statements of a like
character were not contradicted ; why it is left
to a foreign correspondent to gather up the de-
fence of the French Government ; and why offi-
cial documents were not laid open to him by way
of verification. The damning allegations of the
inhumanly oppressed exiles of French Guiana re-
main unimpeached, and their heartwruug denuncia-
tions have sunk into every British heart. The impe-
rial monsters of fallen Rome cast their victims to
I the lions to be torn and mangled—redeeming at
times imperial cruelty by giving the poor wretches
a chance of escape if they overeome their brute
enemies. It is now on record, and Europe be-
lieves it, that the EMPEROR of the French—the
ally of the freest and most merciful country in
the world—transports his elected victims to a
pestilential island, where they must " gasp for
breath," and, when the life is worked out of
them, casts their bodies to the sharks ! Is it
1856 years since the redemption of the world ?
Is tyranny to live for ever ?

THE TWO WANTS OF AGRICULTURE.

Just now we are all musing on the wondrous
revolution to be wrought in the iron trade by the
beautiful theory which Mr. BESSEMER has so per-
feJtly reduced to practice. Those marks of genius
—simplicity and boundless applicability—in this
compel toe p.amiraLiou r.nmmercial
companies. No one could be found to sneer ex-
cept the Government officials ; and it is very
pleasant to think how silly they must now feel,
and how much they would give could they get
rid of the provoking fact that their ignorance was
so broadly displayed, and that in their own pro-
vince. Woolwich " authorities" confounded Mr.
NASMYTH'S steam with Mr. BM:SEALER'S atmo•
spheric blast ! Mr. NASILYTH was obliged to en-
lighten them amidst the laughter of the public ;
he gives his uuenvious and cordial admiration to
the beauty of a process, which, like the egg of
COLUMBUS, all might have thought of, but no one
did ; and even should some practical difficulties
yet occur, and should the invention not, as all
expect, be of unlimited application, he cannot push
aside as an " old thing " what will rank among
posterity with the practical discoveries of our
DAVYS and WATTSES.

When shall we have some equally efficient and
revol utionising suggestion in regard to the two
great wants of the English corn grower ? We
always know that " dirt" was manure ; every
farmer could tell us that. It is, however, only
since the time of LIEBIG'S discoveries that we
have become fully aware of the extent and bear-
ings of this homely truth. We now know, as an
indisputable fact, that were the entire excremen-
titious matter, and other refuse which pollutes
our towns, capable of being preserved and con-
veyed to the adjacent fields, the increased pro-
duce would almost, perhaps quite, support the
inhabitants. The Registrar-Generals tells us that
here, in London, we are daily wasting 3,000 tons
of guano l We think it probable that he is not
above the mark. Some million of tons of this pow-
erful manure are yearly thrown away, a quantity
which would certainly, if mingled with our soil,
render London quite independent of supplies from
foreign countries. Its two millions of inha-
bitants could never consume the produce of
half a ton of manure each. The manure is
now all thrown into the Thames ; we might
quite as reasonably throw a million or two quar-
ters of wheat into the river. But here the grand
question arises—how to get this manure away
from the river and on to the land. Mr. THWAITitai
and his engineers seem to propose to themselves
nothing better than the first half of the problem.
They will be content if they save the Thames from
pollution. They will, however, have left a sub-
stratum of poisonous, fever-breeding filth slowly
wending its deadly way along our sewers, killing
us off by cholera and typhus as it goes along ;
and they will have done nothing, positively
nothing, towards converting this agent of death
into the staff of life.
It is here that wo want our manure and sewage
BESSEMER. We want, and we shall one day have,
some simple arrangement by which all this manure,
so fatal iu our towns, shall fertilise our fields. We
shall have it perhaps after we have spent millions
of money in wasting what we ought do save. It is
enough to make us, sufferers under sewers rates,
almost rise in insurrection to read that at Ant-
werp the corporation realises a handsome
sum per annum for the very street sweepings
and sewage which we pay so much in every way
to got rid of. There they regularly cart it away
from cesspools, instead of defiling the Scheldt.
To this we, too, shall have to come. We are
wasting our time and money for grand metropoli-
tan schemes, when we might do all in parishes
and districts. Each small locality could, under
general supervision perhaps, manage its own
sweepings and nightsoil, and, as at Antwerp, sell
them at a profit. We are not mechanics or engi-
neers, and it is not for us to devise the plan, but
it must be based on one condition, the reverse of
what was formerly the case. The cesspools, whe-
ther small and adapted to each house, or large
and suited to several, must be in the street, trap-