The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUNE 26, 1861.

THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 1881.

The Thirty-first Sovereign of the Osman Dynasty
—his Majesty the Sultan-Caliph Abdul-Medjid
breathed his last on the morning of yesterday.
Assassination was once wittily said to be the
natural death of a Russian Autocrat. Premature
decay may be said with equal accuracy to be the
natural death of a Ruler of Turkey. And it has
been well remarked in the instance we are here
referring to as of such recent occurrence, that the
Prince who has but just now expired at Constan-
tinople, died yesterday of old age at thirty-eight !
The existence of a potentate who makes a start in
life at fourteen as the possessor of a Seraglio is
necessarily and to speak plainly, an existence of
precocious and legalized debauchery. The
precocity, in fact, of a career thus inaugu-
rated in boyhood is, by necessity, at once
degrading and enervating. A potentate
lapped thus in luxury from his childhood
upwards has but infinitessimal opportunities for
escape into any higher or purer atmosphere. It
has consequently fallen out thus deplorably with
the Sultan ABDUL-MEDJID. At thirty-eight he
has passed from the world—dying a death of abso-
lute exhaustion. The "sick man" symbolised, not
inaptly in himself, as the ruler of Turkey—the
"sick man," so long trembling between life and
death, has at length, in real earnest, gathered the
diplomatists of Europe about an actual death-bed. It
is just possible that the " SULTAN" may now very ra-
pidly be followed by the " State" of which he was the
Sovereign, that Turkish power may expire as actually
as ABDUL•MEDJID himself has expired. And that
then the Osmanlis may have to re-cross the waters
of the Bosphorus. During now upwards of four
centuries the Turkish power in Christendom has
been nothing less than a flagrant anomaly. The
Christian races of Europe have long felt it to be so.
They have recognised the position of the Mahe
metan empire north of the Bosphorus as an anomaly
at once political, religious, and geographical. Their
jealousy of each other has thus precluded them from
the opportunity—which must otherwise have been
of perpetual recurrence—the often wished for op-
portunity of driving the Turks back into Asia
Minor. England and Austria, France and Russia
have alike been desirous all along of witnessing
or, if possibly, even of aiding in the expulsion of
the followers of MAIIOMET from the soil—as it was
felt even, because of their presence on it—the dese-
crated soil of Christendom. But—expelled the
Turks—what Christian Prince could, without jeo •
pardising the equipoise of the Balance of Power in
Europe, ascend the vacated throne at Constan-
tinople. A Muscovite ? All Western Europe
rushed to arms but seven or eight years ago to
prevent it ! Hence the Crimean War—hence the
deadly and prolonged bombardment of Sebastopol
—hence the loss of 100,000 men and the expendi-
ture of £100,000,000 sterling ! All that—simply
to render impossible the triumphal advance
of the Russian Autocrat, whether by force of
arms or by an union of diplomatic adroitness and
audacity, upon that coveted 7roo MO of every poli-
tical ARCHIMEDES in Christendom, the City of the
Golden Horn, the City once of the Cross, now of the
Crescent, once Byzantine, now Constantinople.
No—the difficulty of selecting a Christian potentate
to preside over a newly-constituted Turkish king-
dom has alone prevented the monarchs of Europe
from putting an end long since to the anomalous
position occupied by a Mahomedan State situated '
upon the south-eastern borders of Christendom.

The disappearance of the late Sultan may again
revive among the Powers of Europe the hope at
last of the long wished-for opportunity. Imme-
diately, of course, there is no sign of its coming.
The result of this death, which took place as
recently as yesterday, appears upon the instant
to be merely a courtly transference of allegiance,
like that which marked the close of a royal life
under the old French monarchy—when the herald
appeared at a window of the Palace of Tuileries
crying out to the populace beneath, "Le Roi est
mort, Vice le Rol. " It is thus apparently at this
moment in Constantinople. The Sultan, ABDUL

MEDJID, is dead—Live the Sultan ABDUL-Aiiz !
The latter:Prince being the youngest brother of the
former, his predecessor. " All is quiet," says the
telegram announcing this event. Yes, it is credible
—" All is quiet"—at Constantinople! But in the
Councils of the various European States ?—at Paris ?
—at Vienna ?—at Berlin ?—at St. James's ?—at
St. Petersburg ? That is a different affair alto-
gether—there the changes of policy caused by the
disappearance of ABDUL-MEDJID from the list of
the European Sovereigns while they may be more
profound, are tolerably certain to be more slow in
manifesting themselves. Meanwhile there are
some particulars in regard to the Life and
Reign of the SULTAN just deceased, which are cer-
tainly not unworthy of particular recollection.
His Life—beginning on the 23d of April, 1823,
and ending on the 25th of June, 1861—exceeded
by just two months and two days a space of thirty-
eight years ; he having been, es we have intimated,
at the close of those thirty-eight years in a state of
premature decrepitude. His Reign—beginning on
the 2d of July, 1839, and ending with his death on
25th of June, 1861—was but one week and two days
short of exactly twenty-two years altogether. A
reign long enough to have enabled a monarch,
gifted with even ordinary powers, for earning tohim-
self a lofty and even enviable reputation.
Especially one who had the eminent advantage
possessed by ABDUL-MEDJID of succeeding to
the throne of his ancestors, upon the demise
of a father Great among the greatest of the
SULTANS of Turkey. ABDUL MEDJID'S father,
the gifted, enlightened, and, in some respects, the
glorious Sultan MAHMOUD 11., had prepared the
way for his successor by the inauguration of many
great political reforms, had actually prepared the
way for his assuming his place among the ranks of
the Constitutional Sovereigns. In the early part of
the young SULTAN'S reign there seemed every rea-
sonable probability of his availing himself of the
opportunity opened up to him by his illustrious
predecessor, MAHMOUD the SECOND. The Tanzi-
mat, or Code of Reform, issued by his Government
opened up a magnificent future to his sove-
reignty. It proved, however, in the end,
as illusory as a mirage. Its golden promise
melted away as so much fairy treasure. The
failure of the reforms of ABDUL-MEDJID may be
attributed entirely to the lack of energy and reso-
lution in an otherwise noble and elevated nature.
That the late SULTAN'S temperament was intrinsi-
cally chivalrous, notwithstanding his physical
enervation, and his political vacillation—the his-
tory of his twenty-two years reign attests, by more
than one touching an d exquisitely beautiful incident.
Witness this his magnanimous determination at the
close of the Hungarian war, when the JEgis of the
SULTAN'S authority was thrown over KOSSUTH
and his heroic compatriots, then threatened by the
united terrors of the Austrian and Russian
Autocracies. Witness this the SULTAN'S spon-
taneous munificence in aiding with his con-
tribution the funds raised for the relief of the
Irish multitude when stricken down by famine and
pestilence. Witness this, moreover, the SULTAN'S
splendid generosity in awarding an estate as a
tribute of admiration to the genius and the valour
of the poet-statesman LAMARTINE! " ABDUL
MEDJID is described," says KNIGHT'S " Encyclo-
paedia," "as somewhat above the middle height ;
slender in early manhood, but now inclining to
corpulence ; slightly marked with the smallpox,
pale, with black beard and moustache, and large
black eyes. In manner he is said to be calm and
mild, with an appearance of settled melancholy." The
present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of
CARLISLE in his " Diary in Turkish and Greek
Waters," p. 62, while describing an interview with
him in 1853, writes :—" The impression his aspect
conveys is of a man gentle, unassuming, feeble,
unstrung, doomed ; no energy of; purpose gleamed
in that passive glance ; no augury of victory sat
on that still brow." This gentle-hearted Turk
(the words sound oddly enough together) having
now passed away, apparently in his prime, really
and truly in his decrepitude, the whole Eastern
Question there appears to be again opening up at
Constantinople.

Under a truly magnificent designation—" The
Most Exalted Order of the Star of India"—her
'Most Gracious Majesty the QUEEN has just " in-
stituted, erected, constituted, created"—(they are
her own words in her Royal notification of the
r fact)—a new Order of Knighthood. The Gazette
of yesterday contained the announcement: And the
establishment of this new Order of Knighthood
for the advantage of Hindostan is of itself an
event of so much importance that we cannot do
better than here repeat the exact words of the
preamble of the Royal notification giving the
announcement. Under date the " India Office,
June 25, 1861," it is said in the London
Gazette of last evening, that " The Queen, being
desirous of affording to the Princes, chiefs, and
people of the Indian Empire, a public and signal
testimony of her regard, by the institution of an
Order of Knighthood, whereby her resolution to
take upon herself the Government of the territories
in India may be comemorated, and by which her
Majesty may be able to reward conspicuous merit
and loyalty, has been graciously pleased, by letters
patent under the Great Seal of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, to institute, erect,
constitute, and create an Order of Knighthood, to be
known by, and have for ever hereafter, the name,
style, and designation of 2he Most Exalted
Order of the Star of India." It is added—" And
to ordain, direct, and appoint, that the said Order
shall consist of the Sovereign, a Grand Master, and
twenty-five Knights, together with such extra and
honorary Knights as her MAJESTY, her heirs and
successors, shall from time to time appoint." Other ,
rules and regulations of the Order being further
given, the new Knights of the Order are then for-
mally enumerated, nominated, and appointed. The
reigning Sovereign of the British Empire being
as a matter of course, ipso facto Sovereign of the
said Most Exalted Order. The Sovereign's Viceroy
in his turn, ipso facto
at Calcutta being, moreover,
Grand Master of the said Order, as well as the First
and Principal Knight. Earl CANNING
at once assumes his post by right at the head of the
stately list,among the number of his brother knights
being :Lord GOUGH, Lord CLYDE,
Lord HARRIS, Sir
JOHN LAWRENCE, Sir JAMES OUTRAM, Sir HUGH
ROSE, Sir GEORGE CLERK, together with his High-
ness the Maharajah DULEEP SINGH, and among
other Maharajahs those of Gwalior, of Cashmere, of
Indore, &c., and amongistill other Oriental potentates
the Guicowar of Baroda, and the Nizam of Hydra-
bad. Long may the Most Exalted Order of the
Star of India shine propitiously over the British
Empire in Hindostan !

For what reason Lord PALMERSTON refrained
from stating, as one of the reasons for sending the
3,000 troops to North America, that Newfoundland
was in such a disturbed state, we are at a loss to
conceive. It could hardly fail to be a reason, if
not the chief reason, and the facts must soon
transpire in England, since wo now have them from
)lonial papers. The politics of Newfoundland are,
of course, known to but very few in England, and
unless they become a cause of local disturbance,

and of expense to us, are likely to remain so ; and
this disturbance appears to have been purely poli-
tical. Religious differences are bitter in the colony,
a large proportion of the inhabitants being Irish
Catholic emigrants, but on this occasion the Catho-
lics, and their most hostile antagonists the Metho-
dists, appear to be united in their anger against
the Government, and the Governor. There had been
a defeat of the Government, a dissolution, and
charges of gross unfairness in arranging the time for
the elections when a large part of the voters,
15,000, it is said, were absent on the seal fishery,
and the rioters thus, practically, disfranchised.
The disturbances at the re-assembling of the
House were so great that troops had to be tele-
graphed for to Halifax. The mob, being armed,
prevented the first who arrived from landing ; but
a larger number arrived and restored order, if not
contentment. The Governor appears to be a very
unpopular and really incompetent man ; but of
course the Duke of NEWCASTLE must see,
as the first thing, to the assertion of legal
authority. With the ample means which
Newfoundland, as well as every other colony,
now has of appeal to the British Parliament,
and the ease and certainty of obtaining all they
could reasonably desire, riotous triumphs over the
local Government are intolerable. Our present
maxims of Colonial Government assure to each
colony all the liberty it wishes. We dislike inter-
fering in their concerns, and have no other wish,
now, than that each of our dependencies should be
independent in the management of its local matters.

Some of the United States papers, however,
point to the state of Newfoundland, as a sort of
" Secession Movement ;" and tell us that New-
foundland is essentially an Irish Catholic colony,
that its people have long desired annexation to
the United States, and that it may be well for Presi-
dent LINCOLN to notice the fact that England was
about to strengthen her defences in North America.
A Newfoundland colonial paper thus comments on
the movements of the troops already in America :
" This movement, we suppose, is in consequence of
the war in the United States; and we suppose the
majority of the troops thus thrown into the colonies
will be concentrated upon the frontier, not only as
a protective force against the Yankees,but also against
those erratic adventurous Britishers along the lines
who sympathise with the Northern States, and are
anxious to join in with their Yankee neighbours to
'seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth.'
Newfoundland, we suppose, will not be
overlooked in this arrangement, it being the actual
key to the Northern continent as Cnba is to the
Southern ; and, in the event of any unforeseen diffi-
culty with the States, would no doubt be taken by
Brother JONATHAN in a twinkling. It would be a
formidable stronghold for him, and most valuable
acquisition ; and with Newfoundland in its posses-
sion, the Northern Republic might sweep the ocean
and defy the world." With such facts before the
Government, and such opinions in circulation, it is
reasonable enough to take the precautions which
Lord PALMERSTON vindicated the other night.
Only we cannot conceive why his Lordship did not
tell us the whole truth.

It is gratifying to see that the wanton charge of
wantonness against a.baronet of high standing, the
details of which we yesterday deemed wholly un-
fit for publication, has utterly broken down. In
our judgment not only propriety forbade the need-
less exhibition of such filthy imaginations, but we
did not, even on the ex parte case, believe a word of
them. We felt satisfied they must be either the
creations of some prurient fancy, or of a wicked
conspiracy, or of both. It seemed to us, whatever
any person might swear to ever so hardly, utterly
impossible that any one but an actual madman, un-
conscious of his doings, could have been guilty of
what certain women swore they witnessed. We
disbelieve the possibility of such acts in the
sight of a street full of people; we should
not have credited them of a half-drunken porter;
but to imagine a gentleman, a man of education, of
high position:in the House of Commons, guilty of
them, did surpass all the credulity there may be in

Our decided judgment is that such charges,
unless the probability of their truth glaringly sur-
passes that of their falsehood, ought never to be
published in their disgusting fulness; if possible, all
advertence to them were better suppressed, at
least till the defence had been heard. This is
due to individuals as well as to public decency.
Any man may have such charges trumped up
against him, if persons can but be found willing to
swear hard enough ; and we think the press is
bound to protect individuals against the
possible machinations of malice, or th inventions
of corrupt minds. We hardly need to say that we
congratulate the hon. member on the complete
break down of the ease, for it broke down by its
own extravagance, as reported yesterday by our
contemporaries, in our opinion. We then thought,
as the magistrate has since stated, "that a man must
have been mad, when the police, soldiers, and the
public were thickly about, to commit such an offence
as alleged, and he did not believe it." To-day the
evidence, some of it volunteered, puts the truth of
the magistrate's first view, and of our own, beyond
doubt.

COMPTON v. COMPTON AND BARING.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR,—Permit me to endorse Mr. Benjamin
Webster's assurance that, in the principal London
theatres, where the English Drama is represented,
it is not the custom to admit " gentlemen" behind
the scenes; but there exists no objection to allow
any number to occupy the stalls, boxes, or any
other part of the theatre in front of the curtain, in
a legitimate way.
Also grant me this opportunity, and at the re-
quest of Mr. Henry Compton of this establishment,
to state that he is not the petitioner in the case,
nor is he in any way connected with
.the above
parties.—l am, &c.,
_ _ _

JOHN B. BUCKSTONE.
Theatre Royal, Haymarket, June 25.

THE NEW LORD CHANCELLOR. The title
selected by the new Lord Chancellor is that of Baron
Westbury, of Westbury, in the county of Wilts. Sir
Richard Bethell was this morning sworn in a member of
the Privy Council, and received the Great Seal from the
hands of her Majesty.
THE POET CLOSE.—After the literary pension
to the Poet• Laureate to the King of Grand Bonny had
been withdrawn, the "poet" wrote a long letter to Lord
Palmerston erston and another to the Earl of Carlisle, who
have
addressed the following replies to his communica-
tions

"Downing-street Juno 3, 1861.
cc am desired by Lord Palmerston to inform you
in reply to your letter of the 30th of May, that if you can
show that you have incurred liabilities in consequence of
the announcement that a pension was to be granted to you,
Lord Parmerston will take into consideration any claim
you may put forward for a donation from the Royal Bounty,
but he can see no reason to alter his decision, and h© must
observe that Lord Carlisle's letter, of which you send a
copy,
pdenoesiosnn.—l
not proavme, that Carlisle recommended you
f
" Vice Regal Lodge, June 4,1801.

" Sir,—l am &sired by the Lord• Lieutenant of Ireland
to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 31st ult.
and in reply to inform you his Excellency thought this
prospectus referred to the publication of your books or to a
private subscription. His Excellency never had thd least
idea that it referred to a pension from the Crown. Of
course, his Excellency's letter must speak for itself, and
have the honour, &c."

Lord Palmerston has since granted Mr. Close a donation
of.£loo from the Royal Bounty.

LATEST NEWS.

DEATH OF THE SULTAN.

CONSTANTINOPLE, TUESDAY, 5.35r,m.
The Sultan died yesterday.
His brother, Abdul Aziz, has succeeded hin.

All is quiet.
Sultan Abdul Meejid Khan, the 31st Scvereign
of the family of Osman, and the 28th fom the
taking of Constantinople, was born on the 23d
April, 1823, and succeeded his father, Sultan
Mahm Koudhan 11., on the 2d July, 1839.

ROME, JU 1%.E 24.

It is asserted that the Duke de Gramnont, the
French Ambassador, will leave for France on the
30th inst. The Pope has sufficiently reccvered to
give audiences ; but he is unable to go out
On the anniversary of his elevation to thi Papacy
his Holiness showed himself at the balcony of the
palace.

BUCHAREST, JUNE 24.

Yesterday the inhabitants, to the Lumber of
40,000, assembled in the " Champ Philarete," and
celebrated the anniversary of the natimal move-
of 1848.

All the persons present signed a petition demand-
ing a union of the Principalities, that Prince Couza
should remain at the head of the State, and that a
new electoral law on the broadest balls should be
proclaimed.
The most perfect order prevailed.
The whole country is disposed to sign the petition.

CASSEL, JUNE 25.

The committee for the examination of the con-
stitution has unanimously resolved to send the
following declaration to the Diet :—" The Chamber
declares itself incompetent to carry on parliamen-
tary business, and is of opinion that a requisition
should be mule to the Elector demanding the re-
establishment of the constitution of 1831."

Tignano, which are said to have been stormed by
the royal troops, twenty of the inhabitants put to
death, and the towns afterwards burned. There is
no :foundation for this story. We have journals
and letters from Naples of four days later date, up
to which time there was not even any disturbance
in those districts. It is a malignant invention of
the enemies of Italy, but not their first, nor will it
be the last.