The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-12 00:00:00

Commerce at 7.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.-
Lessee, Mr. A. Harris.
Re-engagement of the Wonderful Dancr, Mons. Espinosa.
First appearance of Mdlle. Marietta Rosetta, Principal Dan-
seuse of La Scala, Milan ; and first time of the Delapierre
Family. These hiAly-talented Children will appear every
night. The Royal Princess's Rifles on parade every evening.
THIS EVENING, THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.
After which, a new Christmas burlesque pantomime, by H.
J. Byron, called JACK THE GIANT KILLER ; or, Harle-
quin King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Jack, Miss Louise Keeley—Harlequin, Mr. Cormack Panta-
loon, Mr. Paulo—Columbine, Miss Caroline Adams—Clown,
Mr. A. F. Forrest.

MEW THEATRE - ROYAL, AD ELPIII.
-LI Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. ber.j. Webster.
Holiday Attractions.— The Christmas Carol and the New
Spectacular Extravaganza, by IL J. Byron, Esq„ the Nymph
of the Lurlyberg ; or the Knight and the Naiades.
THIS EVENING-, TILE CHRISTMAS CAROL. Messrs
J. L. Toole, C. Selby, Paul Bedford, Stuart, Billinzton, C. J.
Smith. Romer; Miss Woolgar, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Chatte-
rley, Miss Laidlaw.
After which THE NYMPHS OF THE LURLEYBERG ;
or, The Knight and the Naiades. Messrs. Toole, Bedford,
Eburne, Smith, Powell, Romer, Miss Woolgar, C. Webb, K.
Kelly, Laidlaw.
Doors open at half-past six—Commence at seven. Box-
Office open from 10 to 5. No charge for securing seats,
nor for bills of performance. All fees to servants of this
establishment are strictly prohibited.
Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.
On Wednnesday, Jan. IS, the Theatre will be Closed, In
consequence of the Company performing at the Royal Thea-
tricals, Windsor Castle.

ROYAL ST. JAMES'S :THEATRE,
King-street, St. James's. Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatter-
ton. The nearest Theatre to Chelsea, Pimlico, and West-
minster, the Park being open to carriages and foot passen-
gers all hours of the night.
THIS EVENING, THEY'RE BOTH TO BLAME."
Followed by a new sketch, A HOUSEHOLD FAIRY.
Miss Wyndham and Mr. H. T. Craven.
To conclude with the new pantomime of PUNCH AND
JUDY. Introducing Miss Lydia Thompson and the Corps
de Ballet. Clown, Harlequin, Columbine, and Pantaloon, and
the wonderful Performing Dogs.

Reduced Prices—Gallery, 6d ; Pit, ls. The Box-office open
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half-past six ; perform
:Ince commences at 7.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE,
Westminster-road.
Sole Lessee—Mr. William Cooke, his Farewell Season.
The Great Christmas Novelty, "Harlequin Tom Moody,"
triumphant.
THIS EVENING, the entertainments will commence at
7 o'clock with the droll drama of DOMINIQUE THE DE-
SERTER. Dominique, Mr. G. Belmore. After which, fine
and exquisite Riding Evolutions by the Star Artistes, Miss
Emily Cooke, Mr. John Henry Cooke, and other first-rate
professors. Concluding with the really successful Holiday
piece and Sporting Pantomime, entitled HARLEQUIN TOM
MOODY ; or, Old Towler the Huntsman and the Goddess
Diana, introducing, among numerous new and splendid
effects, the Derby Day of 1860, by the Astlean Racin, Stud
• and clever jockeys ; also the wonderful Salamander Horse,
enveloped in a body of real fire. A Grand Day performance
of the New Comic Pantomime, and very superior novelties in
the ring, every Saturday, at Two o'clock, during the Holidays.
Stage Manager, Mr. R. Phillips

CANTERBURY -
EVERY EVENING. Sterndale Bennett's MAT
QUEEN.
And a Grand Selection from lifeyerbeer's new opera of
DINORAH.

Comic Vocaligts —Messrs. George trodson (the Irish Come,
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchfleld, and E. W. Hackney.

Several interesting Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.

ROSA BON S celebrated PICTURE of the HORSE
FAIR is now added to the already magnificent Collection of
Paintings in the Canterbury Hall Fine Arts Gallery.. The
gallery is open from 5 till 11 on Sunday Evening.

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, JAN. 12, 1860.
THERMOMETER, IN THE IVEILDB.
45—highest since noon yesterday.
45—lowest this morning and during the night.
47—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.09.
WIND, S.E. ; light, with fine weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, 4h. 24m.—Afternoon, 4h. 48n1
To-monaow.-Morning, 3h. 11m.—Afternoon, sb. 33m,

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THE SUN.

LONDON, THURSDAY, JAN. 12, 1860.

One-fourth of the annual pamphlet presented
this year to the Congress of the United States is
occupied with remarks on slavery and the slave-
trade. Hardly a year has passed of late without
something of this kind from the pen of the Presi-
dent. There is surely something remarkable, even
ominous, in this. What should we think, if in our
short Royal Speech, one quarter of it were occupied
in discussing whetherWhiggism or Toryism should
be upheld by the Government ? Or viewing it terri-
torially, "sectionally," as American Presidents
term it, the question should be discussed year by
year, whether Scotland or Ireland should remain
integral parts of the United Kingdom. Especially,
what should we think if the " sectional" question
arose out of one of the " sections," both adhering
pertinaciously to an institution which the common
voice of Christendom had pronounced to be a sin
against human liberty and Divine Fatherhood, and
also endeavouring to make the other section to
minister to their enormity ? The first aspect of
such a dispute would surely be most menacing to
the integrity of our kingdom. The more civilised
and upright half would never be satisfied with any-
thing short of suppression of the crime which dis-
gusted and disgraced them. The morally corrupt
part would get worse and worse, loving their crime
the better the more its odiousness aroused the in-
dignation of others, till the end must be disruption
or submission of the enthusiasts for crime.

President BUCHANAN, an entirely pro-slavery
man, and elected to sustain the slave-holders in
their Kansas•villanies, thoroughly feels this. He
sees that the Union is really threatened ; that
the alternate aggressions of the guilty south, and
the moral indignation even of the not too innocent
north, endanger by turns the nation, an enmity
which might end in the dreaded dissolution. With
this subject, accordingly, the Message of the Pre-
sident commences. His views of its present position
and the language he selects are both worthy of
notice: According to him our Union is of inesti-
mable value," and "the sectional hatred and strife
now alive in the land is a demon spirit." But what
if the origin of this "hatred and strife" be itself a
,g demon spirit" which Christian civilisation has
everywhere else cast out? -What it the wallowing
and foaming of the whole Union be due to
the presence of the " Legion', of evil spirits
included under the name of slavery ? Is union
with this " demon spirit" of " such inestim-
able value as to demand our constant and
watchful vigilance for its preservation ?" Mr.
BUCHANAN himself will not affirm that any of the
Free States wish to separate from each other. Nor,
indeed, do those possessed with the unclean spirit
of slavery wish to part company with each other.
The evil spirit does not dismember the victim him-
self whom it animates, No, it is, doubtless, the

antagonism of "sections." Mr. BUCHANAN, how-
ever, well knows that the one section is mad for a
confessed evil ; while the other would be probably
quiet enough, except in the way of persuasion, if
those possessed of the evil spirit were not ever
endeavouring to take possession of all around them

also.

And what is INIr. BUCHANAN'S hope of allaying
the demon spirit which troubles him ? It is partly
founded on the lessons which the Harper's Ferry
affair will teach the abolitionists. They will
see, he thinks, that doctrines subversive of the
constitution, that is, of the " inestimable union:,
if carried one step farther, may, in the hands of
heated partizans, issue in violence. He may be
right, but we rather think, that as the great body
of American Abolitionists are notoriously averse
from violence—indeed they are many of them
Quakers—the only result will be to deepen their
hatred of the savagery and terror combined, which
could hang noble-minded and God-fearing men on
a technical charge of treason. In plain English,
could legally murder BROWN and his companions,
not because they purposed or committed violence,
but because they planned a scheme for the slaves to
regain their liberty: The murder or martyrdom of
BROWN by the State which abetted the horrid atro-
cities of Kansas, where his sons also had been trucu-
lently slaughtered, is not likely, we should think, to
be a soothing balm for the irritation of abolitionists.
His great hope, however, is that " the existing
agitation on the subject of domestic slavery, like
everything human, will have its day, and give place
to other and less threatening controversies." In -
deed, unlike our poor plain-speaking QUEEN, he
grows quite rhetorical over the dying away, of the
dispute: " Questions which in their day assumed a
most threatening aspect, have now nearly gone
from the memory of man. They are volcanoes
burnt out, and on the lava and ashes and squalid
scoriae of old eruptions, glow the peaceful olive,
the cheering vine, and the sustaining wine."
But Mr. BUCHANAN should know that figures,
however grand, are dangerous arguments ; they
frequently wound the cause which employs them.
Does he know of a volcano, or of any fire and
flame having " burnt out," until it has consumed
and reduced to ashes, and lava, and scoriae, the ele-
ments of combustion. Now, which does he imagine
to be the destructible portion of matter in this con-
test ? Is it liberty or bondage ? Is slavery or
freedom destined to be universally triumphant ?
A Republican President can scarcely hesitate for
the answer. His very laudations of the constitu-
tion of his country have no meaning unless they be
the laudations of liberty. America sep crated from
England, not to perpetuate slavery, but to perfect
her freedom. We accept his figure, but we see its
application in the reduction to fertile earths of the
thoroughly combustible matter of the Southern
States, and the splendid results of fret in
dustry which will one day assimilate them to
the free states of the north. Mr. BUCHANAN'S

aim is a common one with politicians,
that of moral insensibility. Evil, with him,
is an institution. He speaks of slavery as
" the sacred right of property 1" His moral per-
ceptions make no distinction between the villany
of making property of a man, and the right of
every man to what he has inherited, or bought of a
lawful possessor, or made. Hence, he fails to see
that the contest between the morality of Christian
civilisation and slavery can never be allayed but
by the extinction of the latter.
It is almost amusing to see how philanthropically
he talks about the African slave trade. He is
full of tender pity for the miseries it would cause
to Africa ; he dwells on the blessings enjoyed by
their domestic slaves, and on the mischiefs both to
the happy slaves and the gentle masters which
would arise from the introduction of new Africans.
He does not mention one argument—one, however,
which we are uncharitable enough to think the
weightiest of all—imported slaves would make the
present slaves worth fewer dollars ; and the slave-
breeding interest is the strongest.

Dr. GUTHRIE has the somewhat exceptional
merit of combining in his own person the wit and
the philanthropist. Of this combination of con-
trasting qualities he has recently given signal evi-
dence in an admirable speech delivered at a meet-
ing in Auld Reekie, in behalf of the Original
Ragged Schools- of Edinburgh. The humorous
and benevolent argument enforced by that address
—an argument altogether unanswerable, we take
it, and unanswerable simply through the sheer,
irresistible force of the logic of common souse--
would have warmed, like a very cordial, the heart's
core of honest old Pot:Nr the Cobbler, that rough-
handed Good Angel among the squalid orphans
of our great cities, the originator and founder of
our system of Ragged Schools, and through them
of our Juvenile Reformatories.

It is quite impossible to put before us more irre-
sistibly the absurdity, as well as the impolicy, of
that wonderfully ingenious Act, contrived by our
present First Lord of the Treasury, according to one
of the most important clauses of which enactment no
boy can by possibility be admitted into a Reforma-
tory School saving only and excepting he shall (as
an essential preliminary) be proved to have sub-
jected himself by some sufficient infraction of
the law to the penalty of fourteen days' imprison-
ment. With perfect reason may Dr. GUTHRIE
exclaim at once with horror and ridicule that " He
never had heard before of its being necessary for a
person to have a criminal brand upon his brow
before he could be found entitled to the benefits of
education at the expense of the State !" Such a
provision as this, however, is very strictly in
keeping with the old dogged distinction
between pauperism and crime, according to the
respective treatment of which the very poor have a
grievous temptation before them to find shelter
rather under the :roof of one of our large convict
prisons than under that of the humble parish work-
house. If it be objected that the mere raiment and
ticketing-off of the convicts furnish the very
livery and badge of the felony for which they
are in the former establishments doomed to
undergo incarceration what- may not also be
said in reference to the equally mean and igno-
minious badge and livery of pauperism, branding
poverty as with the brand of crime in the wretched
raiment worn by the miserable occupants of our
parish workhouses ? What may not be said or
written, do we ask, upon this subject ? Answer
that Observant Historian of the humble family of
the Plornishes, in "Little Dorrit," answer that
kindly Celebrant there of le petit homme pie, poor
little Old Mr. Nandy, with his qnavering songs
about Phyllis and Daphne, and his " few and far
between" holidays spent inside the grim walls of tho
Old Marshalsea, under the patronage of Old Mr.
Derrit, the prisoner for Debt !
To return, however, to Dr. GUTHRIE and his in-
imitable exposure, very recently, of the combined
absurdity and impolicy of this deplorably
mistaken Act of Lord PALMERSTON, as to our
Ragged Schools and our Juvenile Reforma-
tories : the uncompromising. annalyst of that mea-
sure goes on to observe thus plainly--" Lord PAL-
MERSTON said, if the Ragged School would take
a child and endeavour to prevent him becoming
a crimieal, the Gov would not allow one,