The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-01 00:00:00

FARTS, T.11.E.

(FROM OUR OWN COFdtEsPoNDENr.)

PARIS, WEDNESDAY, March 31
There is an abundance of rumours in circulation here
to-day—in fact, there always is—but nothing worth men-
tioning. Perhaps lam in error. I ought probably to
mention the extraordinary statement respecting Count
Bismarck, which has just got into circulation. It is
reported that the Prussian Chancellor projected, not the
incorporation of the Southern States in the North-German
Confederation, but the abrogation of the treaties already
existing ! Count Bismarck has considered the matter
very carefully, we are told, and he has come to the deci-
sion that the help of the Southern States in case of war
would be more than counterbalanced by the greatly-
extended frontier which would then be open to attack.
The whole frontier of North and South Germany would

be much more difficult to defend than the line of the Main.
Hence the astute Prussian has resolved to " cut " the
South. I mention this extravagant conception, not because
there is the slightest trace of probability in it, but simply

as a curiosity.
There are likewise some war repbrts, but I shall trouble
you with none of them. The Parisians appear to be ter-
ribly afraid of war, and there can be no hesitation in
affirming that the vast majority of them sincerely desire
peace. This may appear a strange statement to make of
the most bellicose nation in Europe, but it is undoubtedly
accurate. I have already mentioned the unanimity of
the election addresses on the subject of peace. Speakers
and writers, except M. Emile de Girardin amongst the
latter category, are equally in accord. Let an
orator but take up the theme of universal peace
at a Paris public meeting, and he is sure of a hearing, even
if he be the vilest elocutionist that ever mistook his calling.
The word " peace " touches a chord of sympathy in any
French audience. The phenomenon has been too often re-
' peated to be at all doubtful. The clergymen, too, preach
peace with inexhaustible energy. This is, perhaps, only
natural, but they return to the subject so persistently that
the only rational explanation is the sympathy with
which pacific sermons are greeted. During this week two
of the leading Parisian divines have delivered sermons,
not merely pacific, but directly and specially hostile to
war. Truly, if the French people want war, I have been
unable to detect any indication of such predilection.
A rather neat career of swindling by a man named

Rollet has just been terminated by a sentence of

ten years' imprisonment and £2O fine. This individual
seems to have practised a new line of business for a period
of about sixeeen years, varied only by occasional visits
to prison. His system was to travel about from parish
to parish, calling with a grave demeanour on the clergy,
and expressing a desire to confess. He presented
himself as a fresco painter, and under the pretence that
he had broken his leg by a fall from a scaffolding'
and was unable to kneels he induced the priests to
hear the avowal of his sins at their residences,
which places he found more convenient for his
ultimate purpose. His dress of a decayed gentleman,
his apparent penitence, and the superior language in
which he expressed himself, rarely failed to make an im-
pression on his hearer ; and then a plausible story of his
distress and his want of a temporary loan of £1
followed. In most cases his appeal was not made
in vain. At length, however, this traffic on the
sympathy of priests came to an end. One curd who had
advanced the usual loan suspected that he had been im-
?osed upon, and Rollet was arrested just as he had been
successful with another priest. His hypocrisy was such
that he had rarely failed, but his genius must be suspended
for the next decade.
The population of Paris is rapidly increasing. It had
risen to 1,830,000 in 1.86.0, and must doubtless be getting
very near two millions by this time. But though Paris
contains nearly two-thirds as many people as London, it is
observable that it barely covers one-fourth as much ground.
The area of London is about 79,000 acres, that of Paris
only 19,500. This gives a population of 100 to the acre
in London, but of not less than 233 to the acre in Paris.
The number of inhabitants to each dwelling is from seven
to eight in the English capital, but it is from 40 t 0.50 in
Paris. In spite of its vast open spaces, Paris is, there-
fore, the most thickly populated city in the world.
The annual report on crime in France shews an increase
of offences. During the year 1867 there was a marked
decrease in the offences against public morals, indecent
assaults, &c., which fell from 1,064 to 954 ; on the
other hand, there was an increase in nearly every species
of the graver accusations ; murder, 191 to 226 ;
poisoning, 23 to 27 ; parricide, 6to 10. The cases of man-
slaughter, infanticide, and abortion were almost unvaried.
The educational statistics are the most interesting. Of
the whole number of accused 36 per cent. could neither
read nor write, 45 per cent. could do so imperfectly, 14
per cent. well, and 5 per cent, had received a superior
education. A singular fact is, that while there was in the
last ten years a decrease in crime in the two extremes, in
the educated of 1 per cent., and in the entirely ignorant
of 7 per cent., among the intermediary classes there
was an augmentation among those who read and write
a little of about 2L; per cent., and of those who write well of
more than 5i per cent. Nevertheless, the um..ber of
educated persons accused of crime still remains very small,
For the entire total of murders, parricides, &c., only 25
persons were sentenced to death, and of these eight were
reprieved.

TWO CONSERVATIVE MEETINGS.

Two meetings of Conservatives, which were held on
Tuesday, had members of the House of Commons to address
thorn. Ono of them a banquet, held at Buxton, to eommemo-

_ .
rate the victory of Captain Arkwright at the North Derby-
shire election, was presided over by Lord John Manners.
In his speech after dinner, Lord John spoke most feel-
ingly of the crisis which the nation had now reached. We
had come, he said, to the point where two roads meet, one
leading from the glorious past of monarchical, religious
England, to an equally glorious future; the other branch-
ing off, to some unknown form of purely secular Democratic
government, in which the State is to be dissolved from reli-
gion, and liberty to be lost in licence. At the commence-
ment of the late general election attempts were made to
minimise the issue, to localise it to Ireland ; but these
attempts have signally failed. Principles such as those
that are now promulgated in high places, dominant to-
day in Ireland, must, and will, to-morrow rule the
empire at large. The borough elections had been
won by the Liberals ere this fact had been fully recognised;
but when that series of political orations delivered by Mr.
Gladstone in a neighbouring county, and the replies to those
speeches with which the hustings and the press fortunately
teemed, became as it were the property of the public, then
indeed those great and weighty political bodies, the county
constituencies of England, appeared to recognise the immi-
nence of the issue, and the momentous nature of the crisis.
Congratulating the meeting on the local victory which had
been won, he counseled the Conservatives to unite all con-
stitutionalists, Whigs and Tories, Liberals and Conserva-
tives—and they might yet prevent the overthrow of the in-
stitution they loved. "I may be asked—Who aro you, to come
among us and give advice of this nature? You who come
fresh from a crushing defeat in the House of Commons—

how is it that you make use of language which cannot be
called tho language of submission and acquiescence ? No,
gentlemen, I preach no counsels of despair. My voice is not
for surrender. Nothing, gentlemen, in my humble opinion, is

yet lost but the character of those public men who, on
the hustings, and before the election, promised that the
Church of Ireland and the College of Maynooth should
alike be disestablished and disendowed, and who now
are proposing to establish and endow the latter on
the ruins and out of the spoils of the Church of England
is Ireland. In my of 'mien the campaign is only beginning.
Our enemies have called up all their forces. Our reserves
have yet to come into play. The country now, for the first
time, begins to see what is the real meaning of those bastard
English words disestablisment and discndowment. They
now know that disestablishment means the separation of
Church and State ; and that disendowment means the
endowment direct and indirect, of the Church of Rome
out of the funds of the Protestant Establishment.
That being the case, I believe the country will
steadily and perseveringly re-assort its opinion is
favour of the ancient institutions of the country."
Lord John went on to complain that the private endowments
aro now to be declared by law to be only those which were
given to the Irish Church since the year 1662 ; and the
plainest facts of history-have to be falsified in Order to
pillage her of bet undoubted rightful property. These
being, I won't say the only, or the most important, facts
of the great case as it is now submitted to the country, I can-
not, and will not doubt, what the ultimate result will be.
Another Conservative me3ting was held on the same
evening at Ardwick, the lion. A. Egerton and Mr. Birley
being the speakers. Mr. Eger ton spoke out the old cry of
"No surrender." if the Iri.h. Church went, so must the
English. Ile did net believe that that disestablishment of
the English Church 1,7,11. d Ano soon, but he would say
that the disestablishment of tho Irish Church was
a step towards it. Mr. Birley reminded the meeting that
Sir Roundel' Palmer, the greatest English jutist. was op-
posed to disendownieut, he b,li,ved that almost every n an
well qualified to judgo—that was to say, our great jurists,
our greatest judges— would be, speaking dispassionately, of
the same opinion. They would say that it was a great injustice.
They had the best lawyer on the other side taking a view
opposed to disendowment ; and even Sir J. Coleridge, the
Solicitor-General, had been, according to the admission of
his own party, unable to answer him.

A CHURCH DESTROYED BY LIGHTNING.—
A telegram from Havannah, dated March 16, and re-
ceived via New York, states that the cathedral church in
Zacatecas was struck by lightning on the sth instant and
destroyed; burying hundreds of persons in its ruins.

"N. A. W." writes another letter, apparently the last
of the series, on the haunts of criminals in London. He
calls attention to the queen of the Bluegate-fields in the
East-end. " She is known in the neighbourhood by the
soubriquet of ` Cast-iron Poll.' She is a celebrity, having
been convicted, as was proved at her last trial, no less than
fifty-three times. Of course nearly all these convictions
were light ones, varying in duration from 14 days to 3
months ; yet, from the time that this infamous woman
was 15—and she is now near 50— she has seldom been
much more than a month at a time out of prison. We
were not gatified at the sight of this strange heroine of the
place, as one of her companions (who, our detective assured
us, had herself been convicted nearly twenty times) said
that Poll, who at her last sentence got three years' penal
servitude for a daring robbery from the person, would not
be i,` out on the spree' for nearly another month. The
police of the district almost dread the release of this
woman, so much trouble does she give them. She has got
so accustomed to, and apparently enamoured of, the gaol
life that she will literally do anything after a short
` spree' to get back to it. She will go to a
police-station and insist on being locked up ; but, of
course, as there is no charge against her, her unusual
request cannot be gratified. `No charge,' she says,
`well, I'll soon make one,' and out she goes and attacks
with teeth and nails the first man or woman she meets, or
breaks the windows of a public-house, or, as she has done
over and over again, the windows of the station-house
itself. Then when she is brought back she cooly asks the
inspector why he did not lock her up when he knew she
was going to commit her offence, and the same question_ is
likely to occur to many of your readers."
But though the East-end is bad enough, "N. A. W."
considers the South of London worse, especially those
parts around the Mint and Kent-street in the Borough.
Murderers are not tolerated in the haunts, as they create
too much stir ; but every criminal short of these has a
refuge in the houses of the neighbourhood. "There is
hardly a grade in crime the chief representatives of which
may not be met among the purlieus of the Borough. It is
the greatest error to suppose that all, or even a majority,
of the criminal classes are continually passing through the
hands of justice. Griffith, the bank-note forger, who was
tried, I think, in 1862, stated in prison that he had car-
ried on the printing of counterfeit notes for more than
fifteen years. Of course this man was sedulous in conceal-
ing his occupation from the police, but there are hundreds
of others who almost openly follow equally criminal and
far more dangerous pursuits with whom the police cannot
interfere. Our present business should be to look up these
vagabonds, and our future vocation to destroy their re-
cognised haunts. It is no good killing one wasp when
we leave the nest untouched. Thieves, it must be remem-
bered, are a complete fraternity, and have a perfect
organisation among themselves. The aspect of the
quarters is low, foul, and dingy. Obscenity of language
and conduct is, of course, common to all parts of it, but
it is not, as a rule, a riotous neighbourhood. Thieves do
not rob each other, and they have a wholesome fear of
making rows, lest it should bring the police into
their notorious territory. These haunts are not 1'
only the refuges and abiding-places of criminals, I
but they are the training colleges for young thieves." It
is on this latter score more particularly that "N. A. VT"
would suppress these haunts. "If the police were only
some night to make a cordon round Kent-street and the
Mint, in the Borough, and take all they found withintheir
lines —man, woman, or child—l can't help thinking from
what I saw that they would do great good to the metro-
polis and its ratepayers." The position of the public-houses
in the neighbourhood also demands attention. Here are
houses of ill-fame, notorious for coining, card-sharping,
skittle-sharpiug, and hocussing—but the police can do
nothing. They might search the house, but would find
nothing. "The Excise is to all intents and purposes the
landlord of these places, and a landlord knowingly re-
ceiving for his rent stolen property would be answerable
to the law. Is it not, then, a delicate refinement to say
that he shall not be equally liable for receiving money
which is by public repute derived from the open en-
couragement of fraud and theft. In this matter I
am afraid the Excise cannot be said to be not guilty."
"N. A. W." goes on to describe one of these South Lon-
don haunts. They were much the same as those of the
East-end, only the writer seems to have thought them to
he viler. "The first house we entered was at the end of a
narrow, villainous-looking alley off Kent-street, and at the
door of the house were some half-dozen ` roughs.' Before
we entered my conductor told use that I should see nothing
but the most notorious and convicted thieves. Had he
sworn to me that I should see nothing but honest men,
I could not have believed him. We passed down into
a sort of cellar, or underground basement floor,
which had been turned into a kind of kitchen, and here
were assembled, to the number of about thirty or forty,
some of the worst types of the most criminal classes in
London. There was not one of all those present whom a
respectable person would not instinctively hci,ve shrunk
from meeting in the day or night. They were mostly
young men and young women—or, I had better say, young
girls. Not one single one, from first to last, could give
any account of himself as to saying where he worked,
what he worked at, or who bad ever employed him.
Some said they lived `By odd jobs,' some said they
worked `Down the river.' The girls said they sold
matches, some said they sang in public-houses, some
that they ` begged ;' but not one man or woman.
could name an employer, not one could name
a single piece of honest work he had been
engaged in, and there was not one who did not
deny that be had got a penny that week. And this was
Friday night, and the men were all smoking and drinking
beer, and the women, I was told (it was then past 1
o'clock), had had their suppers more than two hours ago.
I spoke to many with a view of ascertaining if they had
ever been in casual wards or refuges. Of the scores that
I questioned, I only met with one who had ever been in a
refuge, and this was the conversation that passed in the
presence of my friends and my conductor. My witness was a
young man of about 25, a convicted thief, a known rough, and
an associate of regular thieves. I asked him had he ever
been in a casual ward. He said, as all the rest said, ' No,'
and I believe quite truly, ` that he liked getting his own
living, and not going to a work'us.'—` Have you ever been
to a refuge, then? Yes ; I tried to go once.—Did you stay
there ? No, I didn't ; they asks too many questions,
and they asks them over and over agin, and when you
forgets what you've said first, out you goes. —But if
you tell the truth first, you surely can't forget
that? Oh, yes, you can, though, when you are asked over
and over again.—What questions did they ask you I
(A very long pause). They asked me if I had a father os
a mother alive.—Well, have you ? No ; they're both
dead.—Well, if you were asked that a dozen times you
would not forget it, would you? Yes, I did, and they
turned me out. The truth is you cannot get
your beer and pipe at the refuge ? Yes, that's
it (a great laugh at this ; and they makes
you say prayers, and this was said with a spit of
intense disgust) they makes you wash.' This was the
only case where I met any who had among these criminals
been at either a refuge or a casual ward. The house in
which this thieves' jubilee is held makes up some 120
beds, and the lessee, if I may so call him, pays £lO a
week rent for the place. In this place men are charged
4d. a night for their beds, and men and w omen is
In most other houses married couples are only charged
6d. I was so much struck with this discrepancy
that I asked the reason plain and pointedly, and the
reply was equally plain and pointed. 'Bless you, sir, I
should no snore think of asking if the people who come
here are married than I should think of asking if the men
who come here are thieves. So long as they pay their
money and are quiet I asks no questions.' After this I
need not further explain what the house is, nor need I
dwell upon the class of female children whom I saw there,
and who, though living on their infamy, were more fit
for a nursery than a notorious thieves' house of ill fame."
In conclusion, " N. A. W." says : " I do not pretend to
offer suggestions as to the prevention of all crime, but
this I do say, that unless the low beershops, the low pawn-
brokers, and the low leaving shops are put under the
entire control of the police, it is idle to talk of diminishing
crime in the metropolis or bringing in bills for its better
suppression."

The infant child of Prince and Princess Christian
was christianed at Windsor Castle on Wednesday afternoon.
The Dorset Chronicle states that the Solicitor-
General has returned his fees in the Saurin case, believing
that the plaintiff's friends cannot afford to pay them.
The Guardian is glad to learn that there is an im-
provement iu the health of the Bishop of Salisbury. His
lordship's condition is still very precarious, but there is
much greater groIAILI for hopes of his recovery than there
was a week ago.

'Fire New Fork Tribune says that Miss Van Lew,
who rendered the State some service as a Union spy for II
General Grant, in the Potomac 'army, is to ro eivo the
appointment of Postmistress at Richmond, Virginia. This
is looked upon as a big thing for the women's rights people.
From a return published on Wednesday it appears
that the total number of sick poor attended by the medical
officers of the metropolis clueing the year ending 29th of
September, 1868, was—indoor, 79,375; ohtdoor, 268,135.
The amount of remuneration paid to the medical °Meer;
inclusive of salary fees, &c., was £28,669 7s. 9d.
The Prince of Wales is expected to arrive at Con-
stantinople to-day. Mr. Elliott will go to meet him in the
Dardanelles on board the Caradoc. The King of Italy has
placed the Palace Capo-di-Monte, at Naples, at the disposal
of the Prince of Wales, who is expected to wiye shortly in
South Italy.

The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise,
and attended by the Duchess of Roxburghe, drove
to Twickenham yesterday afternoon, and visited
the Countess of Paris.

Prince Arthur accompanied her Majesty on
horseback.

Her Majesty returned to Windsor by a special
,rain on the South-Western Railway.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

THE BRAZILS.

PLYMOUTH, April 1.

The London, Belgium, Brazil, and River Plate
Royal Mail Steamship Company's steamship City
of Limerick, from the Brazils, has arrived at Fal-
mouth this morning with 20 passengers, the mtils,
£15,000 in specie, and a general cargo. Her dates
are :—Buenos Ayres, February 18th ; Montevideo
23d ; Rio, March 3d ; and St. Vincent 18th.

According to Brazilian advices brought by the
City of Limerick Lopez still continues to repel the
advance of the allied army into the interior of

Paraguay.
The appointment of General Asorio as Comman-
der-in-Chief had met with general approval.

LISBON, March 31.

The Royal Mail Steam-packet Company's steam-
ship Oneida from Brazil, &c., arrived here to-day
at 9 a.m., and left for Southampton at one p.m.
with 70 passengers, specie, £8,475, 2,862 bags of
coffee, 1,147 rolls of tobacco, 854 packages (cocoa),
and 370 packages of sundries.
The La Plata, with the oatward mail of the 9th
March, was at St. Vincent (Cape Verds) on the
20th of March.