The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-18 00:00:00

British Home for Incurables.

The fifth annual general meeting of the governors
and members of this society was held in the London
Tavern yesterday. Mr. Charles Hood, in the
absence of Viscount Holmesdale, the chairman, pre-
sided. There was a numerous attendance, consist-
ing principally of ladies. Mr. E. Weaver, the secre-
tary, read the report, from which it appeared that,
since the British Home for Incurables was first
established, 93 patients had been elected to the
benefits of the charity. Of these 40 have been
elected inmates of the home, and 53 have been elected
to the out pension. Some few have also been ad-
mitted on payment, and there are at present residing
in the home 85 patients. Although nearly every
form of suffering existed in the institution the general
cheerfulness of the inmates and the almost universal
appearance of comfort and happiness which prevailed
were features which struck every visitor. The board
had the pleasure to announce that they had lately
received a second liberal donation from the Princess
of Wales, the patroness of the institution. The
friends of the British Home would be glad to learn
that the Marquis Townshend had presented the
magnificent sum of £l,OOO to found a perpetual
maintenance for one in-patient, in memory of his
lordship's father, the late Marquis Townshend, the
first president of the institution. This amount, as
well as a similar endowment from another kind bene-
factor mentioned in the last report, had been invested.
The account of receipts and expenditure from Ist
April, 1865, to 31st March, 1866, showed that the
annual subscriptions and donations in that period
amounted
,to £6,959 4s. 7d. ; that the sum of
£3,570 had been invested in approved securities ;
and that the balance in the hands of the treasurers
amounted to £438 19s. 10d. The total amount
now invested is £13,286 3s. 4d. The chairman, in
addressing the meeting, said the home was rapidly
filling up, and he believed that in two years
it would be quite full. It was therefore necessary
that they should take into consideration the advi-
sability of providing additional accommodation by
erecting a new home. For this purpose increased
support was requested from the friends of the insti-
tution, and, believing that a visit to the home would
be the best means of interesting them in the matter,
the directors had resolved to invite the subscribers
to a reunion to be held in the institution next
month. He concluded by moving the adoption of
the report, which was agreed to. Office-bearers
were elected for the ensuing year, and eight indoor
and an equal number of outdoor patients were
elected. This terminated the proceedings.

CIRCASSIAN BR tGANDAGE IN THE

DOBRUDJA.

Anx,t, May 4.
A cowardly and murderous attack was recently made by
a party of Circassian settlers on one of the sub contractors
for the Varna and Rustchuk Railway. The victim, Mr.
Martin, was returning from England, via the Danube, in
company with another sub-contractor, named Fathers, and
whilst crossing the country from Rustchuk in a country
araba the party was attacked about three hours on the
Varna side of Rasgrad, and shortly after leaving the main
road, by a party of eight Circassians, who had been lying
in wait near the junction, for the purpose of pillaging any
unwary travellers who might fall into their hands. It was
about 9 p.m. on a bright moonlight night, and at about
two miles from their destination, that the mon were
stopped. At that time Martin was on foot, about 100
yards iu front, looking for the track. Fathers remaining
inside the araba, which was driven by a Turkish driver
from Rasgrad. At first the Circassians kept at a respectful
distance, and, contented themselves with demanding money,
until, finding that nu firearms were presented; they took
courage, and commenced plundering the araba, dragging
the contents out into the road, to which Fathers from
within offered all the resistance in his power by striking
and kicking those who came within reach.

Whilst thus engaged the robbers were disturbed by Mar-
tin, who, on hearing the row behind him, turned back,
and rushing towards the araba called loudly on them to
desist, whereupon they quitted the araba and rushed upon
him in a body, the leader firing a pistol without effect as
he approached. Martin turned to fly, but was immediately
overtaken and cut down by a blow from a sword, which
severed one ear and inflicted a frightful gash on his head.
Despite this, being a man of great muscular power, he re-
gained his feet, and was happily able to ward off with his
left arm a second blow aimed at his head ; as it was, the
elbow was cut off, and this was immediately followed up
by a sweeping blow under the arm, penetrating through
the muscles, and completely laying the chest open. Mean-
while the araba driver, taking advantage of the diversion,
turned his horses short round, and flogging them into a
gallop escaped down the hill in the direction of the nearest
village, where he and Fathers took refuge, and whence
they obtained assistance and protection in the search which
they subsequently made for Martin.
The Circassians, thus left alone with Martin—whom
they believed to be dead, and who did all in his power to
favour that belief—proceeded to cut out his pockets and
rifle him, and collect the goods strewn in the path ;
having done which they took themselves off, after their
leader had bidden one of the gang to desist from trying
to pull off their victim's lace-up boots. On their depar-
ture, fearing lest they should return, and, finding him
alive, complete their work, Martin succeeded in crawling
to a considerable distance from the spot, until, overcome
by loss of blood, ho became insensible, and in this state he
was found next morning.
Information of the outrage having been communicated
by the vice-consuls to the Governor-General at Rustchuk,
and the Governors of Varna and Schumla, every effort
was at once made to discover and arrest the offenders.
The suspicions of the inhabitants of the village,
Yeni-keui, in which Martin lived, pointed to the in-
habitants of a Circassian hamlet about three miles off, whose
predatory habits had already inflicted serious losses on the
neighbourhood. On this hint the zapties acted ; and having
first interrogated the chief, add received an earnest denial
of any knowledge of the affair, proceeded to arrest him.
This had the desired effect, and so led to the arrest on the
following day of the majority of the gang, and the recovery
of the whole of the goods stolen. These ruffians are now
waiting their trial at Rustchuk, but have already confessed,
without any reservation, their guilt. It is now said that
the two men who actually inflicted the wounds are Rus-
sians. Poor Martin is now, it is hoped, out of danger. His
sufferings, however, have been very great, and his life was
long despaired of ; at the best he will be deprived of the use
of one arm for life.

The consolatory feature connected with the affair is the
prompt and energetic conduct of the local authorities, all
of whom, from tho Governor-General downwards, showed
a most earnest desire to bring the offenders to justice,
whilst the neighbouring villagers displayed much sym-
pathy and good feeling.—Levant Herald.

The Return from the Derby.

SEVERAL SERIOUS ACCIDENTS.

In the returtti;me on Wednesday several accidents of a
very serious character took place. In the New Kent-road,
shortly after 11 o'clock, a three-horse van, laden with per-
sons, in turning the corner, swayed and turned over with
a loud crash. It was found necessary to remove the follow-
ing to St. Thomas's Hospital :—Wm. Crocker, 24, of 107,
Stamford-street, engine-fitter, fractured ribs and a severe
injury to the scalp. Robert Baker, 51, of 14, East-street,
Walworth, coach-smith, fracture of both bones of the right
leg. Chas. Jenkins, 36, of 7, Ann's-place, Walworth, frac-
tured right leg. Frederick Unman, 32, plasterer, fractured
wrist; and Wm. Simes, injured hand. All the above-men-
tioned cases were found to be very serious, and at once re-
ceived the_attention of Mr. Avoling, house surgeon, and
the medical staff. Near Kennington Church a gentleman
on horseback rode down a_lad, named William Sweeney,
aged seventeen years, and on his removal to St. Thomas's
Hospital it was found that his skull was fractured.
—ln Walworth-road, a collision occurred between a cab
and a horse and cart, the occupants of the latter, four in
number, being all thrown ont. They were taken to St.
Thomas's -Hospital, their injuries being—to James Harris,
fracture of right leg ; Prudence Rose, fractured ribs ;
Amelia Wright, injured right arm; and Richard Griffin, a
crushed right arm. Several persons were also attended at
the hospital suffering severe injuries to the eyes from the
effect of flour, awl laud thrown al them.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
-
—TIMES.—The universal sound of warlike prepara-
tion has been singularly interrupted by one of those
episodes by which war itself is occasionally and
quaintly relieved. The provost-marshal, the scout, the
sutler, the peasant, and the cantiniere furnish some
of that comedy which the masters of fiction find it
necessary to intermix with their most tragic stories.
We can scarcely regard in a more serious light the
treatment which the sober and substantial old
element of public opinion is now receiving at the
hands of two very different personages—treatment
not quite identical, but only varied to the circum-
stances. The King of Prussia, not finding it very
easy to obtain the required flavour of Liberalism for
his Government by the infusion of a statesman or
two with a bias that way, and despairing of coun-
tenance from the more educated classes, is bethink-
ing himself of the last political discovery of the age
—a Monarchy founded on universal suffrage. The
immediate difficulty in the way is that even with
the most summary methods for obtaining a repre-
sentation on this deep and extended basis, the
King would certainly find himself far advanced
in the Dog-days before he could have the moral
support and the intellectual aid he looks for from
the Parliament of the People. At the present
rapid pace of preparation that body would find
they had little to do but to vote supplies
and sanction taxes. But as time is so precious,
and the war so imminent, his Majesty has had
further recourse to a species of extempore and sup-
plementary Parliament, just to fill up the gap in
Prussian politics. The rural police, who may, or may
not, have more knowledge and tact than our own,
have been commissioned to pick out, every one of
them, two labourers and working men, and form an
assemblage direct from the very nursery of Dame
Nature, hitherto uncontaminated by class influences
and party views. His Majesty proposes an interview
with these legislative lambs, in which he will put
straight to them the question of peace or war, ex-
plaining, of course, the objects for which that war
is to be waged, the sacrifices it will entail, and the
possibility that the persons themselves, their bro-
thers and sons, may have to give the strongest prac-
tical proof of the sincerity of their opinion. It is
in the villages and the lanes that the King hopes to
find that pure German nationality which is pre-
sumed in these great controversies, but which is
found rather intractable in closer contact, possibly
because alloyed with baser metal. But if the King
of Prussia cannot find that pure element in his
existing Chamber, and will not even discover it in
the Diet, no wonder he should go out into
the fields and collect it as he would a bouquet of
wild flowers or a handful of simples. The difficulty
is that all must depend on the police, and we sus-
pect the Prussian police are rather apt to take in-
structions and follow them with praiseworthy exact-
ness. Our neighbour across the Channel, it must be
said, has no occasion to go to the villages and lanes,
or any part of the population especially under the
eyes of the police, for the simple reason that this is
the very quarter from which he comes by the happy
and aboriginal mode of his election. He has no
need to go back again or ask on a question of the
day the unbiassed opinion of the sons of the soil.
He is, in fact, their special representative, and fully
authorised to speak for them. What he has to do, and
who occasionally gives him and his friends a little
work for their pens and their authority, is to reduce
within proper limits the opinions of the educated
classes. In France, as in some other countries, the
possessors of land, and money, and education, and
social influence, and professional positions, and
mercantile interests, forget that they are a minority
of the people, on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, are not the sovereign power. Through this
oversight they are led into the indiscretion of pre-
suming to insinuate what the nation should do, and
what, by consequence, they should not do, or the
Emperor should do, or his allies should do, for all
positive advice must have a negative side to it. The
Emperor lately availed himself of what would be
called here a visit to his constituents of Auxerre, to
express his. feelings about the Treaties of 1815,
and add a few words which were interpreted into
a politic resignation to the worst that should
come, on the philosophic ground that good would
come out of it. Though, of course, from different
points of view, there appears to have been a
marvellous agreement in the French Press as to
the meaning of the Imperial declaration. It has
been hailed by one half of the Press, and somewhat
sharply criticised by the other half, as an appeal
from the enlightened classes to those who make up
for their want of artificial illumination by the purity
of their natural tastes and the simplicity of their
patriotic instincts. The educated very naturally
think they know a little more about politics than
the peasants do, and the Emperor evidently thinks
they know rather too much for him, and that what
he wants is not advice, but moral aud, above all,
numerical support. A well-known member of the
Parisian press replies in behalf of the class, and the
interest, and the cause, which certainly have been
challenged, and had a right to reply. lie observes
that the Treaties of Paris happen not to be exclu-
sively, or even principally or primarily, in question.
The Treaty immediately menaced is that of Zurich,
by which France herself secured Venetia to Austria;
and the entire face of Europe is covered by arrange-
ments in which France has taken a part, but which
overlay and even abrogate, in some instances, the
Treaties of Paris. What the Emperor would really
have to dispose of before he could do anything for
the advantage of France is the map of Europe alto-
gether as an arrangement binding on the common
conscience of nations. The writer had put it a little
more cautiously than this, but he protested decidedly
and argued conclusively against anything like co-
operation with Prussia, and against a way of speak-
ing which tended to put Crowns at the head of the
multitude, and annihilated the great interests and
just influences between those two extremes. Even
were the design praiseworthy, it is still a speculation,
for nobody can say how the Throne would find
itself when surrounded by an armed mob, or how
the people would find themselves under the guid-
ance of one sovereign will. Fortunately for the ar-
gument, perhaps unfortunately for the writer, it is
on record that Napoleon 1., though carried away,
in the days of his power, by popular flattery and
subservience, found out too late that he had better
have listened to the prudent misgivings of the
prosaic middle class, or any class with leisure to
think, and something to think for. Had he lent a
more willing ear to the timely warnings from this
quarter, the Treaties of 1815 would not even have
existed to deserve the hatred of his successor. In
this country we see nothing in these criticisms ex-
cept that freedom of disussion which we hold a ne-
cessity of political existence, and from which no sub-
ject is spared. We certainly should despair of our
country, and follow our fathers to New England,
or further, if we found ourselves forbidden to make
remarks on a document which amounts to a declara-
tion of war against half Europe, and a denunciation
of the middle and upper classes of one's own coun-
try. It would seem, however, on the legal maxim
that a libel is all the worse for being true, this cri-
ticism was all the more criminal because sound. The
journal containing it has received a second warning,
and may now be considered as trembling for its
existence and half blighted by the breath of Impe-
rial displeasure. The writer certainly had put an
adverse, but very natural, construction on a speech
which denounced Europe as it is politically divided,
and France as it is socially constituted, and which
invoked the aid of a multitude to its reparation.
He had, however, something to speak for when he
defended at once Europe and France, order, pro-
perty, education, and law. If he had only tripped,
or exceeded the limits of just criticism, he might
have been answered, in behalf of nations and the
people of France. They, too, are something to
speak for. But why should M. Prevost-Paradol be
silenced, and his arguments left without reply ? All
the reply we find in the official organs is that the Em-
peror maintains a strict neutrality, in order that he
may mediate, and that this mediation, when it comes,
is to be, in fact, nothing less than a European redis-
tribution, not merely for the restoration of peace
and the abatement of grievances, but for the re-
establishment of a state of things older and more
desirable than that founded by the Treaty of Paris.
We cannot see how this mends matters, and if this
be all the explanation the Emperor will vouchsafe,
we can easily understand why he would rather have
to deal with the simple and loyal peasantry of
Auxerre than with an educated capital. Even as a
prophecy, here is something to give us all uneasi-
ness. War is to raze the surface of Europe to a
dead political level—a mere crowd of nations and
battle-field of armies. Frontiers are to be swept
away by the incessant passage of armed myriads.
Napoleon is to look on. At length suffering hu-
manity will raise toHeaven one great, simultaneous
cry. Napoleon 111. will then present himself, like
Achilles from his long retirement. He will appear
and set things to rights. He will restore the Golden
Age, of what date we are not told. We are only
told emphatically that it is to be one innocent of the
Treaty of 1815.
POST.—Since the day when the battle of Solferino
decided against Austrian usurpatim in the Italian
Peninsula, King Victor Emmanuel and his advisers
have never known anything like repose from the
most anxious State labours and a variety of com-
plications, domestic and foreign, demanding an
amount of political wisdom and forethought which
has made the death of Cavour to be felt by every
Italian patriot as a national calamity impossible to
repair. It is well known that Austria, the exiled
Sovereigns, and the Court of Rome have never
ceased to intrigue against the constitutional king-
dom of King Victor Emmanuel, aided by the
Ultramontane faction of all Europe. The domestic
difficulty has ;lOW ceased. The party of action,

- _
including the extreme partisans of Mazzini, have
constantly hampered the Government by urging a
line of policy towards Rome and Venetia which
would have offended France and brought destruc-
tion on the newly-formed unity of Italy. Another
great difficulty which the Government had to
contend with was that of national finance. The
debts of the various States had to be amalgamated
and provision made for an endless number of mili-
tary and civil officers, whom it was thought prudent
to place on the retired list. Then, again, in order to
amalgamate the Italian people from the foot of the
Alps to Sicily, it was deemed a supreme necessity to
form an army which should wake the people of one
State familiar with the peasantry of another ; this
had a political as well as a military meaning, and it
resulted from this the best soldiers of the Italian
Peninsula, viz., those of Piedmont, found themselves
amongst Sicilians, Tuscans, Neapolitans, Romans,
men of Parma and Modena ; in fact, recruits from
every quarter of the Italian Peninsula ruled over
by the head of the House of Savoy. The patriotism
of Italy responded to the will of the Government, a
patriotism which was cemented and strengthened
by the ardent and universal desire that this military
force should one day be employed to incorporate
Venetia and become the guardian of the temporal
interests of the Papacy. No disturbing cause oc-
curred to thwart either the domestic or foreign policy
of the Italian Government until the Emperor NaPe-
leon had decided on withdrawing the French flag
from the States of the Church. Previous to that de-
cision the Court of Rome and the exiled princes 110
confined their hostile intrigues to organising bri-
gand bands, who we employed in making depreda-
tions in the rural districts of the Neapolitan States.
But of late the conspiracy against the Kingdom of
Italy became more widespread abroad, and there
is every reason to believe that the exiled princes:
since the commencement of the Austro-Prussian
dispute, have conceived plans in anticipation of
a European war in which it was calculated that
Italy would of necessity take part. The Italian
Government, aware of this conspiracy, had taken
precautions against a domestic revolt to be set
on foot by the priest party, when suddenly the
dispute between Austria and Prussia assumed a..
gravity and importance which the statesmen of
Italy had not originally anticipated. There is everY
reason to suppose that Count von Bismarck soli-
cited Italy to commit herself to that ambitious pro-
gramme, the main object of which is to break up
the Austrian empire. The ready ear of Italy could
scarcely expect to be found indifferent to the Siren-
like invitations of a great Power, who asked her co-
operation in the destruction of an enemy. Disre-
garding the counsels of the Emperor of the French',
and urged to excitement by her long-cherished
hopes, the King and his Cabinet have roused the
national aspirations to a state of enthusiasm, which
animates Italy at the present moment to a frenzy
patriotism exceedingly difficult to control in a
Southern race. The King and his sons are ready to
jump into the war-saddle. The public roads ase
swarming with troops, the " Garibaldian Hymn la
heard on the mountains of Calabria, in the Pontine
marshes in Florence, and in all the maritime town!
of the Mediterranean. The war-cry is universal, AP,I
foreign complications are forgotten, and the heart e."
the nation pants for battle. At such a supreme tne"
ment diplomacy unexpectedly steps in, and the EM"
peror Napoleon, who has hitherto observed a
neutrality towards Germany, whilst counselling
Italy to be cautious, and rather expectant than am-
tive, suddenly assumes a marked and decided desi,re
to prevent European complications, which for the
last month have been gathering thick and fast upoPs
the political horizon. Negotiations for a Congres
are now actively in progress, and Prussia is under:
stood, on account of the hostility of the Gera";
sullen
people towards her Court and military policy, 0,13„
contemplating the overthrow of the Bismarckle3,
programme. Italy, therefore, finds herself arrnethei
war purposes, with a whole nation expecting a Brea
struggle for freeing the whole Italian soil from the
occupation of the stranger, whilst there springs 2iPr
a powerful peace movement which would leave nee
alone with the sword drawn. In a few days vit
must expect to witness a solution of one of the n3?:s,
complicated webs of political and military corefilLe
nations which has ever been witnessed since 4.'he
days when Napoleon 1. made it impossible for
politician to anticipate the events of the future.