The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-11 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, MARCH 11.'""'

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
51—highest since noon yesterday.
41—lowest this morning and during the night.
56—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-29.93—a fall of half an inch.
Wiwn, S.W. ; rather fresh, with fine weather.

Few probably of our readers have cared to wade
through the double debate on the affair of the
Charles et Georges. We cannot, however, profess
to be sorry that both Houses of Parliament did
thoroughly discuss the subject. It is in this way
only that Europe can be made rightly to appreciate
the views of Englishmen, and that the violence and
bad faith of the French EMPEROR'S Ministers can
be pilloried as they deserve. Our chief wonder,
indeed, in looking at the papers, and in reading the
explanations and discussions, is that Lord MALMES-
BURY did not better know his men. He dealt with
a set of " ante-chamber" Ministers as if they had
been all gentlemen disciplined to the notions of
honour which surround a lad here, from his entrance
at Eton to his occupying the post of a Secretary
of State. He never imagined that he was
treating with a set of Stock Exchange gamblers,
and of officials accustomed to get all that bullying
would bring them, deeming it little disgrace if,
compelled by justice and by the self-possession of
an antagonist, to eat their words. It is here that
we chiefly blame Lord MALMESBURY. Count
WALEWSKI had been induced to accept arbitra-
tion under the 23d protocol of Paris; a protocol
of which he was the author ; a protocol pre-emi-
nently reasonable in itself; a protocol peculiarly
dispute was between a weak
applicable when the
and a strong Power; and yet in this very affair
of the arbitration Count WALEWSKI perpetrated
a gross fraud on the too unsuspecting English
Foreign Secretary. Lord MALMESBURY, not dream-
ing of any FOG and DODSON practice in the matter,
simply instructed our Ambassador at Lisbon to
support the French proposal ; meantime WALEwsKI
had substituted a gilt sovereign for a gold one.
He had changed the arbitration from one on the
merits of the case—from an arbitration on all that
concerned the honour of Portugal—to an arbitration
about the amount of indemnity ! Should it be, say,
a couple of thoust, nd pounds, or a few shillings less !
I. AVALEWSKI had, of course, learned in the school
of the. Bourse, with the Bulls and the Bears for his
teachers. Portugal had learned in another school,
and indignantly rejected the proposal. We have
said we cannot acquit Lord MALMESBURY of
neglect or oversight. If a man must be
amongst thimble-riggers and sharpers, he is
bound to keep his eyes open and his pockets
buttoned--and Lord MALMESBURY did neither. He
would not have been so tricked, we believe, by a
NESSELRODE, a METTERNICH, a BUOL, not even
by an ANTONELLI ; but how could he imagine
himself safe in the hands of the gentry who had

lured Lord PALMERSTON to his fall, and who have
done Lord MAL3IESBURY and the Cabinet to which
he belongs no little injury?

We do not see why any one needs doubt Lord
MALMESBURY'S good will to Portugal, but it was a
sleepy good will ; neither need we imagine him
indifferent to the honour of England in a contro-
versy with French Ministers ; he could not
well forget that he stepped into Lord CLA-
RENDON'S place last year just because the
latter had notoriously failed to sustain his coun-
try's honour against the fire-eating colonels
and a bullying count. But he did not, unfortu-
nately, perceive how deeply our honour was at
stake. We had induced the Portuguese Govern-
ment to make strenuous exertions, and strict regu-
lations, for the suppression of the slave trade, in
any form, on the east coast of Africa. Portugal
had had no little trouble with some of her own
unfaithful servants there ; and now, just as she had
compelled these servants to act with vigour, some
French smugglers of human flesh and blood were
caught by the Portuguese, flagrante delicto—for
such was the fact. If ever there was a case in
which a mighty old ally was bound to strain every
nerve in aid of its weaker ally, here was
one. Lord MALMESBURY not only failed to do
this, but he allowed Count WALEwslii to
practise all kinds of diplomatic knavery with Portu-
gal, and finally to implicate the French Government
beyond the possibility of dignified retreat, either
without notice, or with but the feeblest remon-
strance ! He let France place herself in the posi-
tion of a highwayman towards Portugal, and then
whispered to the latter, " to avoid being shot, you
had better give up your purse."
It is, of course, mortifying that the Foreign
Minister who handled so properly the King of
NAPLES, should have been so perfunctory, if not
timid, in regard to the French EMPEROR. It would
of course have been unwise to get up a European
war because France made unjust demands, in a
case like this, on Portugal ; but timely firm-
ness would have prevented all that have
saved the honour of England, and ward
off from Portugal a flagrant wrong. At the
commencement of the affair Lord MALMESBURY
might have apprised the French Government that
our relations with Portugal, as an old ally, and as
a weaker power, whom we had induced to take
ergetic measures in regard to the slave trade,
compelled us to regard very sensitively the position
of Portugal in a case of suppressing the slave trade.
Whatever the faults of the EMPEROR, he has shown
no unwillingness to respect the necessities of our
position. Had his Ministers been, with due diplo-
matic politeness of course, warned not to commit
themselves till he and we understood each other,
all must have ended well. Neglect of doing this
is the head and front of Lord MALMESBURY'S offend-
ing. No one, not Portugal herself, would have
wished us to make the dispute into a casus bent'.
The error was in allowing France, unwarned, to
make it so with Portugal.
The Ministerial plea that " all is well that ends
well"—that the EMPEROR has now suppressed the
traffic—will not quite do. We are all, of course,
glad of such a result. It only shows, however,
what might have been done had Lord MALMES-
BURY but acted in time. A little more promptness
on his part might have saved France the indelible
disgrace of overbearing violence towards a
small nation in refusing all appeal to arbitra-
tion, and resorting to brute force, and Por-
tugal the painful feeling of being wronged by
a stronger neighbour, and deserted by a yet
stronger ally, and England the dishonour of ap-
pearing to succumb to Count WALEWSKI, and to
accept as a favour afterwards the abolition of the
French slave trade.

Precisely, at one of the most startling moments
that could well have been selected for the date of
its transpiring—a most romantic incident has just
now come to light at Quemistown. Recollect, for
an instant, the peculiar conjuncture at this time, in
regard to our own national interests ; and yet more
remarkably, if possible, in regard to the interests
more or less of entire Christendom. The incident
we are going to specify then comes to light, ex-
actly at the period when the political orb of Europe
is hardly less threatening than a bombshell charged
with detonating powder, with a fuzee burning
slowly down to the point of ignition ! Meanwhile
at home here, we are in the crisis of a party con-
test upon the irritating theme of a series of Parlia-
mentary reforms involving a comprehensive reor-
ganization of our whole representative system, and
with it, possibly, the entire reconstruction of Her
MAJESTY'S Government. Abroad—the European
powers appear to be mustering their forces, and
marshalling them into opposing ranks, preparatory
to a life and death struggle for supremacy. At
home—our leading statesmen seem no less deter-
minedly to be gathering their forces together with
a like intent ; ac ceptiug, at last, as the convenient
battle-ground of party, the hitherto evaded ques-
tion of Parliamentary Reform. At this imminent
period, during the first momentary truce conse-
quent upon the postponement, yet awhile, of the
second reading of the Government measure, the
isle is startled from its propriety by a very un-
wonted occurrence, which, as we have said, trans-
pires precisely when the public mind is agitated
by so many conflicting interests.
In the midst of the stormy discussions in the
Lords and Commons upon the case of the
Charles et Georges ! In the thick of all
the warlike rumours coming to us from
the direction of Turin, of Paris, and of
Vienna ! Simultaneously with the resignation of
the Prince Minister of Algeria, with the return of
the right hon. member for Oxford University from
Corfu, with the progress of Lord COWLEY'S mis-
sion to the Austrian Government ! Exactly at this
very moment of varied hope, anxiety, and trepida-
tion, an incident takes place on the high seas that,
really and truly, reads less like the account of an
actual occurrence in the spring of 1859, than like
an episode taken from a romance by Mrs. RAD-
CLIFFE, or a stray chapter from the autobiography
of BENVENUTO.

Allusion is here made of course to the escape of
POERIO and his patriot companions. Their ro-
mantic
recollections
history will henceforth live in the popular
of Italy, together with that of the
rapid rise and fall
of
MASANIELLO-withthee the
p a t
hfiesthi
ce r mn
aann. a
toifv
eo f Amalfi,the
incarceration of StLvm PELLico--with the record
of the vicissitudes ofPEPE atNaples, or of MANRIN
achieved
and stirring annals
at Venice—with the picturesque
by the bold hand
of the deeds of prowess a
and heart of the last of the great condottieri,
General GARIBALDI.
The previous history of CARLOS POERIO and his
fellow-sufferers we all know too familiarly. Their
protracted sufferings require here no detailed reca-
pitulation. Those sufferings, we need only recal to
mind, have been extended over a period of ten
years—the ten years last passed. Confined during
'those ten years in the Neapolitan prisons,
they were at length " pardoned " by the
State at the close of that extended period
of incarceration. Deported from their native
country on board a Neapolitan transport,
they were conveyed in the first instance by

that means to Cadiz. The/ -e, at the end of about 1
three weeks, they were tr ansfercd in the bay of
Cadiz to the American s hip David Stewart, 674
tons, Captain PRENTISSf bound originally for Bal-
timore. This American vessel—leaving one-third
of its freight as a guarantee for the faithful per-
formance of the contract entered into by its
American captain—was chartered to convey the
Italian exiles, sixty-six men, one woman, and two
children from Cadiz to New York, there to land
them on the shores of the New World, giving to
each at the moment of release 120 dollars to
begin life anew beyond the wide -waste of the
Atlantic. Towed out from Cadiz, two hundred
miles to sea, by the Neapolitan war-steamer the
Stromboli, the American ship with its sixty-nine
but with a crew numbering only seven-
teen in ,
all, was cast off by the Stromboli, and so
Iletfrilitwanitsha fair wind from the east to find its way
in due (!ourse to its remote destination.

It is not very wonderful surely that the sixty-
six men of this historical group of exiles, worn out
by ten years' imprisonment, and wearied very
recently by two or three weeks' voyage, deter-
mined they would not be dragged across the
whole width of the Atlantic Ocean against
their owl( will by a crew of seventeen. The dis-
proportion of numbers rendered the Neapolitans
supreme in the argument. The captain might
demur—did demur—refused to change his course,
as desired, from the United States to the United
Kingdom. No matter. The Italians, if needs
were, would work the ship themselves. Besides—
was there not an additional surprise in store for
the American skipper ? A handsome young
stripling suddenly throws off the disguise of one of
Captain PRENTIS's own crew—and appears (conside-
rably to his personal advantage, we learn) clad in
a blue frock coat with gilt buttons, gold cap-band
&c., in fact, the uniform of a mate of one of the
Galway line of steamers. He is the son of LUIGI
SETTEMBRINI, one of the most conspicuous and
important of the exiles. It is young RAFFAELE
SETTEMBRINI, who, while really and truly acting
as a mate of the Galway line of steamers, receives
tidings of his father's conditional pardon, and of
his proposed destination, and who thereupon hastens
to the Spanish seaport, and under the disguise of a
sailor before the mast, appears—decidedly the
right man in the right place, and what is more
just at the right moment, on board the American
ship David Stewart, of Baltimore.
The result of all this is very naturally the ap-
pearance the other day in the Cove of Cork of the
over-mastered captain and crew with the mutinied
Italian passengers. The joy of the latter on land-
ing at Queenstown is like that manifested by
COLUMBUS when he first planted his glorious foot
upon the soil of San Salvador. They spring
on shore—they kneel and kiss the ground
where they stand for the first time, after so many
years, erect as freemen. Is it not a vivid reminis-
cence of that immortal outburst of eloquence from
the lips of a native of that Irish soil—a reminder
of those sublime words of CURRAN—" I speak in
the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty
commensurate with, and inseparable from, British
soil—which proclaims even to the stranger and the
sojourner the moment he sets his foot upon British
earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy
and consecrated by the genius of universal emanci-
pation. No matter in what language his doom
may have been pronounced—no matter what com-
plexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or
an African sun may have burnt upon him—no
matter in what disastrous battle the helm of his
liberty may have been cloven down—no matter
with what solemnities he may have been devoted
upon the altar of slavery—the moment he touches
the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god
sink together in the dust ; his soul walks abroad in
its own majesty; his body swells beyond the mea-
sure of his chains, which burst from around him,
and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disen-
thralled by the irresistible genius of universal
emancipation !" Happier years, let us hope now,
are in store for the Italian exiles but just now so
strangely and happily landed at Queenstown.
Whatever course may thence befollowed by his com-
panions, it appears that the chief among them all,
the Baron CARLOS POERIO, is himself bent upon
hastening forthwith to Turin—to be ready for any
emergency. Thither—to Turin—has already has-
tened GARIBALDI. It is like the mustering to the
sound of the trumpet in Sardinia.

A NEIV CLASS OF REPRESENTATIVES.

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THE SUN.
FRIDAY. MARCH 11, 1859.