The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-16 00:00:00

FIIE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, DECEAI Mil 16, 1867.

Radicals may make for party purposes, there are
very few white men in the North who really desire
to put the blacks completely on a level with
themselves, and there can be no question
as to the imprudence and danger of such
a course even as regards the North. As for
the Southern States, the PRESIDENT says
the subjugation of the Southern States to negro
domination would be worse than military despo-
tism, under which they are at present governed.
If anything could drive the whites of the South
to a fresh outbreak it would be the sudden eleva-
tion of the negroes. Setting aside the prejudices
of race and colour, which are not iu fact so strong
in the South as in the Not it is not difficult to
believe that the sudden conversion of servants into
masters is a dangerous as well as a distasteful ex-
p :riment to the latter. Yet the numbers of blacks
in some of the States are so large that representation,
if the franchise were extended to them, would be
completely in their hands, and the interests of the
whites would be altogether sacrificed. The Radicals
have gone on much too fast. Allowing them to be
sincere in their loudly expressed desire for negro
elevation, the haste and precipitation of their
schemes would have been sufficient under any other
circumstances to secure their condemnation. We
wish to see a child well educated, and accordingly
send him to school and college, but we do not ex-
pect him within a day or two of his arrival to carry
off the highest honours. Much has been said of late
about the elevation of the masses among ourselves,
and much has been done to procure it, but nobody
expects to find our miners and our bricklayers on
an intellectual level with our engineers and our
skilled mechanics. Yet the proposed method of
registration in the Southern States does more than
put the negro on a level with his former master.
.It decimates the numbers of white voters, who are
already in some parts numerically fewer than the
blacks, and consequently the whites are left totally
unrepresented. As matters are at present
arranged by the Radical Reformers, the
members for the Southern States might actually
in Congress vote for the confiscation and
re-distribution of Southern laud and property.
Happily for the Southerners the danger which
threatens them extends itself to the North also, and
the negro will be no welcome addition to the deli-
berations at Washington. The words of the PRE.
SIDENT on Reconstruction will be listened to with
more attention now than they would have been last
year. He does little more than repeat the old un-
heeded • arguments. The disorganisation of the
Union is, he says, a subject of profound regret, and
the Union, as formerly established, can only really
exist when all the States are represented in
Congress. The rebellious States were always
part of the Union, and their secession
ordinances were mere nullities. If it is now
to be admitted that they were valid as the authors
intended them to be, the whole ground upon which
the civil war was justified would be swept away.
In fact the Radical party are now doing the very
thing which the great majority of the Northern
people refused to do during the painful years of
struggle. They are acknowledging the secession of
the South. At the time of the secession the Radi-
cals, like most others in the North, refused to re-
cognise the Confederacy or its officers. PRESIDENT,
Ministers, Congress, and Geneials, were all to
them mere empty names ; and the whole body
of Confederates, great and small, were classed
together as " rebels," men who had resisted a supe-
rior authority, and laid claim to an independence
which they had no right to possess. But if, by their
own voluntary act, they had power to dissolve their
connection with the Northern States, how were they
rebels? The claim of the North was based on the
indissolubility of the Union, and the North was
victorious. How, then, can the Radicals, with
any consistency, maintain that the Union
is broken, and the South must not be
re-admitted ? These are the questions which
the more moderate and reflective among
American politicians and statesmen have been put-
ting for some time past, and they are at last obtain-
ing an answer from the great body of the people.
We have in the news brought by the Cuba another
significant intimation of the change. General
POPE has ordered the adjournment of the Alabama
Reconstruction Convention, for the pithy reason that
" its action tends to delay reconstruction." Those
who have watched the progress of these African
legislators during their brief deliberations will not Lo
disposed to dispute the truth of the General's asser-
tion.

CONTINENTAL nations seem to be surpassing
Great Britain in their appreciation of cheap means
of intercommunication. By the convention just
concluded between Austria and the North German
Confederation, the penny-postage system is ex-
tended over the greater part of Central Europe.
Heretofore, postage throughout the whole of Austria
cost only a penny, and by the new arrangement a
letter may be sent from Hamburg to Vienna, from
Pesth to Cologne, for the • same sum. This is
not the whole of the improvement. These States
offer their subjects still greater advantages; By
this convention with North Germany, Aus-
trians will be enabled to send small packages, for
many hundreds of miles in fact, for the same dis-
tances as they could post letters—for threepence.
The desirableness of some such system in this coun-
try needs no enforcement. The present charge on the
transit of most parcels more than a few ounces in
weight, whether by post or by rail, is nearly pro-
hibitory. In the matter of telegraphic messages
we have also a great deal to learn. Austria is not
an advanced country in commercial progress.
Nevertheless, its telegraph system is being deve-
loped more rapidly than ours. Cheap rates have
been adopted, and have succeeded so well
that they are to be made considerably cheaper.
The means for the rapid transmission of informa-
tion will soon be brought within the reach of the
bulk of the people. In the first six months of this
year the inhabitants of Vienna alone sent 175,638
private messages. This number, considering the
ratio of progress, would allow an average of nearly
one message to every member of the population,
and five or six to every adult male, per annum.
England has heretofore taken the lead in such
matters, but now we are content to follow other
nations at a humble distance. It is no wonder
that we are not quite so prosperous as formerly.

The Abyssinian Expedition seems to be prosper-
ing on the whole. From Malkatta, December the
Ist, we learn that Colonel MEREIVETHER is moving
on Senafe with the advanced Brigade. One very
encouraging circumstance in the affair is that the
Expedition seems likely to receive the support and
assistance of the people of the various places
through which it pas3es. In this last account we
learn that the inhabitants of Okulch and Kuzeih
have offered their services. It is very cer-
tain that this aspect of the matter must not be
slighted, or made little of, because it might
hereafter prove to be of material advantage to our
forces. The troops, it is said, are in good health ;
but from Aden it is reported that there is a great
scarcity of water, and the disease among the mules
and horses prevails to a great extent. It would be
well if, in any future transports, more care were
taken that there was not so much crowding in the
transit of these animals. The mules were sent
packed in so " tight" a manner that it
was impossible for them to lay down. This

not the way to enable them to bear the
subsequent fatigues and privation that await them,
and a change for the better would be a desirable
one. Colonel STAVCLY and Staff, with the last de-
tachment of the Scinde Brigade, have passcd Aden
en route for Abyssinia; it is mentioned also that a
chief of the Tigre, with six hundred men, had arrived
in the British camp, and that is a significant an-
nouncement of itself. On the whole, we feel assured
that the expedition promises well so far, and the
public may feel confidence in its future prospects. Of
course we cannot expect that it will be without
drawbacks and disappointments to a certain ex-
tent, but the result is the main thing to consider,
and in every view of the question there seems no
reason whatever to doubt that it will have a pros-
perous issue.

CORRESPONDENCE FROM PARIS.

(FROM our, olv:i CORRESPONDENT.;
PARIS, Sunday, Dec. 15.

From telegrams received here I am informed that a
tearful explosion, attended with loss of life, took place in
London on Friday night. The telegram is extremely
bald and inaccurate, but the circumstance that all the
journals have taken it up. chews that the calamity has
created excitement here. The telegram gives notice that
the event took place at the "Prison de Elerkenwell," and
that Burke has escaped.
Lord Clarendon has passed through Paris en route for
Florence and Rome. During hie brief sojourn here, he
he was accompanied to the Peace of Saint-Cloud, and
introduced by the Marquis de Moestier to the Emperor.
In spite of the promises made by the Moniteur and
other ocia.l organs, and in spite of the efforts of M. de
Moustier himself, the project of the 'Conference, for the
realisation of which the French Government has been
labouring with more perseverance than success, has been
abandoned.

A common topic of talk here is the strengthening of the
garrisons of Gibraltar and Moscow. It is believed that
these measures have been taken in view of approaching
complications in the East. The fact that Gortschakoff has
been superseded by Ignatieff is believed to be a sort of
menace to Turkey.

At the close of a confer3nce held at the Imperial Asylum
of Vincennes upon the nutritive qualities of the flesh of
horses, 31. Reboul, director of the establishment, ordered
that a plate of this meat should be served to convalescent
patients.

A most remarkable and mysterious case of murder
is just now the topic of conversation here. A
farmer and money-lender of Bourgueil, named Pierre
David, disappeared suddenly in June 1863. The body was
discovered in a state of decomposition in December 1866.
On examination it was found that death had been pro-
duced by strangulation, and also that the body had but
lately been removed to the spot in which it was found.
On tie 17th of Febi-uary last Hilaire David, son of the
victim, was standing in a wine-shop talking to a man
named Bouchet. Suddenly the young man, pointing to
Bouchet, exclaimed, " Arrest him ; he has in his
possession tho names of the murderers of my father !"
Bouchet was observed to have a slip of paper
in his hard at this moment, but ho put it
into his mouth and swallowed it before he was
placed in custody. Bouchet and Hilaire David were
found to have been in close relations respecting the crime
since August 1863, and it turned out that the former had
agreed to produce the body of the murdered man in con-
sideration of a sum of money. For a further sum of money
Bouchet agreed to write down the names of the mur-
derers, and he had actually written a name or names upon
a piece of paper, when he seemed to change his mind, and
would not give up the writing. At this moment David,
pointing to him, accused him cf complicity in the murder.
The charge of murder has just been made, and though it
was found to be impossible to bring the charge directly
home to Bouchet, enough was made evident to pi uv.z that
he knew something about the tragedy, and he was sen-
tenced to twenty years' hard labour.

Herr von Dreyso, the inventor of the needle-g-un,.died
on the tth instant at his native place, Sommcrda, near
Erfurt. He was born in 1787, and in youth he worked in
the shop of his father, who was a locksmith. From 1809
to 1814 he lived in Paris, and was employed by a German
officer who had been commissioned by Napoleon I. to in-
vent a breech-loading rifle. On returning to Prussia he
devoted himself to the pursuit of the object which his
Paris employer bad vainly endeavoured to realise, and the
result was that in 1836 he produced the famous needle-
gun. Herr von Dreyse is also the inventor of the grenade
rifle, and of other varieties of firearms. The neefille-gim
was first placed in the hands of the Prussian infantry
in 3840 •