The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-23 00:00:00

SHIPPING DISASTERS.

On Tuesday night, during the height of the hurricane,
two vessels in Yarmouth Roads were observed to part from
their anchors. The St. Nicholas light ship sent
up rockets, and the vessels exhibited flares, but
they wero speedily lost to view. Of their ultimate fate
nothing is known, but it is feared they may have been
caught on the dangerous Scroby Sands, and that all hands
have perished. The beach on Wednesday morning was
strewn with wreckage. At Wells, Norfolk, four vessels
were lost, and numerous wrecks on the same coast are
reported. , Several ships are missing of whose fate nothing
is known. A telegram from Yarmouth states that the
French vessel Irma, of Cherbourg, founded in Carton
roadstead in the gale on Tuesday night, and all on board
were lost with the exception of the captain and one sailor,
who were landed at Yarmouth this morning.
A report from Dunna Nook, Lincolnshire, states that the
gale has continued to rage fearfully. A schooner, supposed
to be French, has gone ashore, and all attempts to save
her crew of seven or eight men, either with the lifeboat,
or with the mortar apparatus, have unhappily
proved useless. Two brigs also stranded during the
night ; all hands saved except the pilot. There
cannot be less than eighty shipwrecked sailors here.
Altogether there have been eight complete wrecks, and the
beach is literally covered with stores, timber, oil casks, &d.
The loss of the Brittauia is contradicted by her arrival at
Leith

ELECTIONEERING DODGES.

(From the Anglo American Times)
Those who watch the current of events in the
United States and are interested in the honour and
reputation of the Republic, are pained to observe
how regularly important State elections are preceded
by a torrent of abuse poured on the leading mem-
bers of the Federal Administration, more especially
on its head—the PRESIDENT. The last event of
exciting interest, the Great Gold Gamble, has been
so eagerly seized, and so ingeniously woven through
his brother-in-law, into a connection with himself,
that General GP.ANT has been compelled, publicly,
to disclaim that connection, through the columns of
the New York Ledger. The difficulty of choosing
the right path may be illustrated by the fact that
honest and leading papers in America urged a pub-
lic denial, while leading papers in London as honestly
thought that the PRESIDENT had compromised him-
self by making that denial. The rule on which
General GRANT has acted, under provocation on
this side is little appreciated, has been to take no
notice 11 hatever of newspaper reports and comments;
but he, on one or two occasions, has been driven out
of his reserve, and notably in this instance. Our
' readers will get some idea of the state of the case
who peruse the story as we tell it, and there is no
denying that many well-informed persons believe
in Mr. CORBIN'S complicity, to which Fisx and
others swear. But what Mr. CORBIN'S acts have
to do with the PRESIDENT we are at a loss to un-
derstand, for it by no means follows as borne in the
case of mothers-in-law that a man who marries
brings on his shoulders brothers-in-law, or that the
man his sister accepts for a husband should ride
him like the Old Man of the Mountain. What
with Judge DENT and Mr. CORBIN, and Dr. SIIARPE,
the President, would have " quite a nice time,"
but, fortunately for him, the world believes he has
enough to do to answer to his own people for
his own conduct. That General GRANT in his late
summer travels has been thrown into the society of
some disreputable individuals is more the misfor-
tune of his position than his fault personally. That
JAMES FISK. (junior) should often manage to secure
an interview, might be expected, when the PRESI-
DENT travelled over his railroad, or took a state-
room in his steamer, or a box at his opera. On such
occasions Mr. FISK would naturally be present,
and,knowing his unbounded impudence, it can readily
be believed that he might suggest to one unacquainted
with trade like GRANT a prior intimation to himself
of the intended policy of the Treasury. This, on
the PRESIDENT'S own showing, he did do; and he
did what was more infamous. He used these in-,
terviews to insinuate an understanding between
himself and the PRESIDENT, as well as to hint that
while Mr. CORBIN was at the bottom of the con-
spiracy, he was acting with the knowledge, and
under the protection, of the PRESIDENT himself.
The men who engineered, and eventually, like scum,
came up to the surface of the movement, were con-
nected with Tammany ; and it was pretty evident
what the tools were with which FISK and his party
worked; yet no sooner had the bubble burst than
this very Tammany and the Democratic organs
attempted to attach to the PRESIDENT and the Trea-
sury Department these disgraceful proceedings, that
they might use them in stumping the States of
Pennsylvania and Ohio. To appreciate the diffi-
culty of the question as it came before the PRESIDENT
and the Secretary of the Treasury, it is necessary
to try to realize the position in which they were
placed. Here was this intrigue, successful to an
extent by which it vas disorganizing the trade of
the country, directed against the interests of honest
merchants, while it was in the power of the Trea-
sury to break it down. To break it down was to
depart front the sound rules which regulate
finance, to depart from the distinct promise given
of timely and public notice when the policy of
the' reasury was to be changed, and to take a direct
and effective part in the demoralizing struggle of
speculators. On the other hand, to allow a band
of robbers to sweep the earnings of the nation into
their own pockets by a means so detestable and in the
broad daylight, while the power of arresting them
remained in the Secretary's hand, would argue a
complicity which would most certainly be effectually
used against the party of the Administration in the
coming elections. By a momentary departure from
a sound rule a blow might be administered which
would save many hard-working traders from ruin,
and knock all the profits out of the schemers in a
way which might, at least for the present, be asobering
lesson to them. The journals were divided on the
subject, the one urging the Government to take no
part whatever in the disreputable strife ; the other
set regarding it as little less than complicity to
allow such plots to culminate in the ruin of families
when a word could not only demolish them but
enable the Government to sell its surplus gold at
an extraordinary and unlooked-for profit. When
Mr. BOUTWELL waited on the PRESIDENT, leaving
in his office piles of telegrams from agonized mer-
chants, urging him to break down this horrible con-
spiracy to profit by their ruin, the PRESIDENT sug-
gested the sale of $5,000,000 of gold. Secretary
BOUTWELL was about to advise the sale of $3,000,000,
the decision being the immediate order to General
BUTTERFIELD to offer $4,000,000. Whether the
PRESIDENT was wise or foolish in his conception of
his duty in this extremity is a fair matter for dis-
cussion; many sound financiers think he was wrong,
while Mr. BOUTWELL undoubtedly regards the course
he took as in the highest degree exceptional,being dic-
tated by imperative necessity. Such is not our point,
but the manifest fact that in giving this order thePRE-
sIDENT was breaking down the Erie and Tammany
clique, which this very Erie and Tammany clique
asserts had been set in motion by himself. Here is
a contradiction so glaring that it would require
evidence of the very strongest character to sub-
stantiate it, instead of the assertion of two associa-
tions ranking at the head of every thing disreput-
able in America. A wise man he would be who,
disregarding a great reputation, an unequalled
position, set in motion a low conspiracy to rob the
merchants of New York, using the National Trea-
sury as his means, and when it had culminated to a
success, using that Treasury as the means of knock-
ing that conspiracy on the head, whereby to wreck
first his great name, next his high post, third his
fortune and that of his coadjutors, and finally to
affix an indelible stigma on the institutions of that
country which had so generously trusted in him,
and requite the confidence of his fellow-citizens
with the blackest ingratitude. We discuss this
subject simply to bring it to the reductio ad
absurdam to which such a discussion must inevit-
ably lead, as well as show to our English readers bow
little is the reliance to be placed in the calumnies
concocted in the United States for electioneering
purposes ; but so offensive is such a charge in con-
nection with such a name that we might have hesi-
tated to do so had not the PRESIDENT himself set us
the example. There are two noteworthy points in
this scandal—the one is the reward the press of the
United States has obtained for lending itself to the
circulation of the shameful calumnies by which poli-
ticians desire to affect elections. It is next to
impossible now for that press to make any strong
impression. A story which, if circulated of an
English Minister in the English press, would break
him like a reed, however powerful in reputation,
fortune, and rank, unless disproved, may be passed
with contempt by an American Minister when cir-
culated of him ; and press censure seems only to
tickle and amuse men like FISK. In English so-
ciety persons who had earned his notoriety would be
driven from the haunts of their fellows. He could
not operate on the London Stock Exchange, nor
would respectable men of business enter into any
contracts with him, while the community generally
would make him everywhere feel that he was under
the ban of their displeasure. In the way strength
is taken out of alcohol and value out of Railway
Stock, the utility has been extracted from the cen-
sure of the American press—it has been so " wa-
tered' that it has no strength, and thus has its in-
fluence been lost. The other is a warning to re-
spectable men to beware of their associates. Every
one knows that to enter into FISK'S schemes is to
become involved in danger ; and every one might
have guessed that in case of failure such men would
turn round as unscrupulously to betray their asso-
ciates as to ruin for their own benefit innocent mer-
chants. It is probable that the PRESIDENT will be
more cautious hereafter in discussing any subject
with such people.