The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-18 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1860.

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May we give a guinea to GARIBALDI This
was the question which occupied the House of
Commons in two long conversations last night.
Every one of our readers will answer it for him-
self, we imagine, very quickly, " Give a guinea?
—yes, ten—a hundred guineas, if I like—and dare
Lawyer-WHITEsinE, or any other lawyer, to indict
me." The discussion will be an excellent adver-
tisement for the General. It will announce the
subscription to thousands, and it will determine,
perhaps thousands, to give who otherwise might
hardly have thought of it, on the good old princi-
ple of eagerness to do what lawyers tell us we must
not. What care Englishmen for the illegality of
contributing to the emancipation of patriots—or
Irishmen for the illegality of enlisting soldiers to
hold the Romans to their bondage ? Englishmen
will aid the cause of liberty all over the world, and
Irishman the cause of a Pope who keeps his sub-
jects down by mercenaries, and by offering those
mercenaries the Perugian rewards of blood
and pillage— and, the law is helpless.
" Italy, Liberty, and GARIBALDI !" " Roman
Slavery and the POPE! " are the cries
now on either side the Irish Channel ; Government
cannot silence them if it would.

The debate was a curious specimen of legal in•
genuity. Mr. HENNESSY unearthed it from the
advertisements asking fcr subscriptions from Eng-
lishmen for GARIBALDI. The Solicitor-General
bad played, he seemed to think, the part of a fox
on a preceding night, in his answer to Mr. GRANT
DCIT, in which Mr. lIENNEssY thought the learned
gentleman had admitted the legality of the subscrip-
tion. The Crown lawyer, brought to bay, defines
and limits hie reply very narrowly—he had only
said that, while a conspiracy would be indictable,
the individual act of of giving money to the object
would subject no one to legal consequences. sir.
\VIIITESIDE replies that it is useless to lay stress
on an individual act, because by the advertisement
the subscriber must be one of a number. Mr.
EDWIN JAMES held that a committee, advertising
for subscriptions, must be a conspiracy, and a person
paying money to them would be a participator in it—
but he reminded the POPE'S friends that " the
transmission of recruits to swell the foreign army
which is to take part in the massacre of the PorE's
subjeets came equally within the provisions of the
Foreign Enlistment Act." The Attorney-General
followed. He admitted that according to the com-

I mon law of England " any subjects of the QUEEN,
1 who either directly or indirectly supplied money in
aid of the revolt of subjects of any nation or power,
with whom we are in alliance, commit an offence
at common law ! But he also showed that a cri-
minal prosecution would be a difficult, perhaps im-
possible, thing, and civil proceedings no one dreamed
of. Also, the application of the laws relating to
the case of foreigners was quite uncertain. Sir
HUGH CAIRNS maintained that they were as guilty
of conspiracy as persons in London would be, who
gave money to a committee here in aid of a riot at
York.

Mr. BOVILL contributed the observation that if
we allowed contributions here, which were eon-
trary to international law, the King of NAPLES
might retaliate by seizing the property of British
subjects in Naples, and that withofit a declaration
of war, It was not said, but we imagine
most of the honourable members thought to
themselves, "he had better do it ! " Ad-
miral FANSIIAIVE would, we presume, soon have
instructions which would set at rest the question of
Sicilian liberties for many years to come ; for the
capture of the King's little navy would give the
coasts as well as the interior to GARIBALDI, and
leave all the shore open for fresh volunteers to land.
Such considerations were of course nothing to a
lawyer—and in that capacity he thought he could
maintain that " any individual advertising, even
without concert with others, committed a serious
offence, violated international law—and even though
no subscriptions were collected, ought to be held
liable to punishment," whereat hon. members said
—Oh ! oh !
But hon. members had not had quite enough of
it. Mr. 'HOPE, after some interval, asked for more
legal light—lore, perhaps we should rather say.
The Attorney-General very obligingly gave him a
little more ; but it was the lore of a Chancery law-
yer, for it showed only that there was doubt—
nothing but doubt. " Suppose an English subject
sent GARIBALDI £lOO,OOO, it would be a misde-
meanour, but if a Sicilian subject, here, did the
same thing, he had no hesitation in saying
that it would be a misdemeanour at com-
mon law. Mr. 'MONSELL, very much aggrieved
by what is doing for Sicilian liberty, called on the
Government for its opinion, and defended the
valiant Irishmen who went not to massacre, but to
be soldiers: Mr. MALINS, however, asserted that
the Papal enlistments here were really violations
of neutrality, and of course illegal—Mr. NEWDE•
GATE, of course, denounced the Irish enlistment and
the PETER'S pence, and the OTIONOGHUE defended
them ; and so the matter came to the Speaker,
whom all wished to hear on the subject.
What will the Government say to it all ? What
will the Foreign Secretary say ? Having shown by
his answer to another question, how well our ships
of war behaved at the landing of GARIBALDI—he
treated the house to a little plain, homely, common-
sense English, which will do good abroad as well
as here. At Naples as in Paris any " suspect" can
be pounced on at once by irresponsible police ; but
he showed the practical difficulties of getting a con-
viction here—" All I can say is that I do not remem-
ber a case of any successful prosecution of persons
who subscribed for the purpose of maintaining an in-
surrection in Poland or in any other country. There
is one country with regard to which I recollect per-
fectly well that I myself was guilty of such an act,
along with a number of distinguished persons. It
was when there was an insurrection in Greece. We
carried on our proceedings very openly. We were
members of a committee which met, I think, at Lord
FITZWILLIAM'S, in Grosvenor-square; and afterwards
we held a public meeting in the City; and I did not
find that there was any great zeal at that time to
prosecute us; nor did I suffer any imprisonment in
consequence of the course which I then adopted.
After all the virtuous indignation which has been
expressed upon this question it appears to me to
be one of common law, that has not yet been
solved, and that would require a great deal of
consideration before the Government authorised a
prosecution. I find that there is a great con-
trariety of opinion upon this subjects. Same
persons say, What a wicked thing it is to go
and take part in a war against the KING of the
Two SICILIES and in an insurrection against his
Government.' Other 'gentlemen, on the contrary,
Why, that is not so very bad ; but it is a
dreadful thing to go and assist the POPE. That is
a crime indeed, and it ought not to be permitted.",
He also uttered the feeling of all of us, as to the im-
possibility of settling such questions as these by a
little ready common-place :—"There are cases in
which it is not enough to f,ay, Here is a man
in rebellion. GARIBALDI is a man who is
fighting against a Sovereign whom he ought
to respect.' It is not enough to say these
things in a glib and flippant manner. These
questions, whether you take them as questions
of law, or as questions of morals or of politics,
require a good deal of examination before
you can affix either moral blame or moral praise
to those who engage in such undertakings."
His illustration of the two classes to which even
Filibusters might belong was good. Having al-
luded to the selfish motives of Walker—" That,"
said he, " is one case; bat you may also have quite
another case—that of a patriot fighting for the in-
dependence of his country. It depends on gentle-
men's own opinions and sympathies, and ultimately
on the judgment of history, to-pronounce which is
the case of a filibuster and a felon, and which is
the case of a patriot and of a hero. We can all
remember that we had once a great filibuster who
landed in the month of November, 1688, on the
south-west coast of England, where he not only
met with considerable support, but where the whole
people of England flocked round him. That fili-
bustering expedition was completely successful."
On the whole, the debate will do good to the
advertisers—through them, we hope, to the Sici-
lians and GARIBALDI, and Lord JOHN:RUSSELL has
spoken worthily of his country and himself.

The Colonels who once rayed throughthe columns
of the Moniteur against England as a " den of as-
sassins "—were but mere complimentary triflers
when compared with M. LE COMTE DU HAMEL.
And who in the name of fortune may M. LE COMTE
DU HAMEL be ? some may ask in astonishment.
Not to know him argues—but the proverb's some-
what musty, good reader, so we leave you to finish
it. Be it known, then, to all to whom these presents,
&c., may concern, that M. DU HAMEL is the writer
of a recent political pamphlet, brochure, opuscule,
or whatever else you may please to call it, the sub-
ject of which, if not in the ordinary acceptation of
the idiom, apropos des bottes, is certainly apropos
of the celebrated seven-leagued•boots in which
NAPOLEON the GREAT, in his time, traversed all
parts of the European Continent. To describe M.
DU HAMEL as a fire-cater would be, as Sergeant
PARnY might express it, to talk of him in the
mildest and most mbdcrate language. The whole
of this terrible little inflammatory production is a
veritable literary Vesuvius, and one, too, in a vio-
lent state of eruption, running over with red hot
lava, and scattering abroad (reheated) the calcined
ashes of old dead and buried hatreds that we might
have hoped were long since forgotten on both sides
of the Channel. We wonder very much what Mr.