The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-19 00:00:00

BOROUGH AND SPITALFIELDS.

These markets are well supplied with foreign potatoes,
and the arrivals of home grown qualities are tolerably ex-
tensive. Fine parcels aro disposed of at full quotations,
but for inferior sorts the demand is inactive. Last week's

THE " EXAMINER" ON TIIE CONDEMNED FENI:ANS
IN CANADA.—TIIe fate of the Fenians under sen-
tence of death in Canada should be decided without
any regard to the construction that may be put on
an act of grace. Men are not to be bung because
sparing their lives might be falsely attributed to fear.
The judgment of the Government should be un-
swayed by the foolish rants and threats in the United
States. But some respect is surely due to the feel-
ings of the American Government. The men might
not have been captured if the American Govern-
ment had not faithfully and vigorously enforced its
laws against piratical enterprises. And this fact
warrants intercession, and entitles it at least to re-
spectful consideration. The inference in the course
of justice in an independent State is not like that of
the King of Prussia, who solicited the reprieve of
the assassin Muller because he was a countryman.
The fact that the blood-stained wretch was a German
gave the King of Prussia no right of appeal against
British justice. The President of the American
Union may fairly claim to intercede for mercy, on
the ground that by the help of his power the pri-
soners had fallen into the hands of their enemies.
But the question of the disposal of these men is not
to be determined by influences, permissible or not,
but by higher considerations. It has become a law
of the land that life should not be taken for any crime
but murder. Frost levied war against the Queen,
land incurred the penalties of treason, but he was
not put to death. Smith O'Brien and his fellow
rebels were transported, though they had put their
necks fairly within the halter. In both these in-
stances it may be said that the folly of the enter-
prises made it impossible to deal with them with
tragical rigour ; but if folly excuses, there is cer-
tainly no lack of it in the Fenian case. The truth
is, however, that the sentiment of the country would
not have endured the enforcement of the extreme
penalty for treason in the instances named. In the
Fenian case the closest analogy is to piracy, but how
long is it since piracy was punished with death ? It
is true that their offence might involve all other
crimes, murder, arson, robbery; but justice deals
with acts, not with contingencies or possible con-
sequences. A man who fires a house is punished for
the arson, but not hung because some one might
have been burnt to death. We have seen it argued
that to show we are not afraid of the Americans, we.
ought to act as if we were in great fear of the
Fenians, and make an example of the captured
offenders. But fear should have nothing to do with
the question, least of all the fear of being thoUght
afraid. Let the criminals suffer suitable punish-
ment for their unprovoked outrage, but not the
penalty reserved exclusively for murder. If they,
had done on our own shores what they had done on
the Canadian frontier they would have been shot
and bayOneted on the field, but when captured theY
would not have been hung by process of law. A long
term of penal servitude would satisfy justice and
keep her on good terms with humanity.
THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON CELESTIAL WASTE
OR WEALTH.—EarIy on Tuesday or Wednesday
morning some 240,000 small bodies called shooting
stars passed the earth in a cluster, penetrating the
upper regions of its atmosphere, and exhibiting the
most brilliant colours—red, white, and blue. There
is no doubt that somewhere between the 11th and
14th November the earth shoots through a ring of
innumerable fragments of planetary matter, many
of which pass so near us that, revolving as they do
round the sun with an average velocity of some 35
miles a second—say 3,600 times more rapidly than
an ordinary express train—through the excessively
rarefied air at a height of from 50 to 70 miles above
the earth, they produee by their sudden con-
densation of that air the light which we call. the
light of shooting stars. The spectacle produced
when these phenornena'are clearly seen and in their
greatest abundance, as they were on Tuesday
night, is like a brilliant display of celestial fireworks.
Humboldt and Bonpland,. who were at Cumana (in
Venezuela, South America) on the 12th November
in the last year of the last century (1799), tell us
that between two and five in the morning the sky
was covered with innumerable luminous trains
which incessantly traversed the sky from north to
south, presenting the appearance of fireworks let
off at an enormous height,—large meteors, having
sometimes an apparent diameter of one and a half
times that of the moon, blending their trains with
the long luminous and phosphorescent paths of the
shooting stars. The same splendid spectacle was
witnessed in Brazil, Labrador, Greenland parts of
Germany, and French Guiana.* Mr. Newton, an
American astronomer, believes, after careful obser-
vation and calculations, there are some seven millions
and a half of these snfall bodies which traverse the at-
mosphere daily, and which would be visible on a clear
night to an observer somewhere or other on the
surface of the naked eye alone ; nay, that if all the
meteors which could be seen in one clear, dark night,
supposing the globe of the earth.were a single living
retina, and were aided by a powerful telescope ap-
plied all round it, were numbered, they could not
be fewer than 400,000,000. The 240,000 or so
which we see in such splendid masses somewhere
near the 13th of November are but a single, closely
concentrated group, apparently belonging to the
same fragment of planet. It is calculated that within
the space occupied by the earth with its atmosphere
there are always at any single moment some 13,000
small bodies called shooting stars, which would be
under favourable circumstances visible to the naked
eye, and at least- forty times as many visible—to
telescopic aservei's under the same circumstances.
And all these, it must be remembered, touch 'the
margin: of the terrestriaratmosplaere, for it is by the
collision with it that the light is emitted. They are
far too near the earth to catch the light of the sun
during our night. Not a few such planetary frag-
ments may, it is believed, have been attracted out
of their own solar orbits into the earth's sphere of
attraction, and become permanent satellites attend-
ing upon us, though too small and too near for
ordinary observation. M. Guihemin tells us in his
book on " The Heavens" that a French astronomer,
M. Petit, of Toulouse, assigns to one such body a
period of revolution round the earth of three hours.
and twenty minutes at a distance of 5,000 miles.
So that, if he is right, we have a little satellite
at a distance of not much above a single radius
of the earth—not so far from its surface as Cal-
cutta is from London—which whirls round us
in less than a sixth part of our own day. And if he
is right in this case, the chances are that there are
many more such minute specks whirling round our
heads at greater or less distances. The magnitudes
of these most diminutive of all known planets—the
existence of which we for the most part should not
suspect but for their flashing fire when they meet
our atmosphere—are exceedingly trifling. Mr.
Herschel believes most shooting stars to weigh no
more than two ounces ; and the largest calculated
meteor is said to weigh about two hundredweight.
What strikes us most in considering these minute
astronomical phenomenon is the enormous amount
of apparently waste planetary matter lavis.n. ehed,
Now,
upon space by the divine. plan. there
was a time, and that npt very long ago, when
it was thought almost irreligious to talk
of waste material in the universe at all.
The moon, which is, of course, vastly bigger than
all the enormous number of terrestrial meteors put
together, is, as almost all astronomers now believe,
a great cinder, where no life i s ; but then the moon
is considered as answering the clearpurpose of light-
ing up the terrestrial night for half the year or so,
so that even though not subservient to any lunar
life of its own, it is fitted with a purpose which pre-

vents its being classed as waste material. But it
will scarcely be supposed that the meteors which in
such enormous numbers penetrate our atmosphere,
and are so seldom seen, being too scattered in space
and: time indeed to attract much notice except at
one or twoiremarkable periods, exist only for the sake
of the celestial fireworks which are now and then
visible on a moonless August. and November night.
They are really to the astronomical.univeree what
the mites which dance in the sunbeam are to a single
ray of light,—for the most part unobserved and
unobservable. If they are not to be called waste
astronomical material, it is only because there is
nothing waste in the universe at all. But at all
events they are to the organised matter of worlds
like ours what the sparks of Metal which a smith
strikes out of the red-hot iron on his anvi', an. 3 which
fly off to mingle again with the crust of the earth,
are to the moulded iron which enters into the ma-
chinery of civilisation, and is used to plough that
crust so as to render it infinitely moce produc-
tive and fuller of vital stimulus to human
pOwer. " Waste," may be,- no doubt, as
we were all taught- in childhood, a false and profane
idea. Still it has a meaning. Though nothing be
absolutely wasted, that which- is mere potentiality
is waste as compared with that which is in full use.
The desert is waste comparod with land which bears
much fruit. The undiscovered mine is Waste power
compared with the worked and discovered mine.
The saa was waste while no one knew how to sail
on it, as compared with the same sea when it became
the pathway of nations. And in this sense, at
least, the scattered billions of ounces of meteoric
matter which make occasional shows of fireworks
in autumn nights, are waste compared with the
same matter organised into worlds capable of sus-
taining such- life as that of our earth.

RE OPENING THE ALABAMA QUESTION.
For example, they will be quite 'justified, in our
opinion, if they re-open the question of the Ala-
bama with the present Government; and the pre-
sent Government will do both a graceful and an
equitable thing if they prevent that move on the
part of the American Government, and themselves
take the initiative in it. Lord Stanley is not bound
by the acts of bird Clarendon -and Lord Russell
in a matter like this. A treaty contracted by either
of these noblemen he would, of course, hold sacred
but a negotiation about a matter of moral right`or
wrong between the two nations may, with perfect
propriety, be opened and re-opened till it shall be
settled to the satisfaction of both parties. Let us
not, however, be misunderstood. We are not
charging either Lord Russell or Lord Clarendon
with conduct unjust in itself or contradictory to the
letter of the law. According to the letter of
the law they were right ; and looking to the
way in which the United ,States behaved, under
cir-
cumstances still more vexatious, to. the Portuguese,
Lord Russell was justified in quoting American
acts against American argument. But the heat of
that controversy is over, and now that both parties
are able and willing to look rather to the future
than to the past, an excellent opportunity is afforded
us of doing the right thing in such a way as shall
add to, not detract from, the dignity of our posi-
tion. Admitting the fact that the Alabama got to
sea solely through the inopportune illness of the
Queen's Advocate, we are scarcely justified in de-
clining to refer the matter in dispute between our
Government and that of the United States to be
impartial arbitration. By all means let a commis-
sion investigate and report ; but a final reference
to the only court capable of deciding between the
high litigant parties would on our part be an act of
grace, by which we should gain in prestige infinitely
more than we might lose in hard cash, or other
material compensation, the award going against us.
--Blackwood's Magazine for .Norember.

Central Criminal Court —This Day.

OLD COURT.

The November sessions of the Central Criminal Court
commenced this morning before the Lord Mayor, the Re-
corder, and Sheriffs.