The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-29 00:00:00

FRANCE.

An Imperial degree has been published, based on
the law of the 19th of May, 1866, abolishing ton-
nage dues in French ports on and after the Ist of
January, 1867, except for vessels of those nations
which, like the United States., impose differential
duties upon French vessels in their own ports. The
report of M. Behic, which precedes the decree,
states that the English Government have under-
taken to bring forward iu the next Session of Par-
liament a Bill for the abolition of local duties of a
differential character. " The English Government,"
continues the Minister, " do not contest our right
to re-establish tonnage dnes in event of the rejec-
tion of their bill by Parliament."
The Commission upon the Anglo-French Fisheries
Convention held their first sitting yesterday at the
Ministry of Marine, under the presidency of 111,
Chasseloup Laubat.
BOURSE, Dec. 28, Two o'clock. The market
is heavy, and all securities are lower. Threes are
at 69f. 50c., with I per cent. fall ; and there is a
similar decline in Italian Fives—at 56f. 50c. to 56f.
55c. Credit Mobilier shares have again fallen below
par, at 497 f. 50c , with a loss of 121. 50c. Comp-
toir d'Escompte lose 7f. 50c.—at 850 f. Railway
Shares likewise are lower—Lyons at 898 f. 75c., and
Northern at 1,198 f. 75c. English Consols are
telegraphed with a decline of
Three o'clock. The market has closed as
follows :

ti per Cents 9B 35
Do. end month —
3 per Cents. 69 45
Do. end month 69 47i
Credit Mailier
Do. end month
.._.

Bank Shares 3555
Italian Loan 56 55
Do. end month 56 50
Mexican Loan —
Do. Bonds —
Spanish Threes
Home Debt —
Deferred -
rAYS.

Credit Fonder —
Do. end month 1390

For Account.
Orleans
•
Northern 1197 50
Lyons and Mediterranean 895
Southern 5BO
Western —
Eastern
Sardinian —
Austrian
Lombard 383 75
North of Spain l2O
Saragossa 135
Ditto to Barcelona
Roman.

77 50

The Colliery Explosion in North

Staffordshire.

..-.._-- --....._ -...-..,,,._..._._..-

Yesterday afternoon a public meeting, called by
the Earl of Lichfield, the Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, was held at Stoke-on-Trent, to consider the
subject of assisting the sufferers from the colliery
accidents at Barnsley and Talke. Lord Lichfield
presided, and was supported by the Earl of Shrews-
bury and Talbot, the Earl of Harrowby, Lord San-
don, Sir E. M. Buller, M.P., the Rev. L. T. Stamer,
Mr. Child, and others. Lord Lichfield explained that
he had called the meeting to consider the raising of
funds for the sufferers at Barnsley and Talke, but
he had found since his arrival at Stoke
that the feeling of North Staffordshire was
decidedly that the money raised in that division
of the county should be devoted to the
relief of the sufferers at Talke, and not divided
as lie had suggested. He willingly gave way to the
feeling which he had heard expressed, but he thought
it would have been far better to have sent all the
money raised on account of the late accidents to a
centre committee. There would then have been a
uniform scale of relief in both cases, and a central
committee would have better dealt with the surplus,
which he had no doubt there would be from the fund
now being raised. He hoped, if there was a surplus,
it would be devoted to the establishment of a per-
manent relief fund for the widows and orphans of
the colliers, so to obviate the necessity of making ap-
peals to the public for relief whenever an accident
occurred. The Earl of Shrewsbury moved a resolu-
tion expressing deep and heartfelt sympathy with
the sufferers for the calamities at Barnsley and Talke,
and admiration of the brave and noble qualities dis-
played by those who assisted in the rescue of the in-
jured and the recovery of the dead. The Earl of
Harrowby seconded the resolution, which (as were
those succeeding) was passed unanimously. Mr. J
Bateman proposed that the funds raised in the
northern division of the county be devoted to the
relief of the sufferers from the Talke accident, which
was seconded by Sir E. M. Buller. Mr. S. Child
then moved, " That any surplus that should remain
of the fund now being raised should be applied
towards the establishment of some permanent fund
for affording relief to sufferers from any further
colliery accident in that county." This was seconded
by the Rev. Sir L. T. Starner. A vote of thanks to
the chairman closed the meeting.
On Thursday afternoon a meeting was held at
Tunstall, and a subscription was opened for the
widows and orphans. Upwards of £lOO was contri-
buted at the meeting. Further subscriptions to the
local fund have been received, among them the fol-
lowing :—Mr. E. Wood, £lOO ; Mr. C. B. Adderley,
M.P., £5O; Mr. W. Davenport, £25; Mr. W. Brown-
field, £2O ; Mrs. Clive, £2O ; Workmen at Berry-
hill and Holly-bush Collieries, £l6; collections at
Christ and St. Mary's Churclaes, Tuustall, £21135. 4d.;
Mr. 11. T. Davenport, N. (per Rev. O'Neil Pratt),
Mr. W. S. Cope, Messrs. Pinder, Bourne, and Co.,
Mrs. Clive's workmen, Messrs. Elsinore and Foster,
Mr. E. Clarke, and Mr. J. Johnson, £lO each ;
Lord Hatherton, £25 ; Mr. John Bateman, £10.;
Lord Harrowby-, £2O ; Mr. J. Southwell and
workpeople, £l5 ; Collection at Ham Church, £l5 ;
Messrs. Macin tyre and Co., £lO 10s.

CHARGE AGAINST THE BIRMINGHAM PROOF
HOUSE MASTER.-011 Thursday Mr. March, the master of
the Birmingham Gun-barrel Proof House, was summoned
before the magistrates of the town for allowing two gun
barrels to leave the proof-house without the usual proof
marks. Mr. Brooks, a gun manufacturer, was tho prose-
cutor, and he stated that he sent a double-barrelled
breech-loader to the proof house and had it returned to
him in duo course. He subsequently discovered it had no
proof marks, and had he sold it in that state he might
have been prosecuted. The defence was that the gun had
been properly marked, and that the marks muse have been
obliterated in the process of " finishing" at the prosecutor's
factory. The bench took this view of the case, and dis-
missed the summons.

The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Silt,—The enclosed letter from Sir John Scott
Lillie, C. 8., received by me to-day, may possibly
interest your readers.—l am, &c.,
HAMILTON HUME, Hon. Sec.
9, Waterloo-place, Pall-mall, Dec. 28.

" Union Club, Dec. 22.

" Sir,—l am favoured by your letter enclosing a
pamphlet, by the direction of the Eyre Defence
Committee, which contains extracts from the evi-
dence laid before the Royal Commissioners with
reference to the recent insurrection in the island
of Jamaica for the subversion of her Majesty's Go-
vernment by the negro population of that island,
numbering 350,000, while the white population did
not exceed 14,000.
" From the evidence thus adduced and the pro-
clamation of Gordon (the instigator of this insur-
rection), his speeches iu the House of Assembly
and elsewhere, referring to the successful insurrec-
tion at St. Domingo, in the neighbouring island of
Hayti, which the power of the Great Napoleon
and French nation (as he reminded the blacks)
could not put down, and where atrocities of an un-
paralleled nature were perpetrated, as described by
Alison in the following extract of a letter from
Professor Tyndall, which you also enclose :
" ' A vast conspiracy that was productive of cala-
mities of an unparalleled nature, and that had for
its object the total extermination of the whites and
the establishment of an independent black Govern-
ment over the whole colony. . . . The explo-
sion was sudden and dreadful beyond anything ever
before seen among mankind. At once the beautiful
plains in the north of the island were covered with
fires, the labours of a century were devoured in a
night, while the uegrocs, like unchained tigers, pre-
cipitated themselves on their masters, massacred
them without pity, and threw them into the flames.
. . . . The cruelties exercised on the unhappy
captives exceeded anything recorded in history. The
negroes marched with spiked infants on their spears
instead of colours ; they sawed asunder the male
prisoners, and violated the females on the dead
bodies of their husbands.'—Alison's " History of
Europe," vol. vi. p. 104.
" If Alison should refer in a continuation of his
history to this insurrection in Jamaica he will no
doubt give the late governor and the military au-
thorities there more credit than blame for the man-
ner in which they averted a repetition of scenes
similar to those thus adverted to, and he may add
that, if the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had followed
the example of Governor Eyre by disposing of the
Head Centre of the Fenians as the late Governor of
Jamaica did of Gordon, Stephens would not have
had the gates of Kilmainham opened with such
facility to enable him to depart for America to re-
sume his machinations for the threatened invasions
of Canada and of Ireland.
" Finding, moreover, by the evidence adduced in
this pamphlet that Gordon was in treaty with an
officer in command of an American (Confederate)
ship of war for the purchase of that vessel with all
the arms and ammunition on board, after the ter-
mination of the war with the Federal States,
and that he crowned all by a practical illus-
tration of his intentions at Morant Bay on the 11th
of October last year, when, after driving our coun-
trymen by fire from the court-house there, the in-
surgents slew and mutilated them in the most cruel
manner, as the French had been treated at Hayti,
which (as it appears by the pamphlet) had been so
frequently referred to as an example for his fol-
lowers, by which they would have no doubt profited
—had not martial law been proclaimed—this ring-
leader apprehended, tried by ccurt-martial, found
guilty, handed over to the provost-marshal and
executed on the 23d of that month, the sentence
having been approved of by the different military
authorities in the island, and ultimately by the
civil governor, for which it appears he is now threat-
ened with indictment for murder, &c.
"If this pamphlet has been sent to me for my
humble opinion on these facts, as having some know-
ledge of martial law, acquired under the Duke of
Wellington during the Peninsular war, and of the
common law, as a magistrate of 45 years' standing,
and I believe the senior on the bench for the metro-
politan county and city of Westminster, I can have
no hesitation in saying thet had Governor Eyre and
the military authorities acted in a less decisive
manner (assuming the foregoing facts to be cor-
rectly stated) they would have incurred a serious
responsibility by exposing the white population of
that island to atrocities similar to those thus de-
scribed by Alison as having been perpetrated at
Hayti.
" If references were made to martial law and the
dangers and confusion inseparable from war, mutiny,
or threatened rebellion, instances could be furnished
of executions, sanctioned by the Duke of Welling-
ton, and carried into effect by a provost-marshal,
without even the ordeal of a court-martial, on
charges of a far less serious nature than those for
which Gordon was tried.
"I witnessed myself, for instance, executions of
this nature during the retreat of the allied British
and Portuguese armies towards the lines of Lisbon
in 1810—the alleged offences bei❑g that certain
soldiers had helped themselves to provisions, or
other property, found in houses whiCh had been
abandoned by their inhabitants, and which would
have fallen into the hands of the enemy, by whom
we were closely pursued, within an hour or two
after ; suoh alleged offences might consequently
have been looked upon as more deserving of praise
than punishment. The object of the Duke was,
however, the preservation of discipline, and not to
admit of any pretext for a deviation from it ; direc-
tions were consequently given to hang these offend-
ers on the spot, to the first tree on the roadside, as
an example to others.

" Making an example of Gordon and some of his
followers was in like manner the object of the mili-
tary and civil authorities in Jamaica on charges of
a much graver nature than those thus adverted to ;
the result in one case being the salvation of Jamaica,
and in the other of Portugal, which was the prelude
not only to the final overthrow of the French army
in the Peninsula and the invasion of France by
the allied almies, but to the liberation of Europe
from the power of Napoleon, who sent more than

a million of men across the Pyrenees during that
war (from 1807 to 1814) who never returned to
France, a result effected by the aid of Great Britain,
the organisation of the Portuguese army by
British officers, its co-operation with the British
troops, the strict discipline enforced by the Duke

of Wellington, and the jadicious arrangements by
which he conducted a series of campaigns in such a
succession of years against the first marshals of

France, or, as Canning described it in a speech on
his visit to Lisbon in 1814 :—"fhe arm of England
was the lever that wrenched the power of Bonaparte
from its basis. Portugal was the fulcrum on which

that basis moved ; England fanned and fed the
sacred fire ; but Portugal had already reared the

altar on which that fire was kindled, and from which

it mounted brightening and widening until the
world was illuminated with the blaze.'

"In the attainment, of such important results
many illegal and unjustifiable acts of cruelty and
bloodshed had no doubt been committed, as in
Jamaica, which would not be sanctioned by any

of our courts of law under other circumstances,
many of which I witnessed myself, after the capture

of various fortresses, by drunken soldiers who had

been for days and nights in an ungovernable state,

which the Duke of Wellington overlooked, and was
supposed so far to sanction, as such acts had been
looked upon as a reward for the dangers incurred in
the storming and capture, though such cruelties
were perpetrated not on the common enemy, but on

the unoffending natives inhabiting such cities and

towns ; yet I never heard of any committees
having been formed of philanthropists whose men-

tal vision had been so obscured by their zeal in
the cause of humanity as to induce them to

appeal to the public for subscriptions to the
amount of £lO,OOO to enable them to com-
mence legal proceedings against the Duke of Wel-

lington for having sanctioned acts of atrocity in-
separable from the confusions of war, or of threat-