The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-10 00:00:00

A TERRIBLE BOAR.

The sportsmen of the old forest of La :Fort6, in
France, had an exciting affair the other day with a
magnificent wild boar, five years old, that had made
short work of several dogs who had the effrontery
to cross his path. At the dawn of day, the piqueurs,
under the lead of Claude Bouchan, the oldest and,
at the same time, the most wary and the most
robust in the neighbourhood, began to draw the
woods of La Fontaine Chanlin ; the sanglier was
soon found, the dogs uncoupled, and the bristly
brute attacked in his lair. The boar wanted little
rousing ; he charged the dogs with fury, and having
wounded two or three of them went away like a
thunderbolt in the direction of the woods of Saint
Ambreuil, tearing down the small trees and under-
wood that stood in his way as if they were reeds-, the
hounds made after him, open-mouthed, and the
tramp of the horses echoed like thunder beneath the
old forest trees. The river Grosne, swollen and
rapid, lay across the boar's path, but, nothing
daunted, he dashed into the foaming waters and
gained the opposite bank, with the pack close at his
heels ; here he found himself in a network of deep
ditches filled by the overflowing of the river, and
coming suddenly upon a number of fishermen he
turned round and nearly retraced his route. But the
river was becoming more swollen and rapid every
minute, and the instant the boar's pace slackened, he
received the first ball, which penetrated below the
ear and entered his head. It was a sporting doctor
of Chalon who administered this disagreeable pill ; an
unpleasant sample of the medical gentleman's
boluses. The wounded boar now made for the woods,
losing much blood, and the dogs, more excited than
ever, pressed him so hard that he attempted to hide
himself in an almost impenetrable thicket ; but at
this moment the old piqueur lodged two more balls
in the carcase of the boar, who disappeared. The
piqueur called on the dogs, made his way into the
thicket, and, getting sight of the sanglier, gate him
a third ball, which also lodged in the creature's
skull.

The boar fell, but while Claude Bouchan was
taking aim for a fourth shot, the animal rose to his
feet, charged furiously at the piquer, killed the two
best dogs of the pack, threw the old man down,
rather seriously wounded in the legs, and took re-
fuge in a ditch, around which the now terrified
hounds fretted and howled. Hearing the cries of
the wounded piqueur, the shouts of the huntsmen,
and the howling of the dogs, the master of the hunt
rode up to the ditch, dismounted from his horse, and
with his rifled carbine lodged another hall beneath
the animal's eye. The boar charged out of the
ditch at his new enemy, who would have fared
badly had he not had the presence of mind to empty
the second barrel of his piece in the region of the
heart of the creature, who fell dead at his feet.
The bunt lasted from seven o'clock in the mot-ming
till three in the afternoon. When the boar was cut
up he was found to have five balls in his head, and
his carcase weighed more than 650 pounds. The
victorious party paid somewhat dearly for its con-
quest. The unfortunate piqueur will not be on his
legs again for a month, at the least; the pack has
lost its two best dogs, valued at 1,600 francs, and
has five others wounded, and, for the present, hors
de combat. It is not child's play this hunting the
sanglier.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—As far as words go, nothing can be more
bitter than the quarrel between Prussia and Austria.
If such correspondence passed between any other
two States, the world might resign itself to witness-
ing an appeal to arms. It is plain that of the two
Governments one is incensed against the other in
the highest degree, while the latter in its turn has
not scrupled to provoke and irritate its adversary.
The Austrian Court, and to a great extent the
Austrian people, are indignant at what they con-
sider with reason the arrogance and duplicity of the
Prussian Minister. In spite of debt, in spite of the
discontent of a great province, in spite of menaces
on the side of Italy and political troubles on the
Lower Danube, Austria has assumed a warlike atti-
tude. Count Bismark probably did not expect to
meet so resolute an antagonist. The easy and some-
what sluggish nature of Austrian statesmanship,
and the remoteness of the matters in dispute from
Austrian territorial interests, may naturally have
led the Prussian Minister to expect that he would
have no difficulty in carrying out his purpose.
Schleswig and Holstein are far beyond the limits of
Austrian ambition. Though German, they be-
long to that part of Germany which Prussia must
always influence, and over which she may at any
time extend her sway. The traditional division of
North and South, by which the younger and more
active Power has been totally permitted to lead the
little States in the neighbourhood of the ocean,
might well inspire the Prussians with a belief that
they would be allowed to have their own way in
the Duchies, provided they were equally complai-
sant to Austria on some future occasion. But they
must not be fully undeceived. Whatever may be the
result of these negotiations and disputes, it is clear
that Prussia will not annex the Duchies without
something more than strong remonstrances on the
part of the other States. Austrian dignity has been
wounded by the coolness with which Count Bis-
mark affected to consider as belonging to his master
provinces in which an Austrian army corps is sta-
tioned. 'The other States are angry at what they
think an outrage upon the rights of a people
whom they have just liberated from Danish rule,
' and an insult to the Federal authority and their
own. Though a large part of their citizens de-
sire neutrality, their rulers do not conceal that their
sympathies so incline towards Austria that in case
of a war they might possibly drift into it on the side
of the Power which defends the rights of the Con-
federation and the 'Duchies. On the other hand,
the Prussian Minister, though probably not less
anxious to attain his end, and indifferent to the
opinions of his adversaries or the world, is likely
to see the wisdom of not pressing matters too far.
Of the power of Prussia to obtain military posses-
sion of the Duchies, all parties to the dispute are
well aware. The Austrian corps of occupation is
isolated, and the facility with which it might be
overcome and the Duchies reduced to a Prussian
province must have been before the eyes of the
Minister, and has, perhaps, tempted him to take so
bold an attitude. In a country where so much may
be done by the show of audacity it might well enter
into the calculations of an ambitious statesman that
a demonstration of force might induce the Austrians
to retire, in order to escape a humiliation they could
not resist. The preparations of Austria have shown
her adversary that this hope is vain. Undoubtedly,
the Austrian corps is at the mercy of their enemy ;
but Count Bismark now knows that any breach of
faith in the Duchies would be followed by a war on
the opposite frontier. If he is to gain his end with-
out paying too high a price, it must be by a present
policy of artifice and delay. The consciousness
that the question is serious, and that the Vienna
Government is more in earnest than was expected,
shows itself in every paragraph of the Prussian reply.
There is the desire to stand well with the world, to
appear as not the wronger, but the wronged, as the
victim of unfounded jealousies and impatient pre-
parations. The advance of the Austrian troops gives

their opponents a pretext of complaint, and they
will, no doubt, take full advantage of it. It is de-
clared that no danger of war existed before the
Prussian frontier was threatened, and that no
danger would remain if the menace were withdrawn.
Prussia only desires to defend itself, and did not,
indeed, move its own troops until " the safety of
the Prussian territory became dependent on the
resolution of the Austrian Cabinet." The emphatic
declaration that Prussia has no intention to violate

the peaCe, and that nothing is further from the
King's intentions than an attack on Austria, may
be only diplomatic language ; but, undoubtedly, the
tone and purport of the note are to indicate that
Prussia -will notplunge into war, and desires at least
to place the enemy in the wrong. By the tele-
graphic summary of the Austrian reply we find that
Austria inclines to press her advantage, and to fol-
low up her receding rival with fresh demands. On
the evening of Saturday last Austria sent a despatch
to Berlin, in which Count Bismark is charged with
having declared war with Austria to be inevitable,
and it is affirmed that the Austrian armaments have
been caused by this declaration. So far, therefore,
the two Powers would be only on an equality.
Prussia says that she armed because Austria
menaced her by her movements, and Austria says
that she moved because Prussia menaced her by her
words. But Austria is not content with this recri-
mination. It is actually demanded that Prussia
shall " demobilize" her army ; that is, while Aus-
trian troops are pouring into Bohemia, and may at
any time be forced on to► the frontier, Prussia is to
desist from counter preparations. These prepara-
tions Count Bismark would, of course, call strictly
defensive. The Austrian Government, on the other
hand, considers, or affects to consider, them as in-
tended to carry out some scheme of aggrandisement.
It m unfortunate that so stringent a demand should
have been made, for it will be difficult for Prussia,
however desirous to keep the peace, to yield to
what seems like the dictation of her antagonist. A
threatening demand and a grave accusation are hard
things even for a mild-spirited statesman to bear,
and we may well imagine what effect they will pro-
duce upon the man who has so long governed
Prussia at his will. The action of the two adver-

saries in the Federal Diet seems hardly more intel-
ligible than their diplomatic bickerings. Prussia is
said to be about to propose the establishment of a
German Parliament, with universal suffrage and

direct elections, for' a reform of the Sundt This
from a Government which so strenuously Opposes
Parliamentary liberty at home is strange enough ;
but it is fair to see in it a bid for popularity, and an
effort to embarrass the Governments which have
always had the power of the Diet in their hands.
The latest phase of the dispute is certainly the most
unpromising that we have yet witnessed. If the
antagonists were not German Powers, war would
seem inevitable, but, as it is, we do not yet de-
spair of peace.

SATURDAY REVIEW.—WC were rather too early
in addressing our congratulations to Mr. Gladstone
on his powers of parliamentary self-restraint. The
very day whichintroduced to our readers our pre-
mature felicitations also published that remarkable
outbreak of temper and puerility with which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer closed the first
page ,of the annals of his leadership of the House
of Commons. You may expellhuman nature with
all unnatural violence, saps the old poet, but charac-
ter
.will break out at last. Impelled by principle or
policy, a man may take the temperance pledge, but
if he does run riot and return to his old courses, he
does it in earnest. Those seven dull weeks of sullen
and difficult self-repression were atoned for in one
compensating shriek of bad taste and bad temper.
The famous " flesh and blood" and " fellow-Chris-
tian"inarticulate burst convinced the House of Com-
mons what dependence-could be placed on the cour-
tesy and judgment of its foremost man.
" Who but must laugh, if such man there be ?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ?"
The very phrase which has already acquired an ugly
sort of immortality, the kind of adhesiveness which
belongs to a nickname, was but a small echo of an
old-cant, " Am I not a man and a brother ?" But
the deplorable indiscretion in the House of Commons
into which Mr. Gladstone was betrayed by the poor
provocation. of Lord Robert Montagu has, like many
other trifles, been productive of serious consequences
—serious perhaps rather to the speaker than to any
other or greater interest. It committed him. If
these things can be said and done in the green tree,
what about the dry? If this is the language for
the uninflammable senators, what becoming words
are right for the touchwood susceptibilities of the
ignorant ? The consequence of the appeal for one's
own flesh and blood and fellow-Christians—as
though the franchise were a matter of animal phy-
siology and the three creeds—was an appeal (in an-
other sense) to the flesh and blood of the orator's
hearers. To talk of flesh and blood savours strongly
of animal passions and physical force. If a man has
a right to the franchise by virtue of his flesh and
blood, it must be his flesh and blood that must assert
his right. Very likely Mr. Gladstone did not mean
this ; he only meant to scream, more or less articu-
lately. He did not intend to threaten ; he only
meant to show that hewas in a passion, and that he
was tired to death of being courteous and stupi▪ d.
So ',much the worse for the leader of the House of
Commons. It is quite possible that his enemi▪
es
were on the look-out for this, or something like this,
though not, perhaps, something quite so bad. For
it must be the policy of the Opposition to taunt and
goad and irritate their high-spirited antagonist. In
the economy of party there is always room for the
playful stimulants of the banderilleros and picadores
especially if the noble toro affects stupidity. The
way in which Mr. Gladstone's speech was received
by the Opposition showed that somebody at least
was satisfied. Mr. Gladstone's stump visit
.to Liver-
pool is the logical result of his speech delivered on
. the eye of the parliamentary recess. lie could not

but pander to the passions he had stimulated. There
was absolutely no choice. It was as in the old
rationale of possession. Faust had sold himself, and
was no longer a free agent. The compact with the
master of his doom was made when from the Trea-
sury Bench he suggested, however vaguely, the
necessity of agitating. And though we are by no
means ready to acquiesce in the moral account
which is given of possession, yet we recognise in
modern men and things the old facts. Men were of
old thought to be given over to the Evil One, only
because there was no reasonable explanation to be
given of their actions. Something of this sort seems
to have happened to Mr. Gladstone. There is no
accounting for him. It may be inspiration, of
course, as well as possession. Perhaps it is only
because it suits our natural hardness of heart that
we most readily assume iu Mr. Gladstone's case the
agency of the goblin damned than of the spirit of
Heaven. Mr Bright is more suggestive, it may be,
in one direction than in the other. But whatever, the
influence,we raust postulate some influence. Mr. Glad-
stone on the stump is so utterly beyond conception, so
out of keeping and harmony with all anticipation,
so extravagantly and abnormally wild and strange,
that we are driven at once to the incredible to ac-
count for the fact. And this whether we look to the
man or to his office. For, of all professions, that of
demagogue is about the last for a man to take up
when the shades of life are beginning to settle upon
him. With most of us character somehow or other
is pretty well consolidated by the time we are fifty.
A fool at forty is a fool indeed, and to be great on
the stump you must mount it before tastes, habits,
associations, and principles are formed. Of course
we speak of men such as men are, as Mr Gladstone's
old friend Homer would say. We do not speak of
the human paradox. There may have been instances
in which youthful and mature saints have turnedout
septuagenarian sinners, and in which burning and
shining lights have gone out with a twang not so
melodious as that which accompanied the disappear-
ance of Aubrey's Ghost. But Mr. Gladstone is not
old enough for the apology of imbecility. He knows
what he is about in doing Mr. Bright's behests. We
believe that he is quite in earnest when he says that
a tremendous moral wrong is inflicted, b.nd that a
righteous cry ascends to the highest heaven for jus-
tice from the gentlemen who, for instance, were to
be seen about London streets in a certain stage of
elevation, perhaps moral, perhaps corporeal, on
Easter Monday, towards 12 o'clock. But what is
alarming is that Mr. Gladstone is always in earnest
and that his earnestness is so very many-sided. As
to his sincerity it would be folly to question it. But
then he is so kaleidoscopically sincere. He was quite
sincere when he detected the doctrine of the Trinity
in the " Iliad ;" quite sincere when he saw in Church
and State but two aspects of one eternal embodi-
ment of truth ; quite sincere when five years ago
he stood up forpocket boroughs ; quite sincere when
he said that all men, being equal, have the same
rights, that of voting included • quite sincere when
he unsaid this ; quite sincere whenl he deduced the
necessity of passing the present Reform Bill from
the identity of the blood globules of Jack
and My Lord ; and quite sincere when, at
Liverpool, he re-asserts his latest paradox
while varying his figure, and concludes the necessity
of Reform because the non-enfranchised have the
same breathing apparatus as electors have. And
he may be quite sincere if at the Amphitheatre he
explain away his doctrine of the Philharmonic Hall.
Yor no one can ever exactly tell, until the time comes,
what Mr. Gladstone may or may not say. Before
Thursday night's " graud banquet" came off it was
all uncertain, and before last night's sports in the
Amphitheatre were concluded his line was not to be
predicted. But whether he goes to the north to lash
his clients into fury, or to still the small tempest
which has been got up, there can be but one opinion
either as to the discretion or the decency of his move.
It is at the best but a sorry reproduction of an Ame-
rican notion. Presidents elected by the stump take
to the stump naturally. The stump does not suit
Mr. Gladstone. In his way he is unapproachable ;
but his way is not the way of the greatest demago-
gues. Cleon was twice the man in his line that
Pericles was ; and, as far as we remember, Fox left
the stump business to Wilkes. Bright, and Odgers,
and Potter, after all, tell most with the audiences
which Mr. Gladstone is just now saluting. Even
Miss Emma Hardinge, the " inspirational' speaker,
would do it better. O'Connell always knew _that
just a trifling touch of the tongue in the cheek, and
at least one sly wink, to show that he and his audi-
ence perfectly understood each other, was necessary
to a triumph at the Rotundo. Mr. Gladstone must
be longer at his new trade before he can snatch this
new grace. At present his undoubted earnestness
and sincerity are against him. There must be a spice
of blarney and humbug in the most successful de-
magogue ; and, to do him justice, Mr. Gladstone
has not yet acquired the popular qualification of being
insincere. He is, and always will be, too tremend-
ously real to tell thoroughly with his own flesh and
blood. One can hardly fancy Bishop Andrewes
preaching Latimer's buffoonery. We are writing, of
course, in ignorance of what deliverance it may have
pleased Mr. Gladstone to make to his less select audi-
ence at the Amphitheatre. As both he and his great
model, Mr. Bright, affect to be as variable as the
weather, storm one day and sunshine another, it will
not be surprising if Friday night's intemperance
makes up for Thursday's continence. There are
some people whom it is safest to estimate by contra-
ries, and who, if they are dull at a grand banquet,
may be safely reckoned to run a muck at a sober
soiree. The Liverpool banquet seems tl have been
an extremely unimpassioned affair. It is the sort of
thing which might come off on Easter Monday at the
Mansion-house, with a difference—the difference
being a matter of taste to the students of post-
prandial eloquence, whether they prefer the hard
and reluctant oratory of Earl Russell to the easy
and unctuous flow and sesquipedalian sentences of
his Chancellor of the Exchequer.
THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES."—In reply to
some visitors from Maryland, Kentucky, and
Louisiana, the President lately remarked that he
" would adhere unfalteringly to the principles
laid down in the several speeches he had made."
He added that he was guided in his course by certain
fixed principles, and that he had always some fun-
damental idea regarding the nature of the Union.
It may be useful, as he thus refers to previous
speeches, to examine these a little closely, to see
what the President's " fundamental ideas regard-
ing the Union" and the principles to which he
means to " adhere unfalteringly" are. In the first
place, we find him expressing on many occasions his
feeling that treason against the Union is the sum of
all crimes, and must be punished. While he would
deal mercifully and kindly with the mass of the
Southern people, as deluded and helpless, he
has always insisted on punishment for the leaders.
" The American people must be taught that treason
isa crime, and must be punished. The people must
understand that it is the blackest of crimes, and will
be surely punished ;" thus he spoke to a public
delegation on the 18th of April, and he has repeated
the same sentiment on numerous occasions since.
tc The pardoning power should be exercised with
caution," he . said to a delegation of loyal
Southern men on the 3d of May ; the mass of the
people had been punished sufficiently, in his
opinion, for in the amnesty proclamation, issued
May 29, he granted " pardon, with restoration
of all rights of property, except as to slaves,"
on their taking a prescribed oath of fealty to the
Union, to the great body of the. Southern people.
He held that consistent Union men only should
be appointed to Federal offices in the South. In his
reconstruction proclamation, issued May 29, he in-
structed the Secretary of the Treasury and the Post-
master-General that " in making appointments the
preference should be given to qualified loyal persons
residing within the districts where their respective
duties are to be performed; but if suitable residents
of the districts shall not be found, then persons re-
siding in other States or districts shall be appointed."
On the 29th of January, of this year, he gave
utterance to his dislike of constitutional amend-
ments. He doubted the propriety of making further
amendments to the Constitution, as tending to bring
that instrument into contempt. One great amend-
ment, that extirpating slavery, seemed to him
sufficient. But if another was to be made, he
" knew of none better than a simple proposition,
embraced in a few lines, making in each State the
number of qualified voters the basis of representa-
tion, and the value of property the basis of direct
taxation." In the same conversation he expressed
the opinion that " the negro franchise question in the
district of Columbia at this time was the mere enter-
ing wedge to the agitation of the question through-
out the States, and was ill-timed, uncalled for, and
calculated to do great harm. He believed that it
would engender enmity, contention, and strife be-
tween the two races, and lead to a war between
them, which would result in great injury to both,
and the certain extermination of the negro popula-
tion." This fear of bringing on a " conflict of
races " turns up repeatedly in Mr. Johnson's
speeches and conversations. Furthermore, he
has at different times expressed himself as
opposed to immediate suffrage for the freed-
men, anxious that loyal representatives from Sou-
thern districts should be at once admitted to Con-
gress ; opposed to the payment of any part of the
rebel debt, State or Confederate ; jealously on
guard to oppose what appear to him measures
tending towards the centralisation of power in
the Federal Government therefore his veto
of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and his oppo-
sition to any permanent measure of that kind.
If, now, after reading all his speeches and other
public documents since he became President, we
were asikned, d what are the chief motives of Mr. John-
son's mind, the seeds, so to speak, of his policy, we

should say—He has a great aversion to war mea-
sures or war legislation in peace time ; he believes
there is vast and irresistible power in free and full
discussion ; he loves peace, and all its ways ; he
thinks that by extirpating slavery the American
people have flung out the only seed of discord,
and that now, when armed resistance to the
Government has been crushed, they should
fall at once into the old ways. It is
as though he had said to himself—Once
more we may advance by argument, discus-
sion, votes ; once more we can appeal to the people
at the ballot-box. Before the war, we were steadily
but surely advancing towards full, and broad, and
universal liberty by peaceable discussion. The war
interrupted this grand march of the nation ; now let
us resume it. There may be evils, but they will be
corrected in time by our old and wise methods ;
there may be suffering, and wrong, and prejudice,
but all this is only temporary, and will be
cured by discussion, by appeals to the common
sense of the people, by experience. This is,
we believe, the fundamental idea or principle
underlying and shaping Mr. Johnson's policy.
He believes that in the Union, with the Constitu-
tion, with peace and free discussion, there is no
limit to the possible progress of America as
a nation ; no wrong that will not be righted ;
no inhuman prejudice or hatred that will not be
rooted out; no class so low but it will be raised
up ; no condition, however deplorable, that will not
certainly and speedily be improved. And believing
this, he is not only anxious at once to recommence
the peaceful march, which was interrupted by the
rebellion ; he is not only confident from the past
that the American people will be true to right and
liberty in peace as they were in war ; but he has a
jealous reverence for the instruments of his pro-
gress, the Union and the Constitution. The one he
would seek by all means to strengthen in the minds
and hearts of all the people ; 'the other he would not
rashly amend, and he will strictly construe. "While
"we hold fast to these we are safe," he cries ; let
us have patience, for with them all good things will
come to us in time. Now this idea is not merely
grand—it is true ; it is philosophically correct ;
it is such a fundamental principle as bears up
a just and beneficent policy. It represents, withal,
the feeling which lies deep in the nation's heart.
But while we approve the principle we see
that the President, from different causes, of
birth and training, sometimes errs in details
of policy. It is, for instance, in our opinion,
the right and the duty of Congress to declare equal
suffrage at once in the district of Columbia. That
is national territory, and the President mistakes
when he compares it with a State. And while we
give our hearty assent to the great idea which shapes
his policy, we trust that Congress will at once pass
an equal suffrage bill for the district. Its hesita-
tion is less excusable than that of Mr. Johnson.
Nor do we sympathise with his dislike of the agita-
tion of . any question. Agitation means discussion,
and discussion is to the political life of the nation
what the waves are to the ocean—the means of
purification. Let the American people agitate, by
all means ; let them expose every wrong, every
hateful prejudice, every ingenious sophistry. In
that way they bring to light the truth ; in that way
public opinion is informed and enlightened; in that
way the truth, whatever it may be, is sure to pre-
vail.

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