The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-15 00:00:00

LATEST NEWS.

. There is no doubt that the Emperor NAPOLEON is
the most adept of political conjurors. He continues
to mystify everybody by his double-doubting
oracular proceedings. The determination to allow
of no foreign intervention in the affairs of Central
Italy had given great offence at Vienna,
when
presto appears the article in the Moniteur re-
.lnking the leaders of the patriots, and the
vise men of Vienna are almost beside them-
selves with joy. But they reckon rather too fast.
The Emperor NAPOLEON has a policy of his own,
and means to stick to it, at least for the present.
:Meanwhile the consolidation of Italian Indepen-
done is making steady progress—calm as it is
dignified. This is reassuring to the friends of
liberty. The number of French troops in
Lom-
bardy and places adjacent is stated to be nearer
100,000 than 50,000, as originally given out.
There may be good reasonlfor this. If the
Emperor NAPOLEON really means to prevent the
Austrians from any further interference in the
affairs of Italy, the presence of such a force may be
necessary, for the knowledge of such power being
on the spot will discourage the Austrians from
making any attempt to reinstate the renegade
Dukes on the thrones they have forfeited, as much by
_their breaking their oaths and promises as by their
recent acts in fighting against their own subjects.
Thus the day of retribution comes with redoubled
anguish on those who have, as it were, contrived to
dig their own graves ! They first pandered to the
bigotted cupidity of Austria as the slave of Rome
—betrayed their sacred trust as princes, and de-
graded themselves, as men, by turning traitors to
humanity, by the infamy of their conduct. Having
so acted, let them now take their reward, and thank
Providence that their lives are yet spared for days
of ,penitence and nights of remorse.
l'he reign of Bourbonism is coming to an end.
It has profited little by experience, and misfortune
seems only to have hardened its stony heart. Well,
like the Stuarts, they have had their J.ay, and
failed. to improve it as they might. Time tra-
velled. too fast for them, and they are now left in
the Imrch solely by their own too clever con-

trivant T.
It •would appear that the perfidy of the Chinese
Gover,linent tends to strengthen the alliance
with F.mnee, and may yet be productive of more
solid benefit to Italy. We sincerely hope so. If
the Emperor NAPOLEON would but eschew
any predilection for setting his cousin on an
Italian thrilne, if but even for the present, and
cordially se eond the liberal intentions of Eng-
land, he we luld find not only France, but all
the enlighti listed people throughout Europe
applaud his conduct. Despotism is only
tolerable to a good end, as the Dictatorship
of the Romans' was submitted to for the
salvation of the Si-a te, and the sooner NAPOLEON
can get out of his p,rosent trammels the better will
it be for his dynasty, and the welfare of the French
people.

The atrocity of the Chinese Outrage glares upon
Christendom. It not on ly justifies by anticipation
—it imperatively demanu's a terrible, instant, and
overwhelming retribution., The occurrence is a
Crime, and a Crime of the n lost heinous character.
It is not only an infringement of the Law of Nations
—it is an infamous and flawrant violation of the
Laws of Humanity. The guilt is the supreme
guilt of leze majeste, of high tre anon to the sanctity
of civilisation. Here was a Treaty of Peace
solemnly agreed between the plenipotentiaries,
not of two, not of three, but of four great empires
—the British, the French, the RU3Viatt, the Chinese.
The compact was sacred and binding. The imk
upon the documents was scarcely yet dry, the seals
were yet warm from the confirm tor', or rather'
we might even say (by reason of their symbolical
character), from the consecrating impress ! The
oaths of fraternAl reconciliation were yet vibrating
in our remembralice—when this monstrous act at
*ice of cowardice a:ld ruffianism proved definitively,
fer once and for all- -between the Chinese and the
rest of the human rac '--who have the best right
and title to the designation of Barbarians !
The memorable and colltumelious outrage perpe-
trated three years ago by the creatures of Commis-
sioner YEIII upon the British flag then flying on
board the lorcha " Arrow" while afloat upon the
waters of Canton, England reeognished at the time
as a perfectly adequate reason for severe and
summary chastisement. But what was the insult
to the sacred symbol of our Sovereignty on board
the lorcha Arrow' to the brutal and bloody
crime accomplished under circumstances of peculiar
flieve, o
and, in some respects, we believe, unparalleled.
on Saturdayothe 25th of June—the mas-
atrocity, up ce hundred, killed
nacre upon the Peiho of nearlyfi
and wounded, British and French, seamen and
marines? Recollect the nature a the circumstances
Remember
under which this massacre took place.
that the little expeditionary, or rather purely com-
plimentary, force which was thus attacked
tiY.
uner-
. pcctedly by an execrable ambush—during
more than
a me
irOfoundpeace—comprised altogether no
300 men of both nations, and of all arms, who were
then .e on board the small allied squadron in a man-
ner a. pnrsuivants of the newly-arrived Mini-
sters 01,. f England and France, the Hon. F.W. BRUCE
aid -m..4. BOURBOULON, then on their way, with
their rek 'etive suites, to the imperial city of Pekin
—the lat ter on board the Du Chayla, the former on
board the ct, Iromaudel. Altogether, we say, the

Ion:

little complimentary precursive force just mentioned
amounted to no more than 1,300 of both nations
and of all arms. Out of which the enormous
proportion of 478 men were cruelly put
hors de combat by a cannonade sud-
denly opened upon them from masked batteries
by 20,000 recreant Chinese. The aggregate of 478
including 14 French and 46 British ! It will
have been sepia from the accoun4ts already published
in our columns giving the details of those disastrous
occurrences, that the ambassadors accredited by
France and England to the court of the celestial
ruler of these infernal barbarians arrived off the
Peiho on the 18th of June, ever memorable as the
Waterloo anniversary. Denied communication of
any kind with the principal authorities on shore
—refused a passage up the Peiho by some subor-
dinate mandarins, with whom had been opened alt
equivocal sort of left-handed correspondence—•
Mr. BRUCE placed the matter then (as was indeed
the only course left to his excellency in that em-
barrassing situation) entirely and. implicitly in the
hands of Admiral HOPE. Apparently that gallant
tar felt perfectly well assured of a successful pas-
sage up the Peiho in spite of the booms and stakes
with which the navigation of the river entrance
was obstructed. If there were the assurances,
thereupon given by the Admiral to the Ambas-
sador, there again certainly, as the old song says,
" HOPE told a flattering tale !" For hardly
had the little squadron, consisting of the Plover,
having the Admiral's flag, and followed by the
other gunboats, namely, the Lee, Janus, Nimrod,
Kestrel, - Haughty, Starling, Opossum, Forester,
Banterer, and Cormorant—entered the river and
taken up their position off the Peiho forts ; hardly
had two of the iron stakes been drawn, hardly had
the first and second boom been passed by the Plover
and Opossum, when the signal for the preconcerted
crime was given ashore—a single gun was dis-
charged, and immediately " all the masks were
rolled up, and a tremendous fire was opened on
the squadron," the murderous onslaught thus be-
coming general. It was nothing less than an am-
buscade of 20,000 assassins lying in wait there to
destroy a handful of brave and confiding men, who
, had come thither in accordance with arrangements
made in a solemn Treaty of Peace—had come
thither not as enemies but as new-sworn friends—
come, so to speak, as the body-guard and attendants
of two eminent civilians, despatched (also acc d
ord.-
ing to treaty) with assurances of amity from the
Courts of the Tuileries and St. James's to the Im-
perial Court at Pekin, in their high and sacred
character as Ambassadors! Twenty thousand
Chinese assassins were theofrdeath and torture from
e, in dastardly ambush,
to accord this welcome
their masked batteries—to 1,30 men in attendance
upon a couple of Ambassadors 0 ! The brutality of
the same enemy upon the unmasking of those con-
cealed batteries we may find illustrated, painfully
enough, in the incidents befallin: one individual,
the brave old Admiral himself, then in com-
mand of the all but doomed expedition. "At
an early period of the action," we learn, " the Ad-
miral had been wounded on board the Plover by a
splinter in the thigh, and that vessel was almost
entirely disabled. He shifted his flag to the
Opossum. When there, he took his station on the
caboose, and thence issued his orders [his thigh, re-
member, torn by a splinter !] until a round
shot cut the mainstay on which he was
leaning, and caused him to fall to the
deck, a height of some eight feet,
breaking a
rib and severely shaking him. After a short time
he left the Opossum in the Du Chayla's gig [the
Frenchman's gigl—the alliance being happily as
complete and cordiale on the Peiho in 1859 as on
the Tebernaya in 1854], and proceeded to the
Cormorant, where he remained." So much for the
gallant tar in command. Now for the squadron—
manned by two hundred less than one-and-a-half
thousand—and murderously fired upon from sud-
denly unmasked batteries by twenty thousand
Chinese bombardiers ! Of the total of 1,300 men
of all arms—we have seen that 478 were either
killed or wounded. Of the ten gunboats—the Lee
and the Kestrel sunk "in testimony of the hard-
fought day "—the Haughty, just contriving to keep
afloat till morning, went down in her turn a little
after daybreak—" the Cormorant, with the admiral
on board and full of wounded, was so fast aground
that it was considered necessary to leave her, as
she was right under the batteries "—the Plover and
the Starling, for similar reasons, were abandoned.
Eventually the Kestrel (sunk on the 25th) was
drifted out on the 26th and towed into shoal water
by the Janus, being thus unexpectedly recovered.
E ventually also the Plover was set on lames by
the Chinese, and the Cormorant sunk by a terrific
fire from the batteries. For this atrocious outrage
—there cannot be one instant's doubt of it—
England and France will forthwith wreak upon its
perpetrators a terrible, a signal, and a fitting retri-
bution. Whatever those wretched humbugs, the
drivellers about peace at any price, may say to the
contrary—this retribution is demanded at once im-
peratively, not alone by the dictates of national
honour, but by the sacred interests of civilisation.

We trust our naval and military authorities w

see that the opinion of the country has deem
against flogging as a punishment. We will not
recur to several special cases which have lately
occurred; there is something invidious in thus
seeming to fix blame upon individual officers, when
they are but acting in accordance with a settled
system. Not, let it be observed, that we justify
them for not being superior to routine; we only
feel that, if the people of England do not amend
their military laws, they are heavily responsible,
as well as the administrators of such laws, for their
direct consequences. Martial law is, much more to
be sure than civil law, a law of the judge's discre-
Still, the martial law of this country must
rest on Acts of Parliament, and, of course, could
inflict no penalty forbidden by an Act of Parlia-
ment ; the country and Parliament must, there-
fore, share the blame with the officers who flog ;
only share it, however ; since we must think that
wise, not to say humane, officers would have got
rid of the punishment long ago. They ought to
have been aware that public opinion was not mere
sentiment, but founded on reason.
Military men are ready enough to think and to
exclaim that civilians know nothing at all about it.
We do not know drill, and therefore it is absurdly
assumed we do not know human nature ! There is
nothing professional required to decide the question
how certain kinds of punishment must tell on a
human being, and with or without the leave of
some of our military and naval friends we must
think that we calm lookers-on, who see the work-
ing of the whole machine, of which they are but
parts, have some advantages for forming a judg-
ment which they have not. Oh. some old routinist.
or some one who has just put on his " little brief
authority," will exclaim—" Such incorrigible ras-
cals as get it, deserve it ; you can do nothing else
with them !" And they think that thus they have
settled the question. But the public does not think
so.
Desertion, re-enlistment, getting bounties once
and again,
are surely roguish tricks enough ; still we
civilians have to submit to all kinds of roguery,
the
we make shift, now-a-days, to get on without
eat-o'-ninetails, the whipping post, the cart tail, or

4
the stocks. Why should not those who have
even
to puns ;sh military rogueries do without such things
as well a s we? Do they wish to give a handle to
peace men —to put into their mouths the argument,
that while c
ivilians have left to Austrian brutality the
use of the st
ick, military men and their soldiers, are '
so much more' like Austrians than Englishmen, that
they cannot dispense with it. We do not believe
that our private .soldiers are worse men for becom-
ing soldiers. And if they could be kept in order
before they enlisted, without the lash, they surely
can afterwards. Will the advocates of flogging
say that the army is a corrupter of those who enter
er that they cannot be governed
it—such a corrupt
like other men, but by punishments at which
1 humanity literally sickens ? °SOHN BRIGHT would
know how to use such a text.
We may well ask of flogging, cui bono? As to
the man himself, if he be a confirmed rascal, flog-
ging will never beat his rascality out of him ; if,
on the other hand, the man has any germs of good-
ness or honour left, flogging will destroy them.
The hardened villain had better be got rid of as
we get rid of any bad servant. He can never be
of any use in the army, but he may corrupt others.
Let him be drummed out by all means, as un-
worthy to associate longer with honourable com-
rades, and let the civil law punish Oppropriately
all his frauds and breach of service. But for a max of
nrhora there yet is hope a more mischievous punish-
• inent than flogging could not be devised. No mail
can ever afterwards call himself a man again. He I
has lost caste. No future obedience, or skill, or
bravery can obliterate the marks of the lash. He
is a degraded man to his dying day, and we do not
4ant men in the army who feel themselves de-
graded. Will the once-flogged man, in the hour
of the greatest need, ever be a candidate for the
Victoria Cross ? Will not his feeling be—no mark
of honour can efface that old dishonour.
There certainly is wisdom in the view that the
naval and military services must be treated and dealt
with essentially on the same principles as any
skilled service. The bounty system is at best a
kind of kidnapping system—we mean, it blinds the
eyes of a needy or a too jovial man by the momen-
tary gains. Men are allured, by a nice " lump" of
money, to work and wages of which they afterwards
sicken ; such men are not precisely the men we
want as our defenders. We should have, not
soldiers and sailors who feel that they once
recklessly sold themselves into a kind of slavery,
but men who think themselves fairly paid for their
work, and who would not willingly exchange it
for any other. This might be a costly plan, though
we are by no means sure that it would not in the
long run be less costly than the present one. The
details would require careful consideration, but we
should at least rest upon sound economical princi-
ples, if we made our soldiers feel that they had sold
their lives, labour, and skill in the dearest market,
and would get, on the whole, less for them than
in any other. " Pay" is, we all know, a magic
word with a soldier. Ought' it not to be such that
desertion would be its own punishment, and that it
would be the most dreaded penalty for many other
offences, to be turned out of the army for life:
We shall be told, of course, that flogging has a
deterring effect beyond any other punishment. It
would not seem so. The offences thus punishable
have rather increased under it. It seems to have
no effect on the hardened, and others do not need
such a terror. Decent soldiers and sailors, like
other men of their grade, have both their sense of
honour and their dread of the disgrace or of the ur,
pleasantness, of much more civilised punishments.
Moreover, the age of torture is past. We no longer
add bodily pains to punishment. Let Russia,
Austria, Naples, do it—England does it no longer.
Even if a man killed the Sovereign, we should be
content to hang him. 'We must renounce, therefore,
torture in the army, too. The thing has been out
of date since the days of JAMES 11. and JEFFREYS.
Society will not now tolerate punishments at the
sight of which both officers and strong men
sicken and faint.

BRITISH ASSOCIATION..

convoked.

ABERDEEN, WEDNESDAY.

The 28th congress of the British Association was
opened here this evening, when the Prince Consort
assumed the Presidentship, and delivered the inau-
gural address before upwards of 2,000 persons.
His ROYAL HIGHNESS spoke for an hour, and
referring to his presidency, said :—" I felt that I
could, from the peculiar position in which Provi-
dence has placed me, appear as the representative
of that large public which profits by and admires
your exertions ; and I saw, in my acceptance of the
office, the means of which necessarily so few are
offered to her Majesty, of testifying to you, through
the instrumentality of her husband, that your
labours are not unappreciated by your Sovereign,
and that she wishes her people to know this as
well as yourselves."

The following telegrams have been received at
Mr. Reuter's office :

MARSEILLES, SEPT. 14.
Advices have been received from Constantinople
,o the ith instant.
The Sultan nearly lost his life last Saturday.
An lonian captain commanding an English steam-
tug drove his vessel twice against the Imperial
Caique, and the Sultan was saved with great
difficulty. The captain has been arrested, and Sir
Henry Bulwer has assured the Government that
the most searching inquiry shall be made into this
affair.
The Governor of Candia has sent in his resigna-
tion. The smuggling of arms continues there, and
a seizure of a bomb vessel charged with powder

has been made.
The political agitation in Servia is on the increase.
The National Assembly (Skuptschina) has been

VIENNA, SETT• 15.

The Imperial Law Gazette of to-day announces
that the premium on the interest of the National
Loan, falling due in the months of October, Novem-
ber, and December, 1859, has been fixed at 15 per
cent.

PARMA, SEPT. 14.

The Natioral Assembly, in its sitting of to-day,
unanimously voted the confirmation of Signor
Farini as Dictator.
The Assembly further resolved to take into con-
sideration a proposal to authorise the Dictator to
contract a loan, the amount of which remains to be
fixed.

MARSEILLES, SEPT. 14.

A message received from Tunis states that the
Bey of Tunis has been attacked with serious illness,
and the French physician had been summoued to
his aid. A second message received from the above
city states that he had been attacked with erysipe-
las in the left side, but that hopes were entertained
of his recovery.

GIBRALTAR, SEPT. 12.

Advices received from Tangiers state that no
serious disturbances bad taken place in any part of
the territory of Morocco, and that Sidi Mohammed
was on march from Morocco to Fez. Sidi Moham-
med had been proclaimed Emperor at Fez,
Mequinez, Tetuin, and Arabas, and he was about
to be proclaimed Emperor at Tangiers.

TURIN, SEPT. 14.

The deputations from Parma and Modena are
expected here to-morrow. The members of the
Modenese deputation are—Advocate Muratori,
Count Ancini, Professor Zini, Advocate Brizzolari,
Doctor Sacerdoti, and Professor Selmi; and the
Parmesan members are—the Marquis Muschi, Count
Sanvitale, Maestro Verdi, Professor Fiorrozi, and
Marquis Dolsi.
The National Guard will be under arms to wel-
come the above deputations.