The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-14 00:00:00

WESTMINSTER.

A DESPERATE ATTACK.—William Scammerton, a
sturdy-looking fellow, 15 years of age, was charged
with attempted pocketpicking, and also with the
most desperate conduct.
Mr. Hall, Camberwell, civil engineer, said that at
7 o'clock last night he was in Euston-street, Pim-
lico, when he felt a tug at his coat pocket, and,
turning round, found the priscner alone near him.
Prosecutor had a heavy pocketbook and valuables
in his pocket, and, turning round to the prisoner,
said, " You young rascal, you are trying to pick
my pocket." Upon which the prisoner used the
most revolting language, and then slunk away.
Prosecutor remained some minutes until the arrival
of a policeman, and then, finding the prisoner, gave
him into custody, when he made a desperate resist-
ance, and, calling to some companions to rescue
him, said—" He has got me for dipping.' 77 The
policeman was then violently attacked, and the re-
sult was that two other persons were also taken into
custody.
Mr. Selfe—What is meant by " dipping ?"
The Policeman—lt's the last new word--it means
picking pockets.
Daniel McCarthy and Thomas Walker, two
other young men, were then placed at the bar,
charged with attacking the police.
Peter Smith, a detective officer, said that Hearn-
merton was given into custody was attempting to
pick pockets. He had no sooner secured the pri-
soner than he was furiously attacked by McCarthy
and -Walker and several others, and severely beaten.
It was urged that Hearnmerton was a very re-
spectable boy employed at gas works, and his fore-
man was called, who proved that he had borne a
a very good character for honesty and industry, and
was going to school when apprehended, not being
near the prosecutor.
Mr. Selfe thought there was a mistake in the
identity of Hearnmerton, who was discharged with-
out imputation. McCarthy was fined 10s. or seven
days, and there being a doubt about Walker he was
discharged.

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JON, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 14, 180 G.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

HEBALD.—Mr. Lowe has entitled himself to the
thanks of the house and the country by his prompt
and indignant protest against the mode of waging
political warfare which has come in with the new
Reform Bill. Subtle philosophers and casuistic
theologians have, it is' true, taken a wonderful deal
of pains to settle the boundaries of the border-
land which lies between truth and falsehood ; to
distinguish the relative culpability of the suppressio
cert and the suggestio falsi, and to make verbal ac-
curacy do duty for substantial unveracity. But,
though the lucubrations of these ingenious writers
have cost them a great deal of labour, we doubt
whether they ever gained many converts, except
among those who had their own reasons for wishing
to find, in mental reservation or partial quotation, a
somewhat euphemistical expression for deliberate
falsification. The notion that language was made
to conceal and not to disclose ideas may have
seemed very attractive to the statesman who ex-
pressed it, but it has never found favour among
Englishmen, who rather pride themselves on calling
a spade a spade, and saying what they mean with
an outspoken frankness which implies a belief that
others will deal with them in an equally candid
fashion. But on Thursday night Mr. Lowe com-
plained, with great justice, of a departure from
this principle' by the three members of the Legis-
lature who are generally supposed to have had
most to do with the concoction of the Reform
Bill. Earl Russell, who suggested it ; Mr. Glad-
stone, who introduced it; and Mr. Bright, who
inspired it, have alike endeavoured to damage the
reputation of its most vigorous assailant by an
artifice at once un-English and unparliamentary.
Still, it would be unfair to deny to the Gover-
ment the credit of adopting means attractive for their
simpl:city, and for the readiness with which a cheap
and temporary triumph may thereby be assured.
They had only to select a passage from the middle
of their adversary's speech, and by quoting it
withoutits context to alter its effect as completely
as if they bad supplied the words from their own
imaginations. Our readers may remember a
passage in the Psalms in which David,
by an ingenious device of this kind
may be made to profess the most unqualified
atheism, and as everybody knows you need only
drop a word from a negation to make it express the
very opposite of, what its author intended. That
any English politician should adopt this kind of
strategy is somewhat surprising; but that three
persons, each in a prominent position in his peculiar
party, should have stooped to it, is as remarkable
as it is humiliating. Of course the original sin of
the misrepresentation of which Mr. Lowe com-
plained lies at the door of Mr. Bishop, and the 60
free, independent, and advanced Liberal electors of
Calne, who memorialised their erring representative
on the freedom with which he had spoken. " You
were sent to Parliament," they say, "to represent
this borough as a Liberal, and now you are found
running from your allegiance to the Liberal cause."
You charged the working man with venality, igno-
rance, drunkenness, and intimidation ; with being
unreflecting, impulsive, and violent. Terrible Mr.
Lowe ! We, the selected sixty and one in whom
are centred the public spirit and pure patriotism of
the borough of Calne, feel bound to protest against
your reactionary utterances, lest the wicked world
should think that we countenance you in your ca-
lumniations of those whom the Cabinet has chosen
for admission " within the portals of the constitu-
tion." To this remonstrance Mr. Lowe replied by
pointing out the error into which his accusers had
fallen. lie showed that they had cut off the begin-
ning and end of the sentence they had quoted, and
thus had converted a well-merited censure on a
certain portion of the borough voters into a sweep-
ing and indiscriminating condemnation of the
working classes. Without getting at all angry it
was easy for Mr. Lowe to refute the reasoning of
Mr. Bishop by a reference to the words of his
speech, and to rebut the imputation of unfaithful-
ness to the trust the electors had reposed in him
by reminding his accusers of the election address
he had, issued, and the hustings speech he had
-delivered when he last stood before them as a can-
didate for their suffrages. But it was more difficult
for him to speak temperately of those who adopted
Mr. Bishop's tactics without Mr. Bishop's excuse.
The local Liberal may be forgiven for embracing
his first and probably his only opportunity of ac-
quiring notoriety beyond the boundaries of his own
borough, and he may also plead that criticising
parliamentary speeches, and calling members to
account, are not very much in his way. But his
imitators have no right to shelter themselves under
these excuses. Mr. Bright knew what he was
doing when, in his speech at Rochdale, he substi-
tuted the words, " the unrepresented classes," for
those in which Mr. Lowe had described the lowest
portion of the existing constituencies; and so did
Earl Russell, when perfectly well aware of the
purport cf the published reply to the memorial, his
lordship chose to garble Mr. Lowe's speech exactly
as it had been previously garbled by Mr. Bishop.
But Mr. Gladstone's offence was the most serious.
Into a debate on a grave organic change in the
Constitution he was the first to introduce the ele-
ment of personality, and he immensely aggravated
his offence against good feeling and good taste by
the time and manner of its commission. Selecting
the same sentence as his chief, he deliberately im-
puted to it a sense which the honourable member
who used it had already distinctly disavowed, and
thus brought upon himself a richly merited rebuke
for the " gross, systematic, and wilful perversion of
language" to which he had resorted.

ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES.—The United States
Congress has been asked, and the Lower House has
agreed, to appropriate one hundred thousand dollars
for the purpose of enabling the American people to
put in an appearance at the French Exposition of
1867, but this proposal has been met in Congress
by a very powerful opposition. The jealousy of the
agricultural Western States crops out and says,
with a spasm of economy, that the country cannot
afford this extravagance ; that she has enough to
do to pay her debts, without incurring new and un-
necessary ones, and that the Western States have
no interest in this show business, and will not con-
sent to an investment of the national funds in it.
Economy is always a powerful argument. As
there are no people on the face of the earth
more careless of money and more extravagant than
the Americans, so there are none more ready to
open their ears and draw down their faces at the
merest suggestion of economy. But there is a
homely adage about " the spiggot and the bung-
hole," which has frequent application among nations
as well as individuals. We shall certainly not be
accused of prejudice against the American people;
on the contrary, we are too often charged with the
disposition to cloak their shortcomings ; but we
must utter our protest against the penny-wise-and-
pound-foolish economy which has always been one
of their most unfortunate characteristics. Th e
President of the United States receives a salary
scarcely adequate to the respectable maintenance of
a London police magistrate ; and the Ambassadors
sent from America to represent the Great Republic
at foreign Courts are provided with a new suit of
clothes and a miserable allowance of pocket-
money, scarcely adequate to purchase the necessaries
of life. It is this short-sighted " economy" that in
times past scattered a dozen American vessels of
war over the whole watery face of the globe, and
left the American flag unprotected in seven-tenths
of its foreign stations ; it is this that would refuse
to the industrial interests of that great and growing
country the opportunity of honourable display in
comparison and competition with those of European
nations. It is urged by the opponents of the grant of
one hundred thousand dollars for the purposes of the
Paris Exposition that itis better for Americans to
stay at home, ,repair the damages of war, and
achieve new triumphs of industrial skill, rather
than to fritter away the public money in an exhibition
of their inventions among a people who are jealous of
their progress, and alarmed at their national growth.
But they should re member that if they go to Paris
next year, they will carry with them, not the fruits
of a cycle of peace and prosperity, but crops
gathered from the broken and desolated fields of
war. They will manifest the power and fertility of
the American people tested at the most unfavourable
time. They will show France and England that,
powerful as the Americans have proved themselves
in war, they have not forgotten the genius of the
inventor or the cunning of the artisan. They will
tender to Europe the gauge of friendly rivalry, and
tell them, through their fabrics and their machinery,
that they intend to dissolve the bond of dependence
which has made them so long the servants of manu-
facturing nations, and that thenceforth they are de-
termined to produce all the fruits of intelligent in-
dustry that the physical conditions in which they
live render possible and expedient. Civilisation
has taught the American people that contact
strikes out knowledge as the flint strikes out
fire; that the interchange of thought and its pro-
ducts is as profitable as the interchange of articles
of trade. Almost every civilised country on the
globe will have an official agent at Paris next year,
and will add its contribution to the Exhibition of
Human Industry. But we feel sure that the Great
Republic will be represented there—not meanly and
niggardly, but grandly and nobly. Mr. J. C.
Derby, the United States Agent at New York
for the Exposition, announces that he has
already received more than fourteen hundred
articles for exhibition, and the number is rapidly
increasing. The
.entries are of things in which
Americans feel a national pride, and which will be
creditable to them as a nation. The New England
States, with the shrewdness that has been the
secret of their industrial success, make the largest