The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—There can now be no longer any doubt
of the Emperor Maximilian's execution. The news
we first received, being sent by the captain of an
Austrian vessel of war which had been placed on the
station, apparently to watch the progress of events
and to aid in saving, if possible, the life of the
Archduke, was at once felt to rest on no unsound
authority, and excited profound anxiety both at
Paris and Vienna. The captain had telegraphed
from New Orleans to the Austrian Minister at
Washington, who had sent the news by the Atlantic
cable to his Government in Europe. There was,
therefore, no possibility that this intelligence should
turn out to be a mere New York rumour, or the
work of some one incited by the desire of mischief
or of gain. Still it was possible that the Austrian
officer might have been misinformed, and for two
days people have hoped against hope. All doubt is
now dispelled by the intelligence received yesterday.
In our second edition we announced from New
York the official confirmation of the news, and a
similar statement was made by Lord Derby and
Mr. Disraeli in Parliament last evening. It was
then announced that her Majesty would be unable
to attend the review of the troops that had been
fixed for to-day. In Paris there is an end of all
the entertainments which had been devised in hon-
our of the Sultan. The Court of the Tuileries, in
the midst of the festivities of the Exhibition, and
during the visit of those Oriental rulers to whom
it had desired to display all its magnificence, has
been struck with a blow as heavy as if a French
Prince had perished, and has already put on a
mourning which is no idle sign of conventional
grief. Although we had no share in the policy
which has come to such a disastrous end, although
the success of the scheme for turning Mexico
from a Republic into an Empire was doubted
even by those who desired to see the anarchy of the
country abated, yet there will be as sincere a re-
gret here for the fate of the misguided Archduke as
there is among the French, on whose honour his
execution inflicts a stain, or among the Austrians,
where he is remembered with esteem and affection.
Of what passed between the surrender and the
execution of Maximilian we know almost nothing.
It is to be feared that his death had been resolved
upon by his adversaries from the first. The ominous
silence maintained concerning him, broken only by
the utterances of the Mexican Minister at Wash-
ington, was enough to induce the apprehension
that the worst was intended. Deliberately, and in
obedience to the detestable policy of the country,
the life of the Archduke has been taken, and
another and a crowning crime added to the blood-
stained annals of Mexico. The savage spirit which
distinguishes the Spaniards of either hemisphere,
and which is intensified in the New World by an
infusion of the blood of the relentless Indian and
the barbarous negro, has been displayed in the
moment of his final victory by the President Juarez.
Never, since the period of civil wars and revolutions
began 57 years ago, amid the anarchy of old Spain,
has a more wanton and uselss crime been committed
in either Spain or Mexico. Spaniards in both
Worlds and on both sides of the equator have been
butchering each other since that time. Even under
the reign of a Queen and a system styled Liberal, it
was said that the Spaniards were continually con-
jugating the word "to shoot." "I shoot, thou
shootest, he shoots, we shoot, you shoot, they
shoot." Within a year the verb has been conju-
gated in every mood and tense in Madrid, and
soldiers by the dozen sent to execution. But nothing
that has been done under Ferdinand and his daughter,
or by Carlist or Christino partisans during the war—
nothing that has been done in the revolutions which
make up all that independent Mexico has of history,
will compare with the cruelty and folly of this execu-
tion. It has been long since hinted that the Impe-
rialist chiefs, if taken, must not expect to be treated
as prisoners of war, since it was known that both
the French and the Imperialists had shot some of
their prisoners, taken on former occasions. The pro-
clamation of the Emperor, under which these acts
were committed, would, it was said, justify reprisals
on his person. But there is at least this difference
between the two cases, that wits the capture of a
guerrilla officer the war was not brought to an end,
and in the stern
policy o f war it might be held
necessary to strike terror into others who might take
up arms against the Government in power. But .
when the Emperor was taken there was incontestably
an end to the empire. Can it seriously be believed
that Juarez thought that if Maximilian returned to
Europe he would make his appearance again, like
Iturbide, to begin a second revolution ? The severi-
ties of the French, who were, we believe, the chief
offenders, and of one or two of the Imperialist
Generals, cannot
b e justified, but to avenge these
deeds, committed in the heat of a civil war, by the
execution of the fallen Emperor when his cause was
hopeless has no excuse. We cannot but see in this
act the ferocity of the native character, or avoid be-
lieving that had even Maximilian refrained from
arrogating to himself that most invidious right of
sovereignty, the right of treating domestic foes as
rebels, he would equally have shared the fate that
befell his partisans. The good-feeling and the com-
mon sense of the world will reject the excuses which
the new Governors of Mexico will probably make for
this crime. European States can at least express their
opinion of it by the reception they gave to whatever
persons Juarez may think fit to send to them as his
representatives. The feeling excited will not be
confined to the Old World. We know not how far
the Government of Washington exerted itself to
save the Archduke, but if the American Press re-
presents the opinions of its readers there has existed
among Americans a profound sympathy for the
fallen Austrian, and a desire that he should be
allowed to depart from the country in safety. The
feeling of the Americans in Paris, always among
the most educated and refined of their countrymen,
has been shown by their determination to abandon
or defer the celebration of the Anniversary of In-
dependence. Such an act is the more creditable to
them since their political sympathies are, of course,
with the came of Juarez, whose authority the United
States have ever recognised, and to whom the Ame-
rican people have given important material assist-
ance; the Texan frontier having been in fact the
Liberal base of operations, and the quarter from
which Juarez and his party received supplies of
every sort. There is a general consent that this has
been a cruel and dastardly act, and such a feeling
will only be deepened by time. We cannot but be-
lieve that after so many years of anarchy and
poli-
tieal vengeance the cup of Mexican evildoing is well
nigh full, and that the time approaches when the
land must be possessed by an abler, a nobler, and a
better race.

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Professor Beesley at Exeter Hall.
_ ----0-
_

~.•.

Professor Beesly's language at the Exeter-hall
meeting on Tuesday night appears to us to be as un-
just and as disgraceful as anything that has been
said of late by a man who has the ear of any con-
siderable section of the public. lie said, in reference
to Governor Eyre, that he " was a murderer whose
hands were red with the blood of more than 400
men, and this man committed his crimes in the inte-
rests of his employers as Broadhead committed his
in the interest of the workmen of Sheffield." We
will leave Mr. Beesley and the workmen of London
to settle between them the qucetion whether Broad-

head committed his crimes ‘.."‘ in the interest of the
workmen of Sheffield," but to say that Governor
Eyrc murdered 400 men in the interests of his em-
ployers is both absurd and wicked. Governor Eyre's
employer was the Home Government, which dismissed
him from his office for what he did, and who had no
more interest in the murder of 400 blacks than Pro-
fessor Beesly had in the Sheffield outrages. To compare
Governor Eyre's acts to Broadhead's is possible only
to a man jaundiced with hatred of that class of
"rich men" which Professor Beesley taunts with in-
difference to murder. Governor Eyre, under the
influence, as we think, of an unfortunate panic,
proclaimed martial law in accordance with the pro-
visions of an Act of the Jamaica Legislature, in
accordance with Jamaica precedents, and with the
sanction of all the authorities of the island.
Courts constituted under this proclamation did, as
we think, irregularly and illegally put to death the
number of persons stated, and, as we have always
maintained, this was a great fault and may in strict-
ness of law have been murder. But if the matter is
regarded morally, there are infinite distinctions be-
tween these executions and Broadhead's assassina-
tions. In the first place it is unquestionable that Broad-
head knew he was committing murder; it is equally
unquestionable that Governor Eyre thought, wrongly
if you please, that he was doing what the law per-
mitted and even required. Broadhead had no legal
authority, and represented at most what should have
been a voluntary association. Governor Eyre re-
presented the Queen of England, and was respon-
sible for the lives and for the property of the popu-
lation of Jamaica. Broadhead murdered men whose
conduct was perfectly blameless morally and legally,
simply because he disapproved it. Governor Eyre
punished those whom he supposed (wrongly again if
you please) to have committed crimes worthy of the
severest punishment aL 1 to have planned crimes which
would have justified all he did. in a word, Broadhead
was a systematic sneaking murderer, liar, and thief ;
Governor Eyre was a mistaken and over-zealous officer
of justice. The one was a murderer in the very worst
sense of that worst of all words, the other was a mur-
derer, if at all, by reason of the excessive severity
and stringency of the English law on that sub-
ject. Professor Beesley, indeed, was good enough
to say that " murder by trade unions was no bet-
ter and no worse than any other murder." We
beg to differ from him. Murders differ greatly in
moral guilt. Broadhead's murder was far worse
than many other murders ; worse, for instance,

than a murder committed in a fair duel ; worse
than a murder committed upon strong provocation,
and in hot blood ; worse than a murder committed
without premeditation in order to effect a less
heinous crime. It was worse, in short, than any
murder not committed with mature premeditation,
by prolonged lying in wait, with the assistance of
conspiracy, upon principle, for the sake of intimida-
tion, and without provocation or excuse, by a cold-
blooded, lying fanatic, who had the hypocrisy to
denounce his own diabolical villany as soon as he
had carried it out. We are quite willing to admit
that any other murder, not committed by a trade
unionist, of which all these things could be affirmed,
would be equally bad.—Pall Mall Gazette.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

MANCHES TER-THURSDAY.

Our market this morning was tolerably attended, and for
both English and foreign wheat we can make no change
in the quotations of this day se'nnight, with a moderate de-
mand. For flour the demand was limited. Oats being
scarce, brought rather more money, while oatmeal ruled
firm. Beans in small supply, and at fully late rates. In-
dian corn was the turn lower.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS—WEDNESDAY.
There was a poor show of wheat at this market to. day,
which sold freely at an advance of is upon previous rates.
All other articles unaltered.
Average prices : Wheat, Gss 3d ; barley, 35s 3d; oats,
226 Od.