The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PMIL re 3101TEXALS.

s s
It was lately 'stated by Mr. trathorhe Hardy that abikit
a thousand memorials are yearly received by the Home
Office in regard to sentences of capital punishment and'
penal servitude. This fact, which, if alleged on less con-
clusive authority, the Times might have hesitated to be-
lieve, throws a flood of light on the uncertain operation of
our criminal law. Though it may have been a cogent
answer to Mr. Newdegate's motion for a half-yearly pub-
lication of all these memorials with the correspondence
upon them, it constitutes a very strong presumption
against the present latitude of the Home Secretary's quasi-
appellate jurisdiction. It is hardly too much to :ay that
every single memorial of this nature represents a sen-
sible deduction from the deterrent effects of punishment.
It is possible that periodical returns from the Home Office
of the sentences actually commuted would contribute to
check indiscriminate commutation. We greatly doubt,
however, whether it would be practicable or desirable to
assign the reasons which influenced the Minister in each
instance, so as to give the House of Commons the means
of reviewing them. There is something to be said for
a regular Court of Criminal Appeal, and something, too,
for an indefinite responsibility such as is now vested
in the Home Secretary, but there is nothing to be said
for transferring that responsibility to the Legislature.
On the other hand, the Legislature is bound to watch
every department of Government, and there is no depart-
ment which more urgently requires its supervision than
criminal procedure. For example, the want of any
approach to uniformity in sentences must tend, like
the hope of remission from the Home Secretary, to defeat
the objects of a penal code. It is not uncommon for two
men to be condemned on the same circuit for crimes pre-
cisely similar, the one to a few months' imprisonment,
s.he other to several years' penal servitude. One judge
or chairman of quarter sessions visits first offences with
great severity to deter the prisoner from repeating them ;
another treats first offences lightly, but invariably inflicts
penal servitude on a second conviction for any felony.
The want of unity in our police system and prison
management greatly aggravates the effect of the want of
uniformity in sentences. If a man is convicted one year
in one county, and another year in another, it is by no
means certain that his former convictions will be brought
up against him, and hardened offenders seldom out of
gaol are sometimes admonished from the Bench against
the danger of entering upon a career of crime. In
short, our criminal law, however far from scientific per-
fection, needs reform less than its administrative ma-
chinery, and the subject discussed on Tuesday is but a
part of a larger question which cannot be postponed much
longer.

The Daily News looks upon M. Rouher's speech in the
French Chambers as the death-blow to the Conference.
He has also, it adds, torn up and scattered to the winds
the last shreds of the alliance between France and Italy.
His admirable eloquence will be cordially appreciated at
Berlin. We should not be surprised to hear that Ceunt
Bismarck had sent him congratulations through the
Prussian Minister in Paris. On the other hand, we are
not quite sure that the Emperor Napoleon, comparing the
eloquence of M. Rouher with the more modest and hesi-
tating utterances of M. de Moustier, may not doubt whether
the department of Foreign Affairs, involving so many
delicate considerations and susceptibilities, is most fitly
represented in the tribune by a rhetorician or by a respon-
sible Minister, though the rhetorician is vociferously
acclaimed and the Minister is listened to in silence. We
trust the Italians will have the good sense to feel neither
discouragement nor indignation at M. Rouher's oratorical
efforts. Indeed, their shrewd political instinct will be
sadly at fault if they do not in their hearts thank him.
There is nothing, after all, in his most emphatic statements
which can prevent time and chance being her best allies.
Patience will work greater wonders than the Chassepot.
The Standard writes a chaffing leader at the expense of
Lord Russsll and Mr. Layard, on the question of King
Theodore's long unanswered letter. Neither the peer nor
the commoner took any trouble about it. The whole
treatment of this most expensive document, indeed, is but
another and a most egregious specimen of "meddle and
muddle." It was tossed about from department to depart-
ment in what we suppose is the usual light and airy
manner of conducting the public business. It was docketed
and minuted by a great many persons, and then pitched
into a corner and forgotten. From Mr. Hammond it
seems to have been thrown to Mr. Layard, and from Mr.
Layard to Lord Russell. Then, somebody having dis-
covered that it was properly in the Indian Department
(the credit of this brilliant achievement seems to be claimed
by Mr. Layard himself), it came somehow into the hands
of Mr. Kaye, who probably duly had the honour to receive
the document, and there it remained. For nearly three
years it lay about in Mr. Kaye's desk—that enterprising
official having, as it is gravely pleaded, no pigeon-holes.
Probably all this time the letter had been a standing joke
in the department. Abyssinia was a long way off, and
Theodore, if he was believed in at all, was perhaps invested
with that comic character with attaches to the ordinary
Ethiopian melodist. The wonder is that the letter should
have survived at all the extraordinary treatment to which
it was subjected—that out of the pigeon-holes it should rise
up at last to confute Mr. Layard's most positive assertions
and to bear evidence against Lord Russell.
The Saturday Review, in dealing with the President's
Message, warns us that under present circumstances such
a document affords no indication of the policy which is to
be adopted by the United States. As to the idea of an
impeachment, it would be useless if it were not preceded
by an act for suspending the President from office during
the trial. Unless two-thirds of both Houses are ready to
vote for such an innovation, the veto of the President will
be fatal to the measure. And unless the impeachment
is rapidly proceeded with it must be inoperative, for the
President's term of office expires in twelve months from
this time. The demeanour of the different parties in
Congress will be watched with more anxious curiosity.
In a few days it will be seen whether the Republican
majority has learned any practical lesson from the recent,
elections. It is well known that the leaders of the ex-
treme party are determined to persevere in the violent
course which has within a few years almost destroyed
their great majority ; but the bulk of their followers may
perhaps prefer to swim with the stream, although it is
now flowing in a reverse direction. A very small seces-
sion would restore to the President the control over
legislation which was habitually exercised by his pre-
decessors ; and a patient and adroit statesman in his
place would cheerfully await the self-inflicted defeat of
his enemies. Mr. Johnson, however, is one of the least
judicious of politicians, and his patience will pro.
bably be soon exposed to a severe trial ; for it ap
pears that the Judiciary Committee will report in favour
of impeachment, and that the Republican leaders will
attempt the prosecution, If the President can keep
his temper he has little to fear from the imprudent
hostility of Congress, for it is doubtful whether
the House of Representatives will vote the impeach.
ment, and nothing can be easier than to protract
the proceedings until his term of office is completed.
The charges against Mr. Johnson are either frivolous or
insincere. If he has deserved impeachment, his guilty
acts are not those which have brought him into collision
with Congress. At the beginning of his Presidential term
he perhaps usurped the prerogative of deciding the condi-
tions on which the conquered States should be readmitted
to the Union. It might possibly be the duty of the Presi-
dent to declare that the termination of the war involved
the restoration of all constitutional rights ; but, in re.
quiring the States of the Confederacy to abolish slavery,
Mr. Johnson assumed powers above the law and the Con-
stitution. In his defence it may be fairly urged that Mr.
Lincoln was prepared to adopt a precisely similar policy,
with the full assent of the people and of Congress itself ;
and notwithstanding his alleged encroachments, Mr.
Johnson retained his popularity until the Republicans dis-
covered that he was recurring to his former Democratic
associations. If the Judiciary Committee has succeeded
in discovering administrative irregularities, or even acts of
corruption, it will still be unwise to prosecute a great dig-
nitary for vulgar malversation which he might have perpe-
trated with absolute impunity but for the political animo-
sities which he has provoked. The proper security against
Presidential corruption would be the election of gentlemen
and men of honour to the highest post in the Republic. It
is extravagantly unjust to reproach a President, elected
because he had been a working tailor, with a deficiency of
the artificial refinement and delicacy which are cultivated
under other circumstances and conditions.

The " Parliamentary Collapse " is the heading of
an article in the Spectator, which deals with the
autumn session and its results. Our ably contem-
porary did not anticipate very much from it, but
certainlydid expect that Parliament would have expressed
with force and clearness the expectations of the country
with respect to the measures which the Government should
introduce in February. But the spirit of both Houses
has been more than passive ; it has shewn positive help_
1ec311C8.3.
Ireland, India, Italy, alike have been passed
over. But worst of all has been the demeanour of the
Lords and the indifference of the Commons on the subject
of Education. It is well known that the Ministry are to
introduce a bill on this subject, and now, if ever, was the
time to modify its provisions. Mr. Disraeli had already
intimated, and the Duke of Marlborough, in his poverty-
stricken speech of Monday, again stated, that the present
intention of the Government does not go beyond a cautious
extension of the present denominational system—in other
words, has nothing large about it, and will do no good in
those poor, ignorant, and populous districts where educa-
tion is most needed, because there is no one to set it on
foot. We are greatly mistaken if the national opinion has
not far ou.t.s4iPPell the thin and meagre designs of
gojejNatigt....24-2124 Jailtyth goofs ions
of

conversion to a laige eduCational
policy. The voluntary sect has given up its wretched
crotchet in deference to the clear expression of the nation's
will, and Radicals and Conservatives have alike expressed
their anxiety to see that kind of intelligence developed in
the working classes of this country which has been seen
to give such extraordinary elasticity to the power of the
United States and Prussia in the moment of trial. Yet
in the face of all this the Duke of Marlborough almost
limits his concessions to the magnificent suggestion that
the Government may probably be induced to help schools
without insisting on certificated schoolmasters, and the
House of Lords drops the subject, while the House of
Commons never takes it up ! The debate of Monday in
the House of Lords is the greatest proof of the inability of
the Peers to enter heartily into the political anxieties of
the country and lead its counsels which we have yet seen.
Grant that Lord Russell's motion may have looked like a
party bid ; still, it should have been vigorously used with
any needful disclaimer of party purpose, to prompt and
spur a reluctant Government out of its stupid lethargy. A
hearty stimulus applied to its zeal now, before the detail of
its plan I ,ad been settled, would have been worth many times
the value of any criticism applied in February or March. Yet
Parliament is now adjourned to the middle of February
without a hint from either House of Parliament that the
nation will not be satisfied with the contemptible modicum
of concession announced by the feeblest Minister in the
Cabinet on the greatest English question of the day. The
Duke of Marlborough said 1 e was quite incompetent to
cope with so great a question as the appointment of a
Minister of Education, and we agree with him, and argue
a fortiori that he is still more utterly incompetent to cope
with the far greater question of what such a nister
ought to do. No " certificated schoolmaster" could have
been found to make a much narrower, more piggish,
imbecile speech on this great matter than the nuble duke.
If the duke had himself been trained in that period when
children are said to have owed their education wholly to
Sunday schools, he could not have excelled the feeblen:iss
of his Monday's deliverance. And the House of Lords
allowed that and Lord Russell's vague speech to gs
forth to the country as all that they cared to say in view
of the proposed Tory policy on educational reform! On
every subject, then, on which an early and emphatic
expression of the nation's wish might have been expected
to influence the coming session, and not only the coming
session but the ripening of national thought, this autumn
sitting of Parliament has been a complete failure. It has
been indifferent, lifeless, apathetic—in a word,prococurante.
It would seem that the Commons, in view of their doom,
are too selfish to think of anything but their " notice to
quit," and that the Lords, being hopeless of directing the
mind of the nation, are almost magnetised into imbecility.
No more pallid, faded ghost of what a Parliament should
be ever met at a crisis thick with the most weighty living
interests than the one which has just adjourned. It is
the only prognostic we have seen at all confirmatory of
Mr. Carlyle's dismal forebodings of a period when vivid
political life shall cease, and " gibbering phantoms" shall
idly chatter where statesmen once held the reins. It may
be, we trust it is, a false prognostic. But no one can say
that the autumn session has not been a miserable display
of languor and apathy, where we expected energy and
life.

The appointment of Dr. Selwyn to the bishopric of
Lichfield gives the John Bull unmitigated satisfaction. It
points out that to this day the statute-book is encumbered
with restrictions on the exerciseof Ministerial functions hi
England by Scotch and colonial clergy, and not only have
no colonial bishops ever been translated to English sees,
but their employment as suffragans, or quasi-suffragans,
has always been eyed with disfavour by politicians
and by a large section of Churchmen. The transla-
tion of Bishop Selwyn will be a heavy blow and
discouragement to these proclivities. From another
point of view, it may also be regarded with satis-
faction. The weakening of the Catholic idea
of the Church of England by the distinction madr
between that part which is established at home, and thy
non-established dioceses in our colonies, to the prejudice
of the latter, is not the only danger. The unhappy
schism in the province of South Africa has led to a ten-
dency, in the minds of many Churchmen, to regard the
colonial dioceses, not as identical in character, and essen
tinily united, with the dioceses in the home provinces,
but as something higher—branches of an independent
State-free Church, linked to the Church of England not
much more, if at all, than is the Episcopal Church in
the United States. Naturally, this view has found
most favour in the North American Provinces ; least
favour in Australia, mainly peopled as she is by
emigrants, whose only idea of the Church is that in
which they were brought up at home. Between these
extremes have always stood the bishops and people
of New Zealand. They, like the Australians, are for the
most part emigrants ; but they arc also almost all, in the
popular sense of the words, High Churchmen; and while
they probably share to some extent the feelings of their
Australian neighbours, in opposition to the separatist
tendencies of Mr. Cardwell's recent bill, their objec-
tions will be based on very different grounds from those
put forward by the Metropolitan at Sydney, or by the
Bishop of Melbourne. Happy is it, therefore, for our
Church, that, in the new Bishop of Lichfield we have a
colonist of all others the most capable to promote a satis-
factory settlement of the Colonial Church difficulty. The
value of Bishop Selwyn's counsel in Parliament on all
questions affecting New Zealand policy cannot be over-
rated, as well as on Colonial Church policy generally. Nor
can we doubt that his work in the Black Country will h
as successful as it has been in the Pacific.

LAW AND POLICE.

---~--

TRANSFER OF SHARES.—The Lord unancellci 'nes has
before him the case of Hawkins v. Maltby. It was an
appeal from the decree of Vice-Chancellor Wood, who had
dismissed the bill of the plaintiff, which he had presented
under the following circumstances. It is the custom on the
Stock Exchange for shares to be sold several times, passing
through several hands, before the transfer is registered. The
deed is then executed as from the original holders to the
last buyer. In this case the plaintiff was the original
holder of shares in the Imperial Credit Company, and
after the shares had changed hands several times they
came to the defendant on the 28th of March. In the
meantime—on the 26th—a call of £5 was made on tho
shares, and on the 31st of May another call was made.
Notices of each of these calls were given to the defen-
dant, but they were disregarded ; and when the com-
pany was wound up the plaintiff paid the calls.
The transfer had never been registered, and the plaintiff
prayed that the defendant might be compelled to register
it, to perform the agreement, to repay the plaintiff all
past calls, &c. The Vice-Chancellor decided for the
defendant, on the ground that when he bought he did not
know of the call. The Lord Chancellor now affirmed that
decree on another ground—that there was no proof of the
contract of which specific performance was asked.

SPORTING CASE.—The case of Southby v. Smith was
an action to recover £25 deposited with the defendant as
stakeholder for a certain foot-race. Plaintiff was to have
run a race with one Rice, but a dispute ensued, and each
party ran over the course. The jury now found that
no race had been run, and returned a verdict for
plaintiff ; damages, £25.
ROBBERY OF A DIAMOND CROSS.—At the Middlesex
Sessions, yesterday, a railway porter at the Victoria
Station of the London and Brighton Railway was charged
with stealing a valuable diamond cross. The prosecutor
had a portmanteau, which was given half an hour before
the train started to prisoner to label and put into the van.
The next day prosecutor's wife, on opening the portman-
teau, discovered that a diamond cross which she had put
there was missing. Eventually it was found to have been
pawned by a woman who it was alleged was prisoner's
wife. This point, however, was not satisfactorily esta-
blished, and the jury acquitted the prisoner.

STRANGE ACTION AGAINST A BANK.—An action against
the City Bank, which occupied the Court of Queen's
Bench during two days, was brought by one Ruddy to
recover £3OO on a deposit receipt. The plaintiff made a
deposit four years ago which collectively amounted to £99,
as shewn on the credit slip, but a receipt was given to him
for £399, and he declared that that was the amount he
deposited. The bank denied having received more than
£99. which they paid into court, and the suggestion was
that the plaintiff, having discovered that a mistake had
been made, resolved to turn it to his own advantage. The
jury found a verdict for the bank without leaving the box.

THE CHAMPIONSHIP. ,TOE Goss AN)? JOE
WORMALD. - The match between these men for the
champion's belt and £2OO a side has resulted in nothing as
regards the trophy, but they, however, have staked £lO a
side and drawn up articles to fight the first Tuesday in
March (March 3) for £lOO a side, at catch weight, in the
London district, and the next deposit of £5 a side falls due
on or before Friday next.—Bell's Life.

AN INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIA-
TION. —At a meeting of the Birmingham Trades Council a
report was brought up which explained the working of
the International Working Men's Association. The
objects as therein defined were briefly as follows :—The
fraternal union of working men of different countries, to
defeat the object of unscrupulous capitalists, who threaten
to import the foreign workman when any attempt is made
to improve the condition of the English one ; the develop-
ment of co-operation in the education of the people ; a
reduction in the hours of labour, &c. The association is
to be governed by an annual congress, the first to be held
in London. To this congress the representatives of
different countries will be sent. The report recommended
the association to the Trades Council, and, after some slis-
_
Vis§ion, it WM M._loPtetil

THE IRISH MONOMANIA.

Last Saturday the Dublin Nation, Irishman, and
Weekly News, bordered with black, came out with
articles appealing to the passions of the Irish on the
execution of the patriots at Manchester. Of these
the most characteristic and forcible was the Nation's
" Gone with a Vengeance." In it, with consider-
able literary ability, free expression is given to a
hatred and malice carried to the verge of fanati-
cism. The English Government is denounced as
framing and executing laws in aid of a detestable
tyranny ; the people as hypocrites and liars ;
the press as a disgrace to a Christian land, and
all, including Judge and Jury, described as
alike reeking and hissing with a fiery spirit of
revenge. The glaring contradiction given to its
diatribe by the impunity of its circulation will strike
others—though perhaps not the writer. The spirit
manifested, more concerns the English than such
insane denunciations, which those who have inquired
dispassionately know to be untrue. Recognising
the animus, the real subject is to ascertain the cause,
and, if possible, the remedy. If ever a strong in-
stance has been given of the sins of the fathers
being visited on the children, it is supplied in this
case. CROMWELL and WILLIAM 111. were great
statesmen, yet they made the most fearful and
irreparable blunders ever committed by English
rulers. The injuries they were mainly instrumental
in inflicting on Great Britain by the course taken
towards Ireland is the root of the present evil. That
they represented the policy of the period, to crush
out of existence the Celtic race, makes the nation
an accomplice in the crime, and is a reason why the
retribution should be borne p itiently. In those
days of wholesale spoliation, when the appeal of the
Irish proprietor was answered by the brutal excla-
mation—" To h-11 or Connaught," the seeds of the
bitter fruit were sown. Contemplating that period
we are constrained to admit that great as is the
punishment it is not undeserved. The life of a
nation extends over centuries—of an individual over
decades, and both reap what they sow ; but it
is the misfortune of national crimes that the in-
heritance of woe descends to far-off generations.
When the bleak hill-sides and bare rocks of
mist-covered Connaught were thronged with the
dispossessed fugitives—when the exiles were crowded
in Cork, bidding an eternal farewell to their native
land—it is strange that no statesman foresaw the
fatal effects of a policy so cruel and injudicious.
En every nation of Europe, Irishmen rose to fame ;
and in every council where an Irishman sat, there
was a bitter enemy of England. The Jacobite
plots derived vitality from his undying aniniosity,
and beneath every standard borne against the
English the foremost soldier was a Celt. Great,
however, as has been the injury thus inflicted on
British interests in the Old World, it is trifling com-
pared with that wrought iu the New. The perse-
cuted and persecuting Puritan who founded the
New England Settlements has been swamped by
the people who owe to their fierce animosity the
worst measures of legislation which have alienated
the race. In proportion to the growth of the United
States in populatian, the numbers of those increased
whose strongest sentiment was a hatred to every-
thing English, handed down as an heir-loom from
father to son till it passed into the hearts of genera-
tions who knew Ireland but as a name, and its his-
tory but as the tale of a distant country. So it
came to pass that men enjoying an unequalled ma-
terial prosperity —with an unbounded liberty—have
cherished as an inheritance this passion, and sacri-
ficed much to gratify an animosity against those
of whom they know nothing except what books
and tradition have told them. And thus, too,
it happened that a party grew in the United
States resisting external influences, till they
became in the nation but not of it, having objects
and aspirations not American, but Irish. To them
the strength of the Great Republic was a matter of
hope and of anticipation,, for they saw in it not the
elevation of their adopted country, but the degrada-
tion of that they so detested. Ireland's miseries
inspired the muse of their poets, the pen of their
historians, the imagination of their novelists, till the
talc circulated over the world, and shuddering genera-
tions had listened to the great crime which demanded
so great a retribution. Wherever England has stood
forth as the champion of nationality, a-A the protec-
tor of the oppressed, Ireland has been flung in her
teeth. Everywhere the Irishman has settled—
everywhere advanced, but, alike in prosperity or
adversity, he has cherished this hatred even as his
faith ; and there are those who allege that it has
furnished the chief reason for the tenacity with which
he has clung to his belief. A nation can no more
afford to have a deadly enemy than an individual ;
and it is England's greatest misfortune to have thus
imbued a foe who have more spread themselves over
the world than any family of the human race. Re-
cognising the danger, anxious to remedy the past
misgovernment, desirous earnestly to conciliate, what
course is England to pursue? Reforms are scouted,
forbearance misconstrued, appeals to reason met
by fierce invective and declamation. In vain Eng-
land points to equal laws and taxation, equ d repro
sentation, and a full and patient hearing for any
grievance. Every profession and branch of industry
she asserts is alike open to all ; and more than a fair
share of the places the country has to bestow, falls to
the Irish. The question is met by fiery and seditious
appeals to the prejudices of the populace. The
orator deals freely with the past or with the future
—with anything but the present. Reference is made
to the days when Ireland was the school of Europe,
and the people the most enlightened in the world.
This fable is used to point the contrast when the
hated Saxon appeared on the scene, and the ruin
began. In vain they are recalled to the practical
questions of the day, the present is vaulted over,
and in the mind's eye the sun of liberty is seen
dawning on the Emertild Isle, shining on an Irish
Parliamentlegislating for an Irish Republic on Irish
soil.

It is time that this injurious agitation should
cease—in the interest of the human race. England
once persecuted Ireland, and Ireland has retaliated
by a bitter persecution of England. Allowing that
the latter does not as yet equal the former, let
Ireland compound for the balance, and bring in a
bill of grievances. It is worth England's while by
any measures of concession short of the disruption
of the United Kingdom to attain this end. Instead
of shooting policemen, murdering informers, orga-
nising invasion, conspiring for rebellion, and keep-
ing the country in a perpetual turmoil, let both
parties take stock of the matters in dispute and square
accounts. If Penians refuse when invited, openly
to come forward to discuss practical measures they
assume this position :—They say to the Saxon,
"Your forefathers have cruelly injured mine; the
only remedy we will accept is to work on you, their
descendants, the same ruin. If not benefiting our-
selves, we injure,you, and this is more agreeable.
Though unable to raise a successful revolt, we
can keep discontent alive until the accident happens
by which we hope to precipitate the United states
into a war with you. The world will be set in a
blaze, and both nations vitally injured, but we
will gain our object." In former days the Irish en-
deavoured to use France as they now desire to use
the United States. It may not be gratifying to the
great Republic to be regarded by a section of its own
citizens as a mere tool for Irish vengeance, but this
is the true issue of the agitation, and' unlesS the
United States discountenances the insane movement,
the nation can scarcely refrain from booming in-
volved in war. The errors of a former age may
thus be repeated in this, and fresh crops of bitter-
ness be again swu broadcast to be reaped by coating
generations. The persecution to which Ireland is
subj,,cting England is producing a result which may
hereafter lea Ito great trouble an I suffering. No
people can patiently endure for ever, their laws
violated, their motives misconstrued, their character
slandered, their territory invaded, and the vengeance
of another people threatened. The insane hatred
will generate in those against whom it is directed
as intense a dislike. If the wee of races begins, the
weakest will most suffer ; and, even in Ireland, if
those born on the soil were left to fight nut the
question of the English connection, it would
be found that the advocates of an Irish Re-
public had not even the strength to carry their
own island against their opposing countrymen,
without Englishmen moving baud or foot. If the
Irish agitators would but come down from their