The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-07 00:00:00

HAMMERSMITH AND CITY.

The ordinary half-yearly general meeting of the
shareholders of this company was held yesterday at
the offices of the Great Western Railway, Padding-
ton—Mr. Foakes in the chair.

The directors' statement was read by the secre-
tary. It stated that the directors had the pleasure to
report that within the last week they had received
from the Great Western and Metropolitan Compa-
nies the draft deed of transfer of this company's un-
dertaking. They would lose no time in considering
it, and having it referred to counsel for settlement,
and they trusted that by the end of the month it
would be submitted to the proprietors for approval.
It was satisfactory to observe that the intrinsic value
of the line appeared to be fully established. The traffic
accounts had not been rendered to the directors
since the agreement for sale was entered into, but
they noted from the Metropolitan Company's report
that the gross receipts on the line were £36,564
during the year just ended, as compared with
£22,357 in the preceding year, which was equivalent
to an increase of 63i per cent. With the rebate
under the old working arrangement this would
probably already cover the amount guaranteed by
the purchasing companies, and the directors had no
doubt that as the district became more and more
populated, when the traffic was developed, and
when the London and South-Western Company's
extension from Kensington to Richmond opened, a
very considerable further increase might be antici-
pated. No advantage could of course accrue to this
company from any such improvement; but it was
nevertheless a satisfaction to be assured that the
proprietors had invested in a substantial under-
taking. The directors had pro forma to recommend
the payment of the following dividends, receivable
from the Great Western and Metropolitan Com-
panies, at the rate of £5 2s. 6d. per cent. on the
original stock, 5 per cent. on the preference shares,
first issue, April, 1864, and 5 per cent. on the pre-
ference shares, November, 1865. _ _

The Chairman, in moving the adoption of the
report, congratulated the shareholders upon the
substantial condition of the company.
The report was adopted, and the dividends recom-
mended therein agreed to.
A vote of thanks to the chairman closed the

meeting.

SPIRIT OP TAE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The war-clouds which are rapidly clear-
ing on the side of Bohemia hang still ominously on
the Southern slopes of the Alps. Between Austria
and Italy no armistice has yet been signed, but
simply a truce of eight days, which expired on the
2d, and has been prolonged till the 10th. Negotia-
tions are at this moment being carried on at Cormons,
in Istria, but by mere military plenipotentiaries,
treating without the intermediation either of Allies
or neutrals. Should their endeavours prove fruit-
less, there is nothing to prevent a fresh outbreak of
hostilities. In the meanwhile Austria will sign no
armistice until the Italians withdraw from all Aus-
trian territory not comprehended within the boun-
daries of Venetia. The wish for a prolongation of
the contest in this instance is evidently on the part
of Austria. So far as we may gather from the tone
of the public press and from intelligence reaching
us through private channels, the irritation of the
Italians at the turn events have taken since the be-
ginning of the war has already considerably subsided.
They are fain to admit that they have had through-
out no one to blame but their ill-luck. They have
certainly no reason to complain of their Prussian
ally, nor even, on the whole, if they are just, of their
Austrian opponent. The cession of Venice, uncon-
ditional, it is asserted—has been stipulated among
the first articles in the Preliminaries of Nikolsburg.
Nothing more can be reasonably required of Austria,
nor is Prussia bound to support the Italians in any
further demands. It seems, however, that not in
the Preliminaries, but in some scheme of pacification
about to be discussed before the French Govern-
ment, a clause has been introduced concerning the
4 rectification of the frontiers." That clause may
be stretched to any indefinite meaning, for Italy
may ask for anything beyond, and Austria insist
on withholding anything within, the present limits
of Venetia. The boundaries of Venetia, agreeably
to the Austrian circumscription of its territory in
1815, are very distinctly, though arbitrarily, traced.
The coasts of Istria and Dalmatia could hardly
be claimed by the Italians with any better title
than the lonian Islands. If they secure the whole
terra firma of the ancient Republic of St. Mark, they
may cheerfully renounce all transmarine possessions.
To these possessions, indeed, hardly any serious
claims are put forward by sober-minded Italians.
There are extravagant men in all countries, and
there are, therefore, men in Italy who would assert
the abstract rights of their country to Trieste and
Istria, no less than to Nice and Canton Ticino,
Corsica and Malta. But the vast majority are
swayed by no such irrational ambition. They are
aware that Trieste has belonged to Austria since
1382, and, although the Venetians doubtless colo-
nized and ruled over the coasts of Istria as well as
Dalmatia, the nationality of those countries is, to
say the least, problematical. The mass of the
population in the interior is Slavonic, and the ad-
mixture of Italian elements in the cities and along
the coasts is not more remarkable than at Pera and
Galata, or any of those maritime towns which bear
se deep a trace of Italian enterprise. But if the
possession of Trieste and Istria by the Italians is
not defensible either on historic or ethnographic
grounds, what are we to say on the score of mere
expediency? Those harbours and that indented
coast are everything to Austria, and, through her,
to Germany ; they would be no gain, but rather a
loss, to Italy, as they would keep up that rivalry
between Trieste and Venice which so nearly gave
the coup de grace to the latter city. Indeed, even
during the most sanguine hopes of the Italians at
the outbreak of the war, no serious thought was
ever entertained of pushing the frontiers of the
kingdom beyond the Isonzo •, and if the subject
was ever broached at all, if hopes were cherished
that Persano's fleet might effect a landing on
those coasts, it was merely that some vantage
ground might be secured on which to carry on
negotiation, giving up what was absolutely unte-
nable in exchange for what seemed practicable no
less than desirable. By renouncing Trieste the
Italians fancied they could make sure of Trent.
It is on that small district or districts of Trento
and Roveredo that all the longings of the Italian
people are now centred, and it is there that lie all
the dangers of a fresh collision. There can arise no
• doubt as to the nationality of those districts. The
Germans themselves designate them by the appel-
lation of Wqlsch—i.e., Italian Tyrol, and the in-
habitants are as purely a Lombard race as their
neighbours of Brescia or Bergamo. With the excep-
tion of some valleys incorporated with that terri-
tory in 1815, the Trentino is, nevertheless, a very
old possession of Austria. The bishopric of Trent
was made a part of the county of Tyrol as early as

1363, and thus it passed over by marriage to the
Hapsburgs. Roveredo, which was held by the
Venetians from 1416 to 1609, became in the latter
year part of the Austrian monarchy, from which it
was ,lever afterwards permanently detached. We
have already said, and we now most earnestly repeat,
that it would be a wise policy on the part of Austria
to rid herself of this last subject of dispute between
herself and Italy. The occupation by a foreign
Power of the valley of the Adige down to the Lake
of Garda, that key to the great gate of Italy thus
left in the hands of a hostile neighbour, constitutes
a perpetual menace to the new Italian kingdom ; it
is a thorn in the side of the Italians which will allow

them no rest, till increased strength and opportunity
enable them to do for it what they have just done
for Venetia. It is a certain source of future wars.

But, however desirable it might be to remove this I
bone of contention for the future, there is no doubt
that for the present the Italians have failed to esta-
blish completely their claims on that district by right
of conquest, and it is hardly to be expected that
Austria will give up to persuasion what was not
wrested from her by force, or that Prussia will re-
commend the surrender of lands which, up to five
or six weeks ago, were no less German than Austrian.
The recent victories of Garibaldi and Medici in the
Tyrol, which had so nearly put them in possession of
Trent, and which enabled them to elicit the vote
of the inhabitants in favour of annexation, far from
smoothing the difficulty, have only added to it, by
encouraging, on the one side, the hopes of the
Italians, and on the other by arousing the wrath of
Austria, who, anxious to retrieve in the South
the losses sustained in the North, has lately
poured no less than 90,000 of her very best
troops into the valley of the Adige, and is unlikely
to listen to a word either of peace or armistice till
she has driven the intruders out of the disputed dis-
trict. But there is more. The " rectification of
frontiers," as stipulated in the preliminaries now
under discussion in Paris, lends itself to a twofold
interpretation. The Italians hope to draw their line
in Tyrol at that point between Trent and Botzen
where the two nationalities come into contact near
two villages hearing the significant names of Mezzo
Lombardo and Mezzo Tedesco—the point through
which Lord Palmerston proposed to draw the fron-
tier line during the pourparlers of 1848 ; but Austria
insists not only' on the whole Tyrol down to Riva,
but even on a part of the Friuli on the side of the
Isonzo frontier. It is clear that if any dispute arises
on these grounds the Italians will be left alone to
settle it, for Prussia, as we have said, will back the
Italians in no other claim than that on Venetia, and
Italy most assuredly cannot count on any sympathy
on the part of either the Government or the people
of France. Happily, there are still several days of
the existing truce unexpired, and we trust that, if
necessary, the truce will be renewed. It would be
melancholy indeed, if, with a most advantageous
peace already within her grasp, Italy, by insisting
on her extreme pretensions, should again expose her-
self to the attack of Austria and to the risk of a
crushing defeat.
HERALD.—The most remarkable feature of the
opposition offered by Mr. Mill and his friends to the
Extradition Treaty Bill, after the intense ignorance
they have exhibited as to the practical effects of the
clauses against which they protest, and as to the
general course of English justice, is the persistence
with which they have pretended that the adoption
of the principle of extradition is a gratuitous con-
cession to France, and have ignored the patent fact
that during the whole time the treaty of 1843 has
been in force the benefits of it have been almost
exclusively enjoyed by England. A person deriving
his knowledge of the subject only from the speeches
of Mr. Mill and Sir Francis Goldsmid would

necessarily suppose that this country has really no
interest in the maintenance of such a treaty, that
its lapse would not encourage in the slightest degree
forgery or murder, and that both life and property
would be quite as secure in London if to all the
other inducements to take either were added this
of absolute immunity upon reaching Boulogne or
Calais. He would further assume that the treaty
was a Machiavellian scheme on the part of the
French Government to possess itself of certain for-
midable political opponents now resident in Eng-
land, and that the acceptance of such a treaty was
a disgrace to the British Government, and that its
adoption by Parliament would amount to the aban-
donment of the sacred right of asylum and a base
submission to the dictates of a foreign Power. Now,
how far such an unfortunate person would be from
the truth anybody who will only read the new bill,
and remember that it but alters in a very slight
degree an act which has been in force more than
twenty years, can discover ; and it really seems sur-
prising that men like Sir Francis Goldsmid, who is
one of her Majesty's counsel learned in the law, and
Mr. Mill, who, although unfortunately not a candid,
is certainly a clever man, should have talked last
night what can[only be described as such utter rub-
bish. If they did not know when the bill was intro-
duced into Parliament, they did know after the ex-
planations given on the second reading that it
enlarged in no degree the old act. The offences
remained the same; the same necessity of giving
to the magistrate before whom the person arrested
in virtue of the Secretary of State's warrant might
be brought sufficient evidence of the commission of
the crime and of the connection of the prisoner
with it as would justify him in committing that
prisoner, if an Englishman, for trial upon the
charge, was maintained, and the only alteration
the new bill made was to save the most absurd ex-
pense of bringing over a witness to swear to the
authenticity of the depositions, when the legal and
usual way of proving that authenticity is the certifi-
cate of the Minister of Justice, which can cost very
little, and is far more reliable than the testimony of
any witness. Sir Francis Goldsmid and Mr. Mill
knew that in the course of the twenty years the
French Government had made no attempt to obtain
the 'extradition of a mere political opponent, and
they knew, too, that the new bill would not give it
any greater facility, except in this saving of expense,
a saving which a Government really anxious to get
an opponent into its hands would certainly care
little about, for obtaining that extradition; and yet
they must needs attempt to obtain, last night, the
insertion of a clause expressly exempting political
offences from the operation of the act—political
offences which, be it known, must consist in mur-
ders or attempts at murder, and so to give practical
immunity to all assassins or would-be assassins,
whether of the Emperor of the French, his Ministers,
or even the meanest of the officers of his Govern-
ment. Sir Francis Goldsmid's argument was of a
very singular kind, and his illustration was stranger
still. He attempted to prove that by the French
code, the present Emperor of the French is a mur-
derer, because he shot a soldier at Boulogne, and
thence to show that any person resisting authority
in open insurrection could be demanded by the
French Government and must be surrendered to it.
We will say nothing of the good taste or of the
decency of this sort of talk. Mr. Neate indig-
nantly denounced it, but the Radicals around Sir
Francis Goldsmid cheered it vociferously. But
the argument so impertinently illustrated was alto-
gether beside the mark,• and one must suppose that
when Sir Francis left his practice he left his law
behind him. The bill has nothing to do with
French ideas of murder. No person would be given
up for a murder merely because the French code
makes out some offence which he has committed to
be a murder. The magistrate before whom he is
brought has to deal with him as he would with an
English subject. He has to satisfy himself that
there is sufficient evidence of the crime, and the
prisoner's connection with it, to justify hiin in
committing that man for murder, or the attempt to
murder, according to English law, before he sur-
renders him to the agents of the French Govern-
ment ; and even if the French code, therefore,
should make murder out of nothing, no Frenchman
need fear being given up to the vengeance of his
Government for that made-up crime. Lord
Stanley, and after him Sir Hugh Cairns, showed
very clearly that Sir Francis Goldsmid's original
clause or either of his alternative ones was
unnecessary, and, under the circumstances,
impossible of acceptance, and, if it could
have been adopted, would have worked most
mischievously. There is not, as Lord Stanley
said, the slightest reason to apprehend any
attempt on the part of the French Government
to turn the treaty to political ends ; and if the at-
tempt should be made it would undoubtedly be de-
feated. On the other hand, as Sir Hugh Cairns
pointed out, it was not competent for the Govern-
ment to alter the treaty without the assent of the
French Government, and that the adoption of such
a clause would have necessarily had for its conse-
quence the non-execution of the treaty, and its con-
cession of perfect immunity to the more skilful and
daring of the criminal population of both countries.
Further, as Lord Stanley urged very forcibly, the
adoption of such a proviso, which must be extended
to all our treaties of extradition, would, in the first
place, give perfect security to the vilest assassins
who might contrive to reach our shores. Wilkes
Booth, had such a clause existed in our treaty with
America, or in the act of Parliament giving effect
to it, would have been perfectly safe, could he have
reached any part of her Majesty's dominions. The
illustration was well adapted to the Radical oppo-
nents of the bill ; for although they think the mur-
der of a King is a crime, that of a President is in
their eyes the greatest that can be perpetrated. Aid,
moreover, the immunity would be reciprocal, and
this most undesirable result would follow, that any
Fenian who might shoot a witness or a policeman
would be safe, if he could once get out of England.
In fact, such a clause as that proposed by Sir F.
•Goldsmid would be a direct encouragement to po-
Heal assassination, an object which neither the hon.
baronet nor Mr. Mill, although the Westminster

.."'"

philosopher's repudiation of all sympathy wi---
crime did not appear very hearty, could have in'
tended. Mr. Mill, who had greatly misunderstood
the operation of the measure, desires safeguards for
the criminal which practically would make any
treaty a farce. He insists that no person should
be given up unless he is confronted with his
i,
ac-
cusers, unless all the witnesses against him shall
be brought over and be cross-examined, and he
have the opportunity of bringing over all the wit-
nesses he pleases. That is to say, the honourable
gentleman practically wants for all French mind"
nals—and with regard to political assassins he
directly claimed it—that before a person can 13,e
given up for a crime committed in France the 'hole
matter shall be tried out here. It is quite evident
that if the French Government had to put all 01s
machinery in motion to obtain its malefactors lib,
would make England a present of all the criminal'
who could find their way to that then coml 0,11
sewer of crime. Sir Francis Goldsmid ultimately
withdrew his amendment, the Government having
consented to limit the operation of the act to a terms
of twelve months. Lord Stanley had allowed that
the house was placed at a disadvantage in having
to discuss the question at so late a period of the
session, and had expressed at the same time ,1)13
opinion that the whole subject of extradition aei;
served to be inquired into thoroughly, and deal
with in a systematic manner. Basing himself upon
this declaration of the Foreign Secretary, Mr. 014
and after him Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Kinglake,
pealed to the Government to be content with
temporary measure, which would enable the subject
to be dealt with comprehensively in the next sessioni
and to that course, as we have said, the Government
assented. We may hope, therefore, that some
general measure, dealing not only with the process
of extradition, but with the crimes which it eel-
braces, at present far too limited in number, will be
introduced to Parliament early enough next seseln.°
to allow of proper consideration, and we would fain
trust that the honourable gentlemen who have takes!
so prominent a part in opposing this bill will
the recess to acquaint themselves more thoroughly
with the subject. Our great commercial communities.
might render them some valuable assistance in that
respect. Do the bankers and traders of Westuainster„
desire that dishonesty of all kinds shall find a safe
asylum so handy as Calais ?

ith th