The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-30 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAY—Morn., 10 min. aft. 12 —Even. 34 min. aft. 12
Te.Monnow—Morn., 1 min. aft. I—Even., 24 mln aft. 1

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, NOVEMBER 29.
Tagaidova rpm, IN Tlift SU-WE.
47—highest since noon yesterday.
42--lowest this morning and daring the night.
47 —this day at noon.
BAROMETER. 30.14—falling.
Wynn,
weithoi, and Northli
ght rainasterly • rather fresh, with *dull heavy
s.'

NOVEMBER 30.
4a---wheats4 nce noon yesterday.
i morning and during the night,
45—this day at noon.

BA.IIOMITIR, 29.92.
D, S.E. ; fresh, with dull weather.

*-1
Q•
. _ •

sults. England has ample reason to be proud of

her gallant soldiers. All have nobly discharged
their arduous duties. No selfish or dastardly
feeling prevailed, and nothing but the irresistible
prestige attached to our arms could have carried
the men through the more than Herculean labours
they encountered, and which they carried to so
glorious an issue.

"Lucknow" is naturally the word that rises
on every lip. The headquarters of the rebellion
have been transferred from Delhi to Oude. Agra
has been completely relieved, thanks to the gal-
lant GREATHED and his protecting and avenging
column. The fugitives there may be considered
as perfectly secure. But, although we feel just
reliance on the chivalrous warrior who conducted
his faithful Highlanders through so many difficul-
ties—who relieved the Residency against such
overwhelming odds —we cannot say that
Lucknow is yet secure. Judging from
what has already been accomplished, we
may, however, entertain well-founded antici-
pations that all will be right eventually, and that
HAVELOCK and OUTRAN., with GREATHED, their
efficient coadjutor, will leave nothing to be de-
sired. We cannot expect to obtain everything at

a moment's notice, and certainly the state of
affairs is very far better than it had been at any
period since the first mutinous demonstration.
But, although matters are thus fortunately
circumstanced, we may, and Parliament must,
inquire how it happened that the necessary
reinforcements were so long delayed—that these
fearful perils were sustained, and India saved
before the arrival of a single soldier from England I
It certainly was not the fault of " the Fourth
Estate." With scarcely an exception, the public
journals of all classes and varieties of political opi-
nions faithfully discharged their duty. There was
nothing wanting on their part. They urged the
dispatch of troops by -the overland route and
Government steamers. But rcd•tapism prevailed !
Sir CHARLES WOOD could not endure any infrac-
tion of routine. He was devoted to the Cape
route and sailing vessels, and all the improve-
ments of the present century were repudiated by
the obstructor-general. Lord ELPHINSTONE strove
to stimulate the Governor-General to action ; but
there " was no hurry"—nothing requiring extraor-
dinary speed or energy.
Lord CANNING was a worthy coadjutor of the
First Lord of the Admiralty, and thus it happened
that the fearful danger was occasioned. It can-
not, however, stop here. A stringent inquiry
must be instituted into the conduct of some of the
Queen's bad bargains.

Delhi was completely our own ; and Captain
HODSON, who was fortunate enough to capture
the Brummagem 11locum and his turbulent sons
and grandsons, had displayed the highest zeal
and enthusiasm. His promptitude in inflicting
well-merited punishment on these miscreants, and
preventing the possibility of their escape, either
through sympathising rebels or lenient civilians,
is worthy of the greatest praise. He exhibited
all through a total indifference to danger,
similar to that by which our HAVELOCKS, NICHOL-
SONS, NEILLS, GREA.THEDS, and SALXELDS have
made their names illustrious in the national
archives. And we earnestly hope that he may
receive a fair share of the honours to be bestowed
on those who have so well merited them.

It was reasonably expected that GREATHED
would be enabled to join his forces with those of
HAVELOCK and 01:1TRAM, at Lucknow, by the 30th
of October, and with such a triumvirate at the
head of seven thousand soldiers, there was nothing
that could not be achieved. From Delhi to Agra
was clear. Cawnpore was all right. Colonel
WiLsox had defeated the rebels at Bithoor, and
destroyed the residence of the infamous NANA
SAHIB. All looks favourable, and we trust that
the next mail will dispel any anxiety or uneasiness
that may still be entertained respecting Lucknow,
its helpless fugitives, and its truly noble garrison
and their relievers.

Between the blunder of the Emperor of the
FRENCH and the plausibilities of the Times, it
looks almost as if we were really to have a bona
fide revival of the traffic in negroes. When the
Tuilleries and Printing-house-square combine, it
is time for those who do not relish the object of
the conspiracy to bestir themselves. Hence the
late deputation to Lord CLARENDON. Louis
NA rorsEois has had, we believe, without
the wish to possess it, the honour of
resuscitating the slave trade by France ;
and his ally of the press in England has the
honour, which it has accepted with its eyes open,
of writing up the cause of buying Africans, "in
the cheapest market " we suppose, and liberating
them„-under the name of apprentices, in the
dearest.

Our readers will remember that the French
EMPEROR granted a concession to a Monsieur
REGIS, at Marseilles, to ship, under cer-
tain utterly futile restrictions, as many
bodies and souls of Africans as he could find
money to purchase, and take them off to the
French sugar plantations. It was cleverly done,
for when our Government drew attention to
the consequences, the Imperial word was past.
Probably it seemed to the EMPEROR nothing very
outrageous to permit the deportation of natives of
the tropics to another part of the torrid zone, there
to enjoy such liberty as the weak and ignorant could
possess in the hands of the strong and intelligen'.
He had had no particular objection to deportation
to tropical swamps of thousands of his own coun-
trymen, guilty of no crime whatever-•-tt least of
none greater than men are here, who believe in
the five points of the Charter. Plenty of mer•
cantile sophisms were no doubt ready for the ear
of the autocrat, and, above all, the pleasant
assurance that planters in distant colonies would
bless the name of the Emperor for Blacks put
into their hands, to use pretty nearly as they
pleased, in growing colonial produce.

Our English contemporary, however, has not
witnessed, in its own recollection, the transplant-
ing even of our felons to tropical plantations,
there to grow us sugar, coffee, and tobacco, and
at the cost of their lives. Here we paid twenty
millions to the bankrupt West Indian slaveholders,
and still pay more than half-a-million a-year inte-
rest for it. Besides that, we have paid to sup-
press the traffic nearly the same sum annually.
Altogether we pay nearly a million a-year to be
rid of slavery and the slave-trade, and now
-EXPERTIIS, in large type in the Times, and the
Times in large type itself, more than hint to us,
pointing at the French and M. Regis, that we
should go and do likewise. There is one little
difficulty in the way to be sure—that the Eng-
lish public will not have it. They may be, as
he maintain, pseudo-philanthropists, fooIR,
blockheads, or any thing else in the ' eyes
of EXPERTUS, still it is the plain fact
that Englishmen will not have it. A whim, a
craapterdicein, ntoiewhtn doubt;i, but if JONATHAN is to be tale-
why not JOHN BULL be borne
with in his ; ani Jourr 13tmr, has a very decided
love of freedom, and an equal hatred of fetters
and cat-o'-nine-tails ; and his hatred takes the
seemingly noble and generous if ever so foolish form
of liking even Blacks to be as free as himself. And
we would rather, as the old phrase runs, err with

Join i BULL, than be right with J ONATIIA.N, the
Times and ExPERTurs, and with French merchants
and Emperors too.
There is another practical hitch. Lord PAL-
MBRSTON is a perfect JOHN BULL on this point. If
ho have earnest convictions and sentiments on any
subject it is just on this one of the slave trade. He
would not mind a tussle with any Power to sustain
his anti-slavery reputation. His heart would be
in it, and while he is at the helm, EXPERTUS may
whistle for his purchased Africans, unless, indeed,
he were willing to ornament the yard-arm of some
of her Majesty's cruisers, or of their prizes. And
not only that, but any successor to Lord PALMER-
STON might as well quit office at once as bring in
a bill for the purchase of Africans, to be liberated
(if liberty it could be called), as indentured ap-
prentices to West India planters. No statesman
could be found hero who would compromise his
position for a moment by a step which would call
forth at once enthusiastic opposition-meetings in
every town in the kingdom. We feel ourselves,
therefore, quite safe against what we are told by
the oracle is the least of two evils.
Bat is it so ? There is another oracle to which
we all profane men, as professional politicians must
be, yet accord a decent respect, which tells us "not
to do evil that good may come," and pronounces
that " the damnation is just" of those who do.
Now it does look something like an e►il to go to
the coast of Africa, to take them gay cotton
fabrics, gay beads, and the like, and, of course,
a fair proportion of powder and ball and mus-
kets, and inform the petty princes there that
all these will we give them if they will only give
us negroes in exchange. These chiefs are begin-
ning to grow us now vast quantities of palm oil
and other produce. They will be equally ready,
if we go the right way to work with them, to grow
us cotton, when we might want a few millions
less accommodation from our Bank, and stave
off a crisis a year or two longer, even with our
ricketty old Bank Act-. All this is, however, to
be given up by them for the profitable, exciting,
and pleasant amusement of negro-hunting. Mid-
night forages, village burning's, killing women,
babes, and old men, and seizing the saleable per•

sons and hurrying them off to the slave barra

coons, is to be again the order of the day. Eng-
land is to aid in turning Africans into demons,
and for what ? because Jamaicl planters are
perverse and thriftless.

1 We believe that after all the complaints from
Jamaica, the chief complainer of our former
slave colonies, the real fault lies not
with the negroes, but with their masters.
When the twenty millions was paid the island
was bankrupt. The smallest fraction of the
money went there, the GLADSTONES and other
English mortgagees or proprietors pocketed the
money by tens and hundred of thousands, and
the island was left penniless. Its lands had been
ruinously exhausted by the improvident cultiva-
tion of silvery—indeed, as OLMSTED shows in the
United States, slave cultivation always leaves the
land exhausted, the greater part of Virginia
itself being now like a primeval forest ; and

it is no wonder if Jamaica became the
same. The estates were abandoned, first,
because they were too worn out to be cultivated,
except by considerable outlay, and next because the
money which England voted under the idea of
supplying a labour-fund in Jamaica was all ab-
lsorbed in England. Added to this, the planters
had too much pride to pay the negroes decent
wages. They could not brook the sight of an inde-
pendent peasantry where they had been accustomed
to flog them at pleasure, and they both mulcted
the slave in wages and in taxes on imported
provisions. QUASHEIN very naturally took to
squatting, ficding he could grow enough to eat,
and to buy all the clothing needed with the ther-
mometer at 100 deg. or more in the shade—he
very naturally took care of himself, and left his
closefisted and tyrannical old master to do the
same.

From the accounts of intelligent Americans, as
well as Englishmen, who have visited the Island,
we believe that nothing is wanted now but a fair
amount of capital and skill, to make Jamaica
really "the gem of the Antilles." At present it
has a perverted and antiquated Government, no
capital, no enterprise, tools of the rudest descrip-
tion ; vegetation there responds to irrigation as
it does in India, and indeed everywhere in the
tropics ; but, though we hear of droughts, we
never hear of attempts to preserve the water o
the deluging tropical rains. The real want is
money and brains. Labourers are already there,
and cheap enough if made the best of ; what is
wanted is not kidnappers of fresh negroes, but
men who have the sense to stimulate the industry
of the negroes already in the island.

The organ of " the hard calculators"—we shall
no longer term them t` bullionists"—is displaying
intense disappointment at the failure of the designs
of the money-lending fraternity. It was too bad
that the panic was not permitted to take its
course, and properties sacrificed to the full extent
of the wishes of these parties. It tells us that in
1841 Consols went down to 79. Here, then, was
an opportunity lost. The hard-fisted gentry might
have made nearly 10 per cent. more than they were
enabled to do. They could not loot (as the hor-
rible Sepoys term it) to tho anticipated extent,
and those who hoarded their gold, who would not
purchase at the depreciated prices actually pro-
duced, lost the golden opportunity. The public
were relieved before there was a general sacrifice
of property and a transfer of trading capital to
the money-lenders. For once they " missed
their tip," or at least di4 not perform
the feat so cleverly as they had anticipated.
In one point respecting the Bank Charter Act,
mirabile dicta, we fully concur with the hard
calculator of Printing-house-square. We believe
that it would be far better that the act should be
entirely abrogated, than that it should be kept
up until it had produced misery and distress
amongst the trading and manufacturing in-
terests, and then be suspended just at the
moment that the Bank itself required as-
a stance to save it from a very disreputable
failure. If based on sound principles, it would
have been good under any circumstances that
could arise, "for everything or nothing." Twice,
however, has it endangered the boasted principle
of convertibility—twice has it brought the Bank
to the verge of closing its doors and refusing cash
payuient. We cannot, therefore, be again sub-
jected to the false and frivolous pretences on
which it was originally introduced. It was not
merely to ensure convertibility at all times, but to
make money, or rather currency, scarce and dear,
to enable designing men to create a panic,
so that they might deprive others of their pro-
perty at little more than half its value. It is, in
fact, the very antithesis of free trade, preventing
the operation of credit in the most important
paint, and paralysing industry. We have
always perceived that the object was to
iuttoduce "a purely metallic currency," as
the Times is pleased to designate it. But
it was impossible to do so. The enormous amount
of taxation, the terrible In trden of the public debt,
and the great amount of. commercial transactions,
prevent the possibility of carrying out the