The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-30 00:00:00

and Hyde-park on the twenty-second of June gives
an. answer to the Imperial assurances. We may
accept his friendly sentiments with reciprocal cour-
tesy, but we are much mistaken if Englishmen will
again trust their security to Imperial forbearance.
As for the commercial resources of France the less
said the better. We have done enough for them
in all conscience. Are we to be expected to make
any more sacrifices at the cost of an additional
income-tax ? or is this sentence introduced in order
to assist Ministers over the stumbling-block of the
Paper-duty, by hinting that "a good understand-
ing between the two great Western Powers" is de-
pendent on the sacrifice of our paper manufacturers?
All the fine phrases and decorated sentiments of
this communication have been expressed to us befoi
as doubtless they have also been to Austria, Sardinia,
and Switzerland, only somehow they did not pre-
ven t Magenta and Solferino, or interfere with the
rectification of frontiers. It might be hinted that
finding Germany awake to the possible intentions of
her friendly neighbour, and aware that English in-
difference was at last aroused, the benevolent
protector of " peace throughout Europe," is desir-
ous of regaining his old position of a trusted and
valued ally. Let Lord PALMERSTON be warned,
however, by his experiment of 1858. The sound
sense and steady integrity of the nation will not
be imposed upon by a few fine phrases. Their
national instinct will prevent them from trusting
their shores to the mercy of diplomatic courtesy,
and their ardent sympathy for the Italian people
will assuredly not content itself by carrying out
the views and assisting the projects of a despotic
and irresponsible potentate.

With a feeling of no little relief our readers
must have perused the evidence against Miss
CONSTANCE KENT in our impression of Satur-
day. That evidence was nil. There really
does not seem to have been a shadow of a reason
for the Magistrates consenting to detain her in
custody, much less for the needlessly cruel act of
sending a girl of sixteen to a county gaol to await
such stories of school gossip as might be raked up
against her from the retentive memory of school-
mates. Now that the entire evidence is before the
public, they will wonder less at the officious act of
an Inspector who was sent down from London,
and who thought he must do something worthy of
a Metropolitan Policeman, than at the men who
sat as judges, yielding to his request for a remand,
and the confinement of a young lady in a felon's
prison.

The night dress is yet missing—that is the single
fact. But it had been [seen, and examined
on Saturday, the morning of the murder, by
the family surgeon, and was remarkably clean,
—what it might have been if worn for a week by a
young lady sleeping alone. It had been seen by the
servant, who noticed no stain on it, and placed it
in the soiled clothes-basket, on the Monday after,
to go with the other things to the wash—it was
soon after in the custody of the washer-woman,
and on the Tuesday, the latter denies that she ro-
ceived the nightdress ! The last dressis plainly the
one which the surgeon and servant saw, but which
contained no evidence of guilt. Miss CONSTANCE
KENT could therefore have no object in effecting
its abstraction ; and, with it, the number of her
dresses is correct. Bad any party an interest zn
abstracting it, to suggest the idea of the sister being
the murderess 2 Unless the dress were stolen,
which is, of course, possible, though, under the cir-
cumstances, unaccountable, this question seems to
point to the reason of its loss, and certainly sug-
gests the importance of the most careful inquiry, as
to where, and in whose custody the basket was, up
to the time of the complaint by the washer-woman,
that three nightdresses were set down in the list
while she had received but two.
The evidence of animus, on the part of the ac-
cused girl, was ludicrous indeed. Every parent
who has children of the same family, of which the
ages vary from 10 to 16, will smile at it. All is
but a picture of every-day family life, even when
there are not two families. An elder girl put out
with the parents petting the younger ones, and
talking about it ; yet playing merrily with the
petted youngster on the evening before the
murder, and on the united testimony of the female
servants, never evincing towards the child aught
but kind and sisterly feeling. And then stories of
her mother getting her a black dress when she
wished for a brown one—as if such disputes
between even the fondest mothers and children
were not as numerous, perhaps, as families in
which the mothers attend to the childrens' dress
at all.

No, the veil is not yet lifted from this most hor-
rible mystery. -We have our own idea as to the
course which inquiry and the search after
" animus," should take, but we think it better not
to express it. Like every one at first, we thought
the perpetrator of the murder must be an inmate of
the house. Our faith in that view is now shaken.
If there was even an accomplice in the family, it
was the worst that now seems likely, and that is
bad enough. We particularly noticed in the sur-
geon's evidence that the stab through the blanket
and the clothing!land into the body, was such as
requited great strength to effect it. his important
words are—" It must have been done with a dagger •
shaped knife or carving knife, and it required very
great force to make such a cut through the blanket
and folded nightdress and through the side, in that
way." Was such a stab likely to have been given
by a young female or by any woman ?" and the
only man known to have been in the house—the
father—is wholly beyond suspicion. 'We say no
more at present in a case in which all must be at
present mere conjecture.

So we are to have what we are told will be a
warm " party fight," on the Gth, on the Customs
duties on paper. If so, it will be the fault of the
Government for committing the vulgar blunder of
running their heads against a wall.
Those who defend the abolition of the penny-
duty, now paid by foreign paper to meet the pre.
hibition of the export of rags, tell us first, that we
have assented to the treaty, and, therefore, our good •
faith requires it. To which the answer is that the
treaty was passed in regard to this particular ques-
tion, under an honourable engagement by the
French Government to modify, in a way satisfac-
tory to all parties, this prohibition—which modifi
cation they, dishonourably, have not made, and we,
therefore, cannot be asked to adhere to engagements
into which we were drawn on false pretences.
Next, they tell us free trade principles require it.
That we deny. We are older Free-traders than
our contemporary the F,eouoinist, which plies us
with this argument ; but to its long and elaborate
article of Saturday we reply, that " consumers"
cannot reasonably ask that " producers" should be
required to face the competition of Governments.
English consumers have a right to take the benefit
of all the natural advantages of other countries, for
production ; such, for instance, as soil, climate,
water-power, cheaper labour ; but they have no right
to benefit by the artificial advantages conferred by
other Governments on its own manufacturers ;
for the avowed purpose of enabling them to under-
sell ours. The rag prohibition is just the gift of,
say one penny a pound, to French manufacturers,
to enable them to undersell ours by that amount in I