The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-23 00:00:00

—almost, we have been at times disposed to assert,
unnecessarily,—the issue of the ponderous and impor-
tant Blue-book, comprsising within it the result of
the prolonged and refiponsible toils of the Royal
Commissioners—then, but not till then, as we have
said and seen, at the very fag-end, as it were, of the
Parliamentary session, the Cabinet introduces to
the Lords and Commons its anxiously-deliberated
scheme for the improvement and development and
general strengthening of our coast and insular fortifi-
cations. In all which there is certainly no preci-
pitation. To call anything in all this precipita-
tion, would be simply ludicrous,--as ludicrous
as it would be to assert that our present
efforts to secure the Defences of the Realm are the
results of a mere paroxysm of trepidation. In
respect to which latter supposition it will be suffi-
cient to remark that we should, any one of us,
find it difficult to point out a period io our national
annals in which we have ever been in a more per-
fect state of preparedness. Evidence of this lies
about us on every hand in abundance. It is visible
at a glance in the simple fact, that in this year of
peace—when, as we have before observed, we are
not at any rate at war with a single one among the
powers of Europe, great or small—our expenditure
upon our war departments alone amounts to a
grand total of thirty millions sterling ! Coupled
with which circumstances is the rapid growth of
our army of Rifle Volunteers ! The Royal Army
never having been in a better state of efficiency and
discipline ! The Royal Navy never having been in
more perfect organisation. Then—as if to affix
the final timbre At once of merit and success to the
Ministerial scheme for the revision and rearrange-
ment of our Vaole system of fortifications—as if to
demonstrate conclusively the fact that, in preparing
this patriotic measure, her MAJESTY'S advisers have
been selecting the juste milieu between the two ex-
tremes of extravagance, i. e., of excessive careless-
ness and excessive expenditure, of doing too much
or doing too little—the Ministerial enterprise is
assailed upon two diametrically opposite grounds
—for " doing too much " by Mr. BRIGHT —for
" doing too little " by Lord ELLENBOROUGH

Whatever be the cause, the frequency of the
most awful of social crimes must strike us all.
General causes, there cannot well be any—for the
proximate causes are either unknown, or of the
most vulgar or savage kind. Jealousy, revenge,
uncontrolled anger, desire to get money, sometimes
concealment of the lesser crime of robbery or bur-
glary, are among the usual reasons which have
prompted men to take the life of their fellow-man
or woman. Yet the shocking frequency of fatal
violence, and that with all the boasted advance of
our civilisation and education, is undeniable. We
have not made any calculations, and we have no
statistics at hand at the moment which have sug-
gested
the subject to us ; we write only from the
impression which comparatively recent accounts
leave on our minds, and which every reader of
newspapers doubtless shares with us. Hardly is
one murder committed, and the perpetrator detected,
or serious efforts made to discover him, if he for
long evades all search, but some other, as horrible
or more so, is committed. The Road murder is
perpetrated ; its mystery remains impenetrable ;
but before it can be cleared up, four persons, and
those a mother, brothers, and a sweetheart, fall at
once by the knife of the assassin, some of them
killed, doubtless, to conceal the killing of the first.
Hardly is this completed when a wealthy, miserly
old lady is found killed to get at the not very large
sum of money she was known to have with her ;
and while the guilty actors are yet undiscovered,
tidings come from the North of a murder, in some
respects yet more atrocious, because committed
apparently by soldiers, and to conceal atrocious
conduct towards a female of tender age. And all
these horrid murders but follow upon others, some
of which have come before the courts of justice in
different parts of the country at the present assizes.

With such facts before us we cannot say that
reverence for human life is increasing ; it seems to
be rather the other way. It may well be that
even the inevitable publicity given to these horrid
facts and their details has some tendency with a
lower order of minds to render such crimes the
subject of morbid imagination, and to dispose them
to brood over them till they seem to come within,
to them, the range of possibility. To silence, by
killing him, a person who has recognised another
in the act of crime, and who might therefore be a
witness against him, seems indeed a very obvious
device ; yet it may, well be doubted whether it
would be so readily resorted to did not the mur-
derer know that it had so often been done, and had
not his mind been familiarised with the idea of
taking life. It is a thing he has often read of, or
heard of, and oftentimes the proof of guilt has been
incomplete ; often he has got off on the allegation
of insanity, and often testimonials to good charac-
ter, and numerously signed petitions, have pro-
cured commutation of punishment. The villain
feels that murder is not an uncommon thing; that
it is much more likely to escape its appropriate
punishment than robbery and theft, so he will
risk it.

Of course such publicity of all thing 3 is essential
in this country. The course of justice requires it,
and the universal desire to know everything re-
markable would render suppression impracticable ;
indeed, no one would think of it. Be the evils of
publicity what they may, publicity is a necessity,
and must be taken with the good or the bad of it.
The advocates of the abolition of capital punish-
ment will now tell us that their views are the
great requisite. They may certainly tell us that
capital punishments have not attained their object.
They have not prevented murders; they have not
even lessened, so far as we can judge, their
number. Of course what would be the
result of their system is little better than
a speculation. We cannot, however, deny that
they have some reason in asking for a fair
trial of their plan. Civil death—perpetual impri-
sonment, or penal servitude for life—might be more
effectual than physical death ; if so, it would be,
not through its greater terrors, but through its
withholding from the public gaze scenes which cer-
tainly do tend to lessen the sanctity of human life
in the eyes of the class to which murderers chiefly
belong. We have no doubt whatever the dread of
death is, after all that has been said, 'stronger than
that of any secondary punishment, and if the ques-
tion were purely one of deterring, we could not
doubt that death, as it is the deserved, so it should
be the actual punishment. We cannot, however,
but see that the uncertainty of death punishments,
through the weakness of juries especially, and the
ingenuity of counsel, is very great ; and it may be
fairly supposed that the other plea, that of the
hardening effect of excutions, has something in it.
Let these considerations have their weight, but
above all things, let us shut out that maudlin sym-
pathy with villains, and forgetfulness of the suffer-
ings of their victims, which passes in some quar-
ters for philanthropy. The safety of the innocent
and helpless is of more consequence than a good
deal of over-harshness to those who endanger the

peace of society.
As things now are, there seems to be a fair call
on our law reformers to consider thoroughly the
question of death punishments. It wants to be

taken out of the hands of pseudo•philanthropists,
and carefully examined by those who care little
about the criminal, but feel -very deeply for the
security of the lives of all of us. Some evidence is
procurable from foreign countries, and much might
be obtained from our intelligent gaol chaplains. And,
as our criminal law reform is postponed till another
session, there is full time to investigate the question
in all its bearings. It is time that the whole sub-
ject were settled, so far as inquiry and discussiod
can do it. The increase of murders, especially if we
include cases of infanticide, is so extraordinary that
Government itself should seriously review our
legislation on the subject.

SORROWFUL SUHMER STANZAS.

It should be the prime of Summer time,
The Earth should be holding its regal dower ;
The grass should breathe and the dog-rose wreathe,
To perfume and illume the noontide hour. '
The corn should be brown and the clover down,
The beetle should bask on its ash-leaf bed;
The blue moth should play in the sun-set iv,
And the Night scarce know that the Day was dead.
Garland and grain should cover the plain,
And the hot steeds pant in the harvest wain.

But mist and chill come over the hill ;
The crops on the upland are green and stark;
The newts are about, and the rain puts out
The tender light of the glow-worm's spark.
The moss is dank on the hedge-row bank,
The fox-glove is falling—drenched and weak—
And a wailing tone steals like a moan
Through the wheat that should sing with a rustling creak
Earth's glory has bowed to the wind and the cloud ;
Lying sad and grand, like a Queen in her shroud.
I know a Soul whose golden bowl
Is filled, like the Year, with Life's rich dower;
But Suffering weaves her shadowing leaves,
And blights the prime of its fruit and flower.
Its hope is sear 'neath the blinding tear,
Its strength is sapped by the choking sigh ;
And its Lloom that should be, full, fair, and free,
Struggles on through the gloom, though it fain would die.
Like the Spirit of Earth, its flourishing birth
Has but led to a Summer of cheerless dearth.
ELIZA COOK.

VISIT OF THE QUEEN TO PRUSSIA.—We hear
it rumoured (says the Scotsman) that her Majesty, on her
return from the north, will sail from Leith in the Royal
yacht, for Hamburg, on her way to visit the Princess
Frederick William of Prussia.

The New Prussian Gazette states, in a letter
from Coburg, that the King of the Belgians will arrive
there in September during the visit of her Majesty Queen

Victoria.

Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Cam-
bridge and Princess Mary have left Cambridge Cottage;
Kew, for Cadlands, near Southampton, on a visit to Mr,
and Lady Elizabeth Drummond.

His Excellency the Turkish Ambassador and
Madame Musurus, the Earl and Countess of Arran, the
Countess of Cathcart, Viscount and Viscountess Castle-
rosse, thg.Countess of Kenmare, and Count J. and Lady
Cecil re-la-feld are passing the season at St. Leonard's-
on-Sea.

The Right Hon. the Speaker gave his annual
dinner to the principal officers of the House of Commons
yesterday (Wednesday) evening :—Sir Denis Le Marchant,
Mr. Erskine May, Mr. Ley, Lord Charles Russell, Captain
Gosset, Hon. George Waldegrave, Rev. Henry Drury, Mr.
Rickards, Mr. Lefroy, Mr. Samuel Smith, Mr. Frere, Mr.
Arthur Jones, Mr. Vardon, Mr. Dyson, Mr. Gibbons, Mr.
Rowland, Mr. Postlethwaite. Mr. J. B. Rose, Mr. Pole,
Mr. Gray, Mr. Hodgkin, Mr. W. Rose, Mr. Howard.
The annual Ministerial -whitebait dinner took
place last evening at the Trafalgar Hotel, Greenwich.
Viscount Palmerston and a large party of his colleagues
came by water from Westminster, a Citizen steamer being
engaged for the purpose. Covers were laid for 30, the com-
pany including the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Somerset,
the Duke of A7yll, Lord Wodehouse, Viscount Palmer-
ston, the Right Hon. Sir Charles Wood, the Right Hon.
Charles P. Villiers, the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, the
Right Hon. T. Milner Gibson, Lord Clarence Paget, Rear-
Admiral the Hon. F. T. Pelham, the Right Hon.W. Hutt,
the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, Hon. H. B. W. Brand, Mr.
Laing, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the Right Hon.
W. F. Cowper, Mr. C. Fottescue, the Attorney-General,
the S elicitor-General, Mr. Hugessen, Mr. J. Bagwell, &c.
Letters this morning from Point de Galle an-
nounce that the whole of the specie of the Malabar—about
£2Bo,ooo—has been recovered. The diving apparatus used
was Heinke's patent.

A telegram from Lisbon states that the works of
the South-Eastern Railway of Portugal were commenced
yesterday.

" Prince de Metternich, the Austrian ambassa-
dor at Paris," says the Sport, "is expected at hie seat in
Bohemia, where he will remain during the Emperor Napo-
leon's tour in the provinces."
The directors of the Chartered Mercantile Bank.
of India, London, and China, at a meeting held yesterday,
declared a dividend of 5 per cent. for the half-year ending
30th June last.

HOMICIDAL MONOMANlA.—Consciousness or un-
consciousness of the act is the true test of criminality, not
the degree or intensity of the homicidal impulse. The old
course is the proper one, which is simply to ask the jury if
the prisoner has—or rather had at the time when the crime
was committed—a sufficient degree of reason to know right
from wrong. We might well tremble at the consequences
if it was once established that a man's mind might be right in
all points save a tendency to commit murder. It is idle in
cases of insanity—as far as the administration of criminal
law is concerned—to lose ourselves in fine-drawn distinc-
tions. If a man knows what he is about when he commits
a crime, he is amenable to justice) no matter how strong his
inclination may be to violate the law,—Onee a-Week.
AN IMPERIAL AUTHOR.—A Paris letter in the
Salut Public of Lyons says :—" it is known that the Em-
peror is engaged in writing a history of Julius Caesar, and
that several gentlemen are employed under his Majesty's
direction in collecting materials for it. M. Leon Renier,
for example, has been sent on a mission into Italy to ex-
amine all that refers to the history of the Roman constitu-
tion, and others are making researches and translations in
France. Some officers of engineers, under the orders of
Colonel Fav6, are likewise engaged in experiments for the
purpose of reconstructing the war engines employed by the
Romans. When all the details required shall have been
collected the Emperor will complete the work, and it is
said that it will throw new light on the grandeur of the
Caesarian period and on the art of war of the Romans."
PLYMOUTH, Wednesday.—The fine ship Lady
Macdonald, Captain Brumell, belonging to Mr. Duncan
Dunbar, of London, left the Sound yesterday (Tuesday) for
Sydney. She took passengers 262 souls, equal to 248 statute
adults. The cost of the conveyance of about two-thirds of
them, chiefly Irish, is defrayed by remittances from their
relatives in New South Wales. The Schah Jehan, Capt.
Cox, is appointed to sail to-day for Adelaide ; she has about
2681 statute adults, chiefly English, but including a few
Scotch, -Dutch, and German. This afternoon the barque
Victoria, bound from London in ballast for Cardiff, put
back to the Sound with loss of bowsprit, cutwater, Scc.,
having been in contact off the Lizard with the Tuscail brig
Nettaro, Captain Carlo, from Ibral, with seed for Falmouth
and for orders. The brig is supposed to have gone down;
her crew are saved.

THE YOUNGEST TAR IN THE BRITISH NAVY.—
While the fleet was anchored at St. Margaret's Hope, a
fine healthy male child, about 19 months old, was left,
either by design or accident, in the engine room of the
Royal Albert, flagship of Admiral Sir Charles Fremantle.
After remaining on board without any clue being obtained
as to its parentage, the little foundling was christened by
the euphonious cognomen of Albert Fremantle, the ship
in which he was left supplying the Christian, and the
Admiral the surname. The little fellow is a prodigious
favourite with all on board. His name has been entered
on the ship's books, and the Admiral, it is said, declares
he is now the property of the Queen, and that ho will give
him up to no one.—Toronto Leader.
KENSINGTON-PARK CHURCH.—We are much gra-
tified to learn that the beautiful church founded by the Rev.
Dr. Walker, standing out in the fields of the new district of
Kensington-park, Notting-hill, and on the confines of the
Great-Western line of railway, is to be forthwith com-
pleted. For seven years this splendid fabric has remained
in its present unfinished condition. The Rev. John Light,
of Ashton-under Lyne, has been appointed the first incum-
bent. A daily cathedral service will be performed morning
and evening by a very efficient staff of singing men and
boys. Dr. James Peck, of New College, Oxford, and Mr.
Sudlow are the organists and choir masters.
STEAM TO NEW YORK.—SOUTHAMPTON, Aug.
22.—The United States' mail steamship Fulton, Capt. J.
A. Wotton, embarked mails and passengers from this port
to-day for New York. She takes out French and English
mails, a full complement of passengers, and a large cargo.
The next steamship due here from New York is the Illinois,
Capt. Griffin, which is expected on Thursday, with mails
for England and France of the 11th inst.
TRADE CATALOGUES.—One cannot but be struck
with astonishment at the innumerable ways in which an
enterprising tradesman appeals to the public with a view to
increase his trade. Printing in all its branches, assisted by
the skill of the wood engraver, seems in the present day to
be one of the media most generally employed in spreading
the knowledge of various manufactures. These arts have
ably been brought into use by Mr. Benson, the eminent
watchmaker of Ludgate-hill, who has sought by means of
an " illustrated pamphlet " (consisting of nearly 60 pp.,
and containing upwards of 250 beautiful designs for
watches, clocks, &c, with an elaborate description of every
construction of watch now made), to enable persons living
in any part of the world to select the watch best adapted
for their use, and have it forwarded free by post.
BRUTALITY BY A MILITIAMAN.—Yesterday a
man named Thomas Fox, said to be a private in the
Artillery Militia, was brought up at the Liverpool police-
court on the charge of having en the previous evening,
without the slightest provocation, assaulted in the must
brutal manner a woman named Elizabeth Matthews. It
appeared from the evidence that Mrs. Matthews had gone
to the prisoner's house to make some inquiry, when she was
knocked down a flight of steps, and severely kicked in the
abdomen by the prisoner. An old woman who was in the
house was then seized by Fox, and would have been thrown
out of the window had she not been rescued. The prisoner
could offer not the slightest excuse. As Mrs. Matthews'
injuries are likely to terminate in death, Fox was remanded
in order that the result of his violence may be ascertained.