The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-07 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, JUNE 7, MO.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADS.
63—highest since noon yesterday.
51—lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.
__ __

BAROMETER-29.86.
WlND—South-Westerly ; fresh, with fine weather now,
but cloudy. It rained heavily all the morning.
2.20 p.m.—Smart showers again.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, 411. sm.—Afternoon, 4h. 25m
To-mounow.-Morning, 4h. 45m.—Afternoon, sh. 5m

4 I,"`fn
‘4s'`7,ltii kc. 44x,
• •
r. •1' ...;,,...4ff•e<_

Tit SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1860.

411.-

The liberation, then, of Palermo is sealed. The
letter, which our readers will read with such
pleasure, though, thanks to a despot's mercenaries,
with such painful pleasure, we have every reason
to think authentic. It reaches us just as we go to
press, but we have full hope that its truth will soon
be corroborated by telegrams or further letters.
Our only doubt is whether " full possession" means
that the Neapolitan troops are driven out of the
castle also, since communications bearing a date so
near to that of the letter, imply that the armistice
was still existing, prolonged, some say, to the 3d of
this month, others till to day. It records, any-
how, a brave soldier's view of the position of the
liberators and patriots—and that is, that Palermo
is theirs. We cannot be long now without more
definite information.

The mercenaries of the KING have, many of them
at least, fought more fiercely than might have been
expected, but perhaps they felt that they fought
-with a rope round their neck. GARIBALDI is, in-
deed, pre-eminently, a man of mercy, but it would
not suit the Neapolitan Generals to let his men
think so ; and as to the native Sicilians, the oppres-
sors knew that their victims hated them with the
most cordial good will. After the atrocious bom-
bardment of the non-military part of the city what
could the fiends hope for from the inhabitants but
the shortest passage to their " own place." The sen-
timents of the people towards Lord JoHN RUSSELL,
and the people of England, are gratifying, the
more so because we all know them to be just. And,
with Mr. POPE HENNESSY'S leave, we beg, at the
hazard of his moving that Sir RICHARD BETHEL'.
prosecute us for misdemeanour, or for anything
else, to recommend the paragraphs relating to
material aid to the attention of all our countrymen.
At the same hazard we beg to add, that anything
in our power which would facilitate the obtaining
or transmission of such aid, it will give us the
greatest pleasure to do. Nor do we believe there
is a journalist in England who would not heartily
say the same. It is, as the writer remarks, huma-
nity to strengthen GARIBALDI.

Anything like wilful misrepresentation is always
as sure to recoil—after hitting the intended foul
blow—as a boomerang. Of this truth our po-
litical history is perpetually affording us
fresh illustrations. It is a truth, however,
so wholesome in its influence when recognised,
that it is worth insisting upon at every
available opportunity as though it had never pre-
viously been demonstrated. How few of us have
forgotten the CANNING episode towards the close
of the political career of the late Sir ROBERT
PEEL. How few who marked it at the time
will be likely now to lose the remembrance
of it. We might enumerate a considerable
catalogue of similar incidents 1f we cared to
to do so, by carelessly flickering open the dusty
leaves of past volumes of Hansard, and bringing
to recollection again now almost forgotten inci-
dents of the like kind in the annals of Parliament.
Our doing so, however, at the present time, would
be, with a double significance in the phrase, worse
than superfluous. For during this current session
of ours for 1860, we have had the old truth here
referred to again and again signally dernionstrated.
Two instances among these are especially
deserving of some cursory commemoration—in-
stances of these recoiling boomerangs of misre-
presentation. They were both of them as flagrant
in their extravagance as, in its utter absurdity, was
that minor misrepresentation indulged in the other
city by one of our Mini Aerial morning eon.
temporaries when charging the right honourable

baronet the member for Hertfordshire (indirectly,
through some Vestry meeting report) with having
designated the people of this country, those humble
and toil-worn classes making up the bulk of our
population as " boors"—or with having applied to
them some other epithet equally supercilious and
contumelious in its significance. Than which
charge nothing, we believe, could be more abso-
lutely groundless or more entirely preposterous.
Not a spoken word from that mouth, not a written
word
.from that hand being anywhere adduceable
to bear out this unfair and foolish accusation. The
accused orator in truth might rest satisfied with
retorting simply to the author of the misrepresenta-
tion, the very words addressed by HAMLET to the
Players, though with more literal force
in their application " Speak the speech I
gave you as I pronounced it to you" and
so forth. And vainly would " boors" be looked for
as applied to our English peasantry, by one like
Sir EDWARD LYTTON, of whom, it is remembered,
among many other kindred incidents, that his
famous " Letters to John Bull," for example,
were signed as forcibly as significantly A
Landlord and a Labourer ! Enough now,
however, if in commemoration of the two
most recent and striking illustrations of the whole-
some truth which we would fain thrust at every
available opportunity upon general recognition—
if we here remind our readers of the instances in
which misrepresentations recoiled of late succes-
sively from the noble lord the Secretary to the Ad-
miralty, and from the honourable gentleman the
member for the borough of Nottingham. Mr.
HORSMAN'S knuckles for one, we should conjecture,
must yet be tingling from the return of his swing-
ing boomerang.

Not many years ago we heard strange stories
from China of the leaders of the rebels there ; they
took the names of Princes—Eastern, Northern,
Western Princes, and professed to have communi-
cations from Heaven itself. Having begun with
some rude ill-adjusted ideas and facts derived from
the Scriptures, they went on till the Eastern Prince,
we believe, asserted himself to be the Holy Ghost,
and the first inspired leader of the rebellion, after
due investigation, acknowledged his claim. Of
course the blasphemy seemed to us very shocking,
yet we naturally pitied the delusions of both leaders
and followers on the ground of their profound
ignorance of Christianity. With the complacency:of
a people who know all about it, we smiled at the
credulity of the previous worshippers of BUDHA and
of idols. We did not much wonder that they-
thought their leaders inspired, who taught them
to smash their porcelain or paper idols, or one of
them even a person of the sacred Trinity.

There is now, however, before the Vice-Chancel-
lor's Court a case which may subtract a little from
the national superciliousness with which we regard
those numerous natives of the flowery empire, who
regard the Eastern Prince as an incarnation of the
Holy Ghost. We, too, have, it seems, a PRINCE
who is honoured yet more highly—a WESTERN
PRINCE—for his palace, of which we have heard
before under the name of the Agapemone (abode of
love), is at Spinxton, near Bridgewater, and
we ought to drop in such a case the common-
place Christian name of HENRY JAMES. Our
WESTERN PRINCE, according to the explicit
statements of his followers, is the Tabernacle of
GOD on earth. The spirit of what was HENRY
JAMES PRINCE is extinct in the mortal vehicle in
which it once dwelt, and the Spirit of GOD occupies
its place. In the palace of our WESTERN PRINCE
worship is considered superfluous, for the day of
grace is past, and the day of judgment and of
the resurrection came in the person of the WESTERN
PRINCE. His teaching, in brief, was this : that
every previous dispensation or covenant had been
terminated by bringing forth its perfect person ;
' the first covenant of all brought forth ADAM, the
next NoAll, the next ABRAHAM, and the fourth JESUS
CHRIST ; but here we had better use the ipsissinia
rerba of the WESTERN PRINCE :—" GOD; in JESUS
CHRIST, has again entered into covenant with man
at the resurrection of mankind. This is the first le-
surrection, and now lam His witness. I his one
man, myself, has JESUS CHRIST selected and ap-
pointed his witness to his counsel and purpose, to con-
clude the day of grace, and to introduce the day of
judgment to close the dispensations of the spirit—
the Gospel, and to enter into covenant with flesh.
. . The dispensation of the law closed so
soon as one was found perfect therein—the Lord
JESUS CHRIST ; and in like manner the dispensa-
tion under which the spiritual seed of JESUS CHRIST
lived, that is the Gospel, closed so soon as one was
found perfect therein—Brother Prince. As it has
been Gon's way in the history of mankind to open
a new dispensation by means of him as His witness,
in whom He had made perfect the former one, so
now He has introduced the day or dispensation of
judgment and the first resurrection through Brother
PRINCE, His witness, in whom he had by His spirit
fulfilled the dispensation of the Gospel, and so
closed it."

The reader will hardly credit the statement that
these are the words concerning himself of a man in
Holy orders in the Chureh of England, who had been
duly educated in one of her theological institutions ;
and that several gentlemen of property, one of them
a lawyer, have been believers in this PRINCE, re-
sidents in his Agapemone, and contributors to his
institution of sums varying in amount from £l,OOO
to £lO,OOO. That four maiden ladies of property
should believe in the incarnation of the Holy Spirit
in a clergyman, may not surprise so much. We
are accustomed to the caprices of religious imagina-
tion amongst unoccupied single ladies ; but the
gullibility of men and lawyers, and in the matter
of hard cash too, would seem to leave us no
very flattering grounds of national 'comparison
with the Chinese believers in the EASTERN PRINCE.

It was in connection with the four ladies just
mentioned that the facts of this marvellous case
have come before the public—and facts they are, as
it is often remarked, stranger than any fiction.
In 1840, PRINCE became curate of a Mr. STARKEY,
at Charlwich, in Somersetshire ; for intermeddling
with other parishes he was deprived by the Bishop
of his license. But even at Charlwich he showed
his power of gaining ascendancy over the minds of
others—for Mr. STARKEY figures as a donor of
£l,OOO to Agapemone. He soon found ano-
ther curacy at Stoke, in Suffolk, where he formed
acquaintance with Mr. JOSTAS NOTTIDGE and his
four daughters, LOUISA JANE (whose gift to him of
£5,728 Three per Cent. Annuities, just before her
death, was the occasion of the present suit by her
brother, who most righteously seeks, as her admini-
strator, to set aside the gift), HARRIET, CLARA, and
AGNES. He then went to Brighton and opened a
chapel there, keeping up, through servants, clan-
destine correspondence with the girls. Mr. NoT-
TIDGE died, leaving his daughters between £5,000
and £6,000 each. And now, of course, he had the
ladies entirely in his power.
They are soon all got down to Taunton; there
we find Mr. and Mrs. PRINCE, the Misses NoT-
TIDGE, and Mrs. STARKEY. They lodge at inns,
but by Mr. PRINCE'S especial direction,
the Misses NOTTIDGE pay the expenses of the
whole party. And here occurs the scene which
shows the complete subjection of these fbmalts'

minds to the inspired PRINCE. On the morning
of June 10, 1845, the party being still at Taunton,
PRINCE sent a message from his own inn to Miss
HARRIET NOTTIDGE requiring her presence, and
upon her entering the room in which he and Mrs.
PRINCE and STARKEY were sitting he informed
her that she would give great glory to GOD
by marrying his friend, Mr. LEWIS PRICE,
and such consent having been obtained,
he directed Miss NOTTIDGE to withdraw. and
to keep entirely secret what had passed at their
interview. A second message of similar import was
immediately after received by Miss AGNES NOT-
TIDGE, and when she got into PRINCE'S pre-
senee he told her that GOD was about to con-
fer on her an especial blessing, which the
Spirit directed him to make known to her,
but that, before hearing what that bless-
ing was, she must make a solemn promise to
do whatever was required of her. After some
reluctance on her part Miss AGNES NOTTIDGE
gave such promise, and was thereupon in-
formed that the blessing in question was that
she would be married to Brother Thomas in a
a few days. Miss NOTTIDGE objected to the mar-
riage taking place before a settlement should
have been made for the purpose of providing
for any family which she might have have. PRINCE
and ST4RKEY immediately replied, " There will be
no need of anything of that kink. You will have
no family. It will not be in accordance with your
present calling. Your marriage will be purely
spiritual, to carry out the purposes of God." Miss
AGNES NOTTIGE then 'withdrew. On the same day
PRINCE dined with the young ladies, in company
with Messrs. PRICE and THOMAS, and during
dinner informed those gentlemen that HARRIET
AGNES NOTTIGE had, in obedience to the will
of GOD, consented to become their wives."
He afterwards married a third sister in the same
manner to persons of whom they knew nothing
before ; the marriages were solemnised immedi-
ately at Swansea, because, he said, "it was the
will of GoD," though the young ladies demurred
through fear of causing " great sorrow" to their
mother. PRINCE, however, referred them to the
book of " Jonah," to show them the consequences
of disobeying GOD by keeping the fourth command-
ment. They were consequently married, in black
dresses—for so the spirit directed—on the 9th of
July, to the three husbands, two of them penniless
men, we believe, previously, and third with but
£l,OOO of his own. It is not for us to anticipate
the legal decision of the judge. But, set-
ting aside the blasphemous extravagances
these poor girls were led to believe, we
imagine that any jury of English fathers—
certainly any jury of mothers—would decide that
the spiritual influence over female minds must be
" u ndue" in the highest degree, if it could enforce
their consent on the spot, to marriage with strange
" brethren"—to marriage without a settlement,
when. even the woman urged its importance, and
to marriage in a way to cause great sorrow to a
widowed mother, while the poor girls retained so
strongly amidst these spiritual aberrations, their
instinctive filial sentiment. Had most of us been
their brothers, we much fear we should have in-
curred the penalties of taking the law into our
own hands in regard to the inspired gentleman.
In the case of Miss NOTTIDGE, whe, by Divine
command, became Mrs. Thomas, and who, as above
narrated, was guaranteed against needing a settle-
ment of her money, it became in due time apparent
that the guarantee was not fulfilled. " Thereupon
and in consequence thereof, PRINCE expressed great
anger with her," and her husband, who was away
from her at the time, writes, " The servant
of the Lord' told me that you would not be in
your present state unless you had rebelled months
ago; and thus you will suffer for it in not being
able to go about with her as you otherwise would ;
but when I see you I will tell you all about it."
THOMAS endeavoured to get the child at one time
away from her, but Vice-Chancellor KNIGHT
BRUCE was appealed to, and appointed Mrs.
THOMAS and her mother guardians of the child.
Such are the principal facts of this extraordinary
case. As to the Agapemonists, they seem to enjoy
all the possible comforts which a good mansion,
extensive grounds surrounding it, conservatories,
excellent horses, carriages, and such like comforts
can minister to the " children of the resurrec-
tion," but, while persecution of Mormonists, Joanna
Scottians, and Agapemonists is folly only second
to that of the victims, we trust the law will yet
prove to be on the side protecting property from
the attacks of religious insanity.

LETTER FROM PALER2IIO.