The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-30 00:00:00

THE 4.R31 r.

The following medical officers, stationed at Fort
Pitt, Chatham, have received orders to embark for
Calcutta—viz.,—Staff Assistant-Surgeon G. Martin,
Staff Assistant-Surgeon J. W. Longhead, Staff
Assistant-Surgeon G. Smith, Staff Assistant-Sur-
geon J. Aessior, Staff Assistant-Surgeon E. Wilks,
and Staff Assistant-Surgeon P. E. Gascoyne.
General improvements are to be effected at St.
Mary's Barracks, Chatham, in order to promote the
comfort of the invalid troops by whom those bar-
racks are almost exclusively occupied. At present
the sick and infirm soldiers, on arriving from India
or Africa, many of them in the last stage of sickness,
and all with debilitated and shattered constitutions,
are sent to St. Mary's Casemate Barracks, where
they remain until they are discharged from the
service. The Parliamentary Commissioners for
inquiring into the state of barracks and hospitals, on
their recent visit to Chatham, made a minute in-
spection of St. Mary's Barracks, when several
obvious improvements were recommended by them,
most of which now are being carried into effect.
The cold damp stone floors are in course of removal,
and boarding will be laid down in all the rooms, or
rather arches which compose the barrack " rooms."
An excellent system of ventilation is also being
applied, which it is expected will much improve
the health of the troops.
Dr. Will:am Cruickshank, Deputy Inspector-
General of Hospitals, died at Simla on on the sth
ult., from the effects of illness brought cn by ex-
cessive fatigue in the zealous discharge of his

professional duties, particularly before and at
Lucknow. He suffered severely in health, but it
was thought repose and change of air would recruit
his health, and that before a few months had
elapsed he would be able to resume the arduous
calls on his professional attention. His death will
be deeply regretted by a wide circle in the army
who had the pleasuie of his friendship and acquain-
tance. He was appointed hospital assistant in
November, 1827, and in November, 1829, obtained
the rank of assistant-surgeon. In October, the
following year lie was appointed junior assistant-
surgeon .to the 79t1t. Highlanders, and after sonic
years' service with that regiment exchanged to the
93d Highlanders, and served with that regiment in
Canada. At. the outbreak of the late war he
accompanied the Eastern army to Turkey. He
served in
.the campaign of 1854-55-in Bulgaria and
the Crimea in medical charge of the Second.
Division of the army, including the battles of the
Alma, Balaklava, and
,IKkermann, the siege of
Sebastopol, and thg,fepulSe of the principal sorties
on the 26th ,of October, 1854. The late Lord
Raglan bore testimony to his ability and exertions
in• his despatch Of the 11th of November,
1854, "as deserving to be most honourably men-
tioned..'' After a brief sojourn in his native .
country he was ordered to Calcutta, to attend on
the Queen's forces in that country. Like many
other distinguished and gallant men he has fallen
a victim to over exertion- and the climate. He ob-
tained the rank of regimental surgeon on the 6th
Jan., 1843, staff-surgeon on the 28th March, 1854,
and Deputy Inspector-General on the Ist Feb.,1855.

.STATE OF PARTIES IN PRUSSIA.

(From a Correspondent of the Times•)

BERLIN, Dec. 27.--To enable ourselves to form a
clear idea of the position of parties towards each
other in Prussia our first object naturally is to
ascertain wluit are the special legislative measures
which each is anxious to promote. Every one
knows, to begin with, the general tendencies of the
party of progress and the party of resistance. They
bear the same character in every country of Europe.
But we wish to know the peculiar shape in which
the same spirit clothes itself in different shapes: In
Prussia, as I have said before, a foreigner finds it
difficult to grasp any substantial measure or pro.
posal beneath the declamatory phraseology of the
Kreutz party. He finds no such difficulty iu ac•
quainting himself with the immediate "aims and
objects of the party of progress in all its various
shades. But on the side of the reaction all is

" wind and blue vapour." He gets phrases in an-
swer to his questions—the " Kingship by. Grace of
God," " Breach with the Revolution," " the Inte-
rests of Religion and Order," and what besides ?
If he insists on looking closer into the.affairs of the
party he finds that their policy is wholly negative.
Their efforts are not for enactment, but for repeal.
They would undo the progress which Prussia has
made during the last half-centuiy. And when the
legislative enactments which have attended that

progress were undoue they imagined that the social
condition of the country would again be what it
was in 1830. Such a party is evidently totally
wanting in statesmanlike views, It has no prac-
tical system of policy. Ali the men of intellect, all
the men of political experience, the practical as
well as the speculative understanding of the coun-
try, are on the other side.
But no party, whatever affinity it may have to
a bubble, can subsist upon wind and nothing else
its interests, as understood by itself,
.must find
expression in some tangible measure or other.
One (at least) such measure of the most solid
proportions does recur again and again in the
speeches and manifestoes of the feudal party both
in and out of the house. The reaction before 1848
and more loudly since, have never ceased to call for
additional restrictions upon the free disposal by
sale, deed, or testament` of landed estate. I have
already mentioned, in my general review,
,of the
legislation of the last eight years, that after a. series
of attacks the feudal party succeeded in striking
out of the Constitution Article 42, which guaran-
teed the general principle of the free disposal of
real estate. This victory of the reaction, however,
has as yet been • a fruitless triumph over the letter
of the Charter. The statutable guarantee of the
absolute rights of the freeholder was indeed torn
out of the code. But the practice, endeared to the
country by the experience of 40 years, had struck
too deep roots to be safely assailed. No positive
legislative restraints on free disposal could be car-
ried, though proposals to that effect were again and
again made. In 1855 the programme of Conserva-
tive polities issued by the Right declared it desir-
able "to restore perpetual entails ; to do away with
freehold estate, and replace the whole of the soil
under the conditions of feudal tenure, endowing it
at the same time with all the privileges formerly
appertaining to the several sorts of fees ; and to
make ' moveables' part of real estate."
Wild as this scheme for a return to the feudal
tenures of the 16th century may appear, it is not
to be supposed that it has no deeper foundation than
a mere childish romanticism—a political enthusiasm
for the Middle Ages, with all their trappings, tour-
naments, ordeals, wager of battle, and witchcraft.
The Right ground their proposals upon very solid
motives of public welfare. They complain of the
breaking up of great estates, the dispersion—to use
their forcible expression—of the soil of Prussia into
particles of dust, the ruin of scientific farming, the
waste of forest, and rise in the price of fuel ; but,
above all, the gradual extinction, of the class
of proprietary yeomen who formerly constituted
so considerable a part of the strength of the
country. The condition of the French pea-
santry, pauperized by the continued subdivision
of the land into smaller and smaller holdings,
is held up as that to which Prussia is
rapidly approximating. All these social evils are
alleged to flow from the stern enactments of 1807-
11, which destroyed feudal tenure, and made land
a marketable commodity.

These allegations arc at least tangible—much
more so than the ordinary declamation of the party.
The interests involved in this question are not
merely Prussian, but are common to all nations.
It may be worth while to give a short summary of
the facts, and to see what is really the result of 40
years' experience in Prussia of free disposal of
landed property. This question, as one of momen-
tous consequence, has been very laboriously sifted
by economists here, and a large mass of evidence
has ,been accumulated. These discussions and evi-
dence have been carefully summed up in a recent
work by President Lette, to which, together with
the " Landeskultur gesetzgebung des Prcuissischen
Staates," by Lette and Vou Ronne, those who wish
for further information are referred.
The ordinances of 1807-11, which removed the
restrictions and the feudal burdens on lauded pro-
perty, left that species of property thenceforward
to the free play of the ordinary laws of commerce
and the natural instincts of parents to provide for
their children. The result has been that the num-
ber of middle proprietors, owning between 20 and
200 acres English, has increased at the expense of
large estates (iCitterguter). But this increase of
middle properties is not progressive, but appears
to have already reached equilibrium. Secondly,
that a number of cottier holdings—i. e., below 20
acres English, has been called into existence ; but
that this also is not a progressive subdivision, but
advances in those provinces where it does advance
in a less ratio than the increase of population.
This is the general result, takine. Prussia as a
whole. The assumed fact on which the complaints
of the feudal party rest is false. Infinite subdivi-
sion is not in progress. There is a law in opera-
tion which checks the tendency to the dispersion
of property and the breaking up of farms below the
extent at which cultivation is profitable. This is
a law of custom, not of enactment. It consists in
that usage traditional not only in the Prussian
provinces, but over a large part of Germany and
Flanders, by which the peasant proprietor, at the
approach of old age, resigns the ownership as
well as the occupancy of his farm to one of his
children. This child takes the estate and stock upon
it at a moderate valuation, usually below its market
price. Upon the footing of this valuation the
father's (and mother's) realty and personalty is
divided among all the children, that child who
takes the farm being charged with the payment of
his (or her) brothers' and sisters' shares, as well as
with a life annuity to the parents. It is customary
to stipulate for this life rent very high, but for the
parents to take less than covenanted for. The divi-
sions between the children may be either equal or
unequal, but the tendency is to equal division.
Where the ready money for paying the portions
of the other children is not supplied by the wife's
dower it is easily raised by mortgage. The excel-
lent and simple system of registration of landed
property established in Prussia makes mortgage
easy. By the system of Pfandbriefe a mortgage
is made a transferable and marketable commodity,
and by the system of Credit-Instituten, it is made
the most secure species of property extant. It will
often happen that these provisions for the other
children are .so charged as to become due by instal-
ments, or as they successively come of age, or on

marriage, &e.., and thus the incoming possessor is
not driven icitake up the money all at once. Still,
mortgages are very general on peasant properties,
but they are rarely or never in Prussia., as in France,
for the purchase money, but are either for working.
capital, or, as now described, tiff the express pur-
pose of keeping the property together. Over-mort-
gaging is rare in the case of peasant properties;
4ot-so in the case of large estates. Where a peasant,
properiv is• too heavily charged the circumstance
may usually be traced to eat ravagant habits in the
oWn6r—hardly- ever to the family compact. Speak-
ing generally, the Prussian small proprietors are a
frugal race, comfortably off; in some districts even
inti7lligent and well-inforined. As a class they show
110 symptvms of disapPearing before the encroach-
ments of either cottiers, on the one hand, or large
landowners on the other; they are, on the coitrary,
more flourishing and Well-to-do than at any ibrmer
period of Prussian history.
This is the general result ; each province has its
own peculiar conditions. On the one hand we have
Pomerania, where large properties are the rule, and
the cottier is hardly. known; At the other end of
the soalestands the Rhine Province, in some parts
of which the parcelling, of the surface has been
carried tons great an extent as in France. Not-
withstanding, when we take the whole area of this
pro Vince (the Rhine) we find that only 10 per cent.
of the whole is in holdings of under four acres
EngliShovhile 35 per cent. is in properties of from
20 -to .200 acres, and 21 per cent, in estates of 400
acres and upwards. In Pomerania, where there are
hardly any cottiers, no less than 62 per cent. of the
total.area of the province is in estates Of 400 acres
and. up*ards,•properties of fivm 20 to '4OO acres
farming 31-pervent. of the slrea. In.: theiirovinee
of Prussia, where cottier owners are also few, the
area is more equally divided
,between the Ritter-
guter and the Banerguter than in any other pro-
vince ; 38 per cent. of its area is in estates of up-
wards of 400 acres English, 49 per cent. in prooer-
ties varying from 20 to 200 acres.
Turning. to the province of Posen, the following
figures of the transfer of land are given by Lette,
which are equally inconsistent with the assertion
that the subdivision of the surface is advancing at
an alarming pace.- Between 18.23 and 1854 as
many as 18 Ritterguter in Posen were broken up
and sold in small parcels. But, on the other hand,
20 new Ritterguter have been created -by consolida-
tion of small 'farms. The area occupied .by large
estates has actually increased, by favour of the law
enacting the divisibility of property, by no less
than 6,000 or 7,000 acres. At the other- extremity
of the kingdom, in the , province of Westphalia, a
comparison of the register book in the year 1837
with 1851 shows that, notwithstanding a good deal
of property changed hands in the interim, the Rit-
terguter were only diminished by two-, so nearly
had disinemberment and consolidation balanced
each other.
I add the following view of the -ratio which the
largest and the smallest properties respectively bear
to the.total area in each province of Prussia :
Estates of more than 400 acres -English consti-
tute in Pomerania 62 per cent: of the total area of
each province, Posen 55, Silesia 50, Brandenburg
46, Prussia 38, Saxony' 27,
,the Rhine 21; West-
phalia 15.*
Crofts of less than three acres English consti-
tute in the Rhine 10 per cent. of the total area of
the province,. -Westphalia 3, Saxony 3.2, Silesia
2.6, Brandenburg 1, Pomerania 0.7, Prussia 0.6,
Posen 0.5.

THE U117.17.1EP 11?ISIDIAN .AND THE

UNITED STATES.

(From the New York Times) •
King Dafid-confesseS that he was not in. a very
good teMper.when.he 'denounced all men as lia'rs ;
and the wisest of monarchs and of men had doubt-

less been driven half mad bysome simpleton of un-
usual severity when he declared- that though you
bray a fool 'in a "mortar,'his folly will.not depart
from him. Yet, if Solomon were living now to be
tormented by the ephemeral nonsense of the, living
age, he might well repeat, with the earnestness of
deliberate conviction, what was conceived at first in
a poetic fervour of disgust. In Mr. John Mitchell
he would find his proverb incarnated. Had the
saying never been uttered, indeed, it might well be
invented for the benefit of the rage,. from data fur-
nished by this incorrigible Irishman's intolerable
absurdity. Mr. John .incorrigible
case is happily of
a kind from which some instruction maybe derived
for those among us who are capable of profiting by
the folly of others, when that folly leads, as it some-
times does, to failure; and it therefore deserves
some attention.

It appears to be a monomania of this man to ima-
gine himself A great destructive force of nature. As
conceived by himself Mr. John Mitchell is and
always has, been a walking volcano, a talking
simomn, a buttoned-up deluge, an earthquake hid-
den in the flesh of man, and capable of eating,
drinking, proposing toasts, editing newspapers, and
undergoing imprisonment. He began his active ex-
perience of life in strict obedience to this halluci•
nation. To all outward seeming a decent young
citizen of Dublin, he felt himself to be a new Attila

—an avatar of vengeance upon the tyrants of his
native land. He resolved to make, the world tremble
and bring the throne of the Guelphs tumbling down
about the ears of Victoria I. For some time his pro-
jects attracted no more notice than the fulminations
which the editor of the Eatanswille Gazette is re

ported, in the veracious pages of " Pickwick," to
have levelled against the brazen front of the Czar
of Russia.- But events at last gave a sudden and
sinister importance to the unrecognised Catiline of
the Hibernian Rome. Distress, misery, destitu-
tion, the most real and the most heartrending,
fell upon Ireland. She was smitten with such cala-
mities and famine and of pestilence as men in
modern times had been more used to read of than
to realize. The year 1847 came upon her terrible,
blasting, opening the hardest hearts to pity, con-
fusing the clearest-brains with the anguish of the
spectacle, that demanded the relief of their counsel.
This was Mr. Mitchell's moment. To drive this deso-
late, maddened, suffering Ireland into still greater
extremities of misery and despair, to heat ten times
hotter the furnace of her trial—to add to all the
troubles of her estate fresh, intenser troubles of the
spirit, and to inflame her from famine into civil
war, was a task congenial to the temper of this ex-
emplary patriot. He set about it.
By his avowal he was at the bottom of conspira-
cies of all sorts and kinds, the sole oltiect and end
of which was to light the flame of intestine war
throughout the Green Island. "I have a stomach,"
he exclaimed, "for all the treasons that man can
commit ;" and he did not fail to satisfy his appe-
tite. le encouraged avert' species of outrage by
which the popular temper could be kept at fever
heat. Murders committed in the dead of night by
armed men—the dragging away of young heiresses
from their homes into compulsory marriages with
rebel leaders not well provided with this world's
goods—baptismal administrations of hot sand and
vitriol lavished upon recreant " patriots" or recu-
sant lovers of the law—all the imaginable and un-
imaginable excesses of malignity, recklessness, and
cruelty, which for months, at that unhappy time,
converted whole counties of Ireland into so many
Aceldamas, were but the natural fruits of an " agi-
tation" whose leaders avowedly shrunk from no
crime in pursuing their purpose.
For all this Mr. John Mitchell had not the paltry
excuse of even technical oppression. He was per-
fectly at liberty to combine any ordinary occupa-
tion of profit, drysaltery, cab-driving or tallow
chandlery, with the most intemperate and exaspe-
rating style of political editing. The grave had
hardly clOsed over the remains of the greatest
agitator whom Ireland had ever seen, and the
" minions" of British tyranny had looked on in
silence while such a precession of mourners as the
world hits rarely witnessed followed O'Connell to
the first resting-place his high and busy heart had
known on earth. Mr. 'John Mitchell might have
fooled to the top of his bent, had he been conten
with bloodless fooling. But this could not be. He
must have pikes and hand-grenades—and so he
came at last to his first braying in the mortar. He
was tried for felony, and by a jury of his own
people found guilty, lamenting aloud, after convic-
tion, that he could not have been allowed to fill the
panel with Roman Catholics, who would have re-
turned a verdict contrary to law, and set him free
again tcOreak the law. The result of this trial
was that exile to the hulks of the Bermudas of
which he has favoured mankind with the literary
fruits, but for which for all its effects upon his own
wits most fully justified King Solomon's excla-
mation.
At last the hands that wielded the pestle grew
weary of so aim!e3s a task. Mr. John Mitchell was
kindly turned over to get what future braying he
might need on Arneiican soil. He soon called upon
us to begin operations. Hardly had he landed in
this much-enduring capital of New York before he
began playing volcano and earthquake, in the hope
of forcing us into a war with England, with
France—with anybody, in short, strong (n ugh t
give us plenty of trouble and Mr. Mitel e I a gocd
wholesome excitement. Of all this nothing came,