The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-03 00:00:00

the original intention, it would be perfectly use-
less-. But Lord ELGIN was resolved that it should
be turned to good account, or that he would know
" the reason why."
He came at rather an unfortunate I eriod. The
Liberal Government which had contracted the
treaty with America had been ev:c' ed from office,
and their opponents had been installed in their places.
Perhaps the daring act of innovation was the cause of
their overthrow. At all events Prince BORING° occu-
pied the position previously held by the liberal Prince
BITSU. Nothing could be more discouraging. But
by a happy act of audacity, Lord ELGIN completely
turned the tables. He was resolved to negotiate
only at the capital, and he found a valuable
auxiliary in Captain S. OSBORNE, who under-
took to pilot the little squadron up to the very
fortifications of Jeddo. The arduous task was nobly
accomplished, and great indeed was the astonish-
ment, not only of the Japanese but of the Americans
and Russians, when they found the British Minister
unhesitatingly transgressing the sacred line of
demarcation, and proceeding onward until the
ships anchored within a mile and a half
of a suburb, " the Wapping of Jeddo,"
and at an equal distance from a series of forts
constructed to guard tho approaches to the
capital, and which might bear honourable com-
parison with our own dearly-beloved Tilbury.
The most tender and affectionate pleas were put
forward by the Japanese to induce his departure.
The anchorage was dangerous, they could not see
strangers exposed to such serious perils without, at
least, representing the magnitude of the risk.
This argument, however, did not prevail; for the
British authorities, recollecting the principle enun-
ciated by NELSON at the Nile, were perfectly
contented to encounter all the perils that would
be borne by the Japanese fleet. " Supplies could
not be obtained," bUt they could be done without,
and the advantages of Kanagawa were un-
hesitatingly ignored. This firmness met its reward.
Eventually the treaty was obtained, that opens to
British enterprise one of the fairest lands of the
earth, where, ,nirabile dictu, there is no pauperism,
and the capital city is as extensive and populous
as our London. Lord ELGIN has thus doubly-
earned his marquisate. It is some comfort to find
a British diplomatist who can hold his own with
those of other nations.

Jeddo is unquestionably a miraculous city. As
populous as London. All the evils that we believe
to be inseparable from the congregation of myriads
seem to be avoided. There was " a Princes' quar-
ter," in which 360 hereditary Princes, or rather
Sovereigns, for they exercised sovereign power
within their own districts, had residences
that might put to shame the most important man-
sions of Belgravia or Tyburnia. It is said that one
of these petty kings can accommodate 10,000 fol-
lowers in his own establishment. They must un-
questionably be packed closely ; but still 10,000 men
constitute rather an alarming tail to be at the beck
and call of any individual.
In front of this extraordinary, or we may almost
style it regal quarter, is a magnificent street ten
miles long. Can we fancy Oxford-street ex-
tended to more than five times its present
dimensions, or ten Piccadilly-s placed one after
the other ! The area is larger than Lonim ;
the population equal to that of the British
metropolis. And yet there is no filth, no smoke,
no distress, or rags, or mendicants; all was clean
and well arranged, as if it had been prepared for
the inspection of an autocrat, who might have cut
off the heads of every official in the event of any
untoward disclosure. The English visitors travelled
ten miles into the country, and the promise of the
capital was more than maintained. Prosperity,
comfort, and order was apparent on every side, and
from what appeared the Japanese were a pros-
perous, and therefore a contented people.
We have now opened communications that will
be of a peculiarly valuable character. Japan is a
wealthy country, and it is by no means improbable
that ere long it may become one of our best cus-
tomers. It might have been made Christian some
time since, and that great desideratum may be the
result of Lord ELGIN'S efficient and zealous exer-
tions.

An application made at the Southwark police
court on Saturday by a baker, carrying on business
in the vicinity of the Old Kent-road, brought to
light a grievance that really does appear to require
some interference on the part of her MAJESTY'S
Government. It seems that the Communists actu-
ally have the consummate effrontery to employ our
Postal System as. a means for the gratuitous diffu-
sion of their pernicious and infernal doctrines.
They scatter broadcast over the land, by means of
the machinery of the Post-office, printed circulars
enunciating their extravagant views as Reds, and
Socialists, and Anarchists. They carefully abe
stain from prepaying these communications. They
transmit them—thus un-prepaid----to the industrious
middle classes, mechanics, and shopkeepers ; pro-
curing their addresses from the records of the Post
Office London Directory, and other public sources
of information. It were not simply idle but alto-
gether beside their purpose to forward those
baneful incentives to insurrection to the members
of the wealthier sections of the community—
the very people proposed to be despoiled.
Fundholders and landowners, professional
persons no less than individuals connected with the
aristocracy, are carefully avoided,'and the favoured
recipients are, as we before intimated, cautiously
chosen from the bumble and less affluent ranks of
society, from those very classes the members of
which might reasonably be supposed to be the least
disposed to fool away their money in paying for
the postage of these preposterous documents. A
single half-ounce letter, unpaid of course, only _
wrings twopence out of the purse of the unwitting
recipient who—imagining the communication to be
a genuine letter from some personal correspondent
—rashly breaks open the envelope, and thereby
renders himself or herself responsible for the pay-
ment of the required postage money. It is not by
any means ridiculous to suppose, however, that
even a comparative trifle like twopence may to a
thrifty mechanic, or even to one of the humbler
kind of shopkeepers,. be really a matter of con-
sideration. In the instance brought before
the sitting magistrate of Southwark on
Saturday, however, the postage money of
which the recipient of one of these wretched
documents found himself mulcted, amounted not to
twopence, but to eightpence. The communicatio*
—a printed circular—having been transmitted to
the neighbourhood of Old Kent-road, all the way
from Harburg, near the capital of Prussia. An
industrious tradesman of Southwark had thus to pay
eightpence for a printed circular that might be
designated so much rubbish, but that it in reality
is a morsel of literary garbage reeking with moral
Poison—a production that would be utterly con-
temptible, but that its transmission unasked to any
one is an outrage of the most gross and flagrant
description.

Here is a lithographed circular, for example, for
which the unwitting recipient has had to pay Bd.
to her MAJESTY'S Post-office—the postmark being
ute
person
there, Harburg, near Berlin, Prussia,,, and h
to Whom it is addressed having relations