The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-16 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, WEDNESDAY, lAN. 16, 1881.

There is but one party in England on the sub-
ject of personal slavery. We may hope there is
but one party in Canada also. The popular feeling
is at least as strong there as here ; the meetings
held on the subject of ANDERSON'S committal, and
the memorial to the Home Government suffi-
ciently prove that. If there be any indifference in
a few hearts, or any crotchets in a few minds
through which a fugitive slave would be allowed
to be reclaimed without emotion, or as a ques-
tion of dry law, this is but parallel with what we
have at home in the persons of retired West India
attorneys, or planters, and their immediate connec-
tions, and possibly here and there a legal stoic. The
latter, however, we imagine are very rare. Our law-
yers are not believers in personal bondage. The writ
of habeas corpus is one of their boasts. The decision
therefore of the Queen's Bench yesterday will be
received in every part of England with the same
pleasure which it gave to every individual in court.

Our readers will of course observe that it is not
a legal settlement of the question of ANDERSON'S
extradition. Whether he be legally in custody for
that purpose is the issue to be tried when the brave
fugitive arrives in this country. The only point
decided yesterday was that the Queen's Courts at
Westminster have so far concurrent jurisdiction
with the Courts in Canada that they can order the
production before them of any person detained in
custody, to decide whether or not he is lawfully
deprived of his liberty. The broad principle
contended for was, in the language of the law
books, that " the QUEEN ought to have an
account why any of her subjects are imprisoned."
And it would appear that any of her MAJESTY'S
Courts in Westminster have power to demand this
aceount, and had the Queen's Bench application
failed, it would have been open to Mr. JAMES to
have appealed to tne other Courts in succession.
The precedents appeared to bear all of them in the
same direction, though it must be confessed none
applied directly to Canada in its present circum-
stances of real independence. The Lord Chief
Justice, however, and his brother judges held that
the power to issue a writ of _Habeas Corpus to any
part of the QUEEN'S dominions, had existed from
the earliest times, and been exercised to the latest,
and that as it had never been taken away by any
distinct enactment, the Court had no discretion to
refuse the writ.

We are quite aware of the danger of straining
law to meet a popular demand ; but our judges feel
this even more strongly than we do, and we may
be assured that had they not clearly seen that
analogy was not strongly in favour of the demand
they would not for a moment have hearkened to it.
They would have left the wrong to find a remedy
by diplomacy or other means, rather than have
granted redress illegally. What seemed to weigh
most with the Lord Chief Justice was the danger
of trenching on Canadian indepenndence, a feeling
we must honour, as much as solicitude for the liberty
of poor ANDERSON. It strikes us, however, that
this will be a good case on which to raise the
question whether the QUEEN'S Courts shall retain
the power or not. It is obvious, as we have already
remarked, that the object of the writ is popular now
in Canada. It will attain an end which all there
desire should now be attained. It cannot well,
therefore create any in Canada as being an
act hostile to the sentiments of the Canadian people.
It is not the levying of a duty or the imposition of
a tax which they have united to resist— it is the
exercise of a little used power to redress a wrong
at which all Toronto is indignant. At the worst it
only bears some resemblance to the interference of
the Lords last year, when the Commons had
wronged the exchequer by repealing a tax it
could not spare. The Lords had the power to
forbid its repeal, and they used it; though under
notice that the thing must not be repeated. In the
same way, as the Canadians in all they have
received or asked. have never had independence of
of this mode of action of the QUEEN'S courts con-
ferred on them, they will accept it now, when used
for an object in accordance with their wishes; and,
if they do not wish the power to remain, if they
think it capable of abuse, it will be for them to ask
its abrogation by an explicit act of Parliament.
At first sight, it certainly appears to us that our
lovers of liberty in the colonies, while they remain
in connection with the British Crown, will be slow
to wish for the abrogation of any power, local or
imperial, which has for its object the personal
liberty of the subject.
:In any case, ANDERSON is perfectly safe. The
surrender under the Extradition Act must have
been through the Governor, and it cannot be con-
ceived that our Government would have permitted
that of Canada to deliver up the fugitive. The
appeal also to the higher court in Canada might be
successful ; it might hold that the appeal would
lie, and that the man was unlawfully in custody.
But in this country there can be no doubt what the
judgment would be. Our judges would, we ima-
gine, be unanimous as to the meaning of the treaty.
They would not in this be biassed by their English
predilections ; but, the more we reflect on the more
we feel satisfied that the two Canadian judges
misapplied the treaty, and quite unintentionally,
foisted into it a crime which the English author
of the treaty would assuredly have rather held to
be a virtue—the crime of killing a man who
attempted tokidnap you. The wonder with every-
one seems to be how the words of the treaty could
have been applied as they were. The statement is,
so far, as clear as it well can be, that the crime of
the man whose extradition is required would not
have been the crime charged on him if committed in
Canada itself, Notoriously it is not so. ANDERSON'S
killing DIGGES in Canada would not only have
been no crime, but rather a duty to himself, his
family, and society. Let kidnappers be stabbed,
says the common law written on the heart of every
British subject in Canada as well as in Middlesex.
Yes, but DIGGES was acting according to the law
of Missouri. So much the worse for DIGGES and
Missouri. If States can become confederations of
kidnappers, that is no reason why other honest
and free States should recognise the kidnappers'
laws as laws of public justice, acting under them
as a justification, and resisting those who so
acted, as a crime. The laws themselves
are the crime. We can know nothing
of them.
A treaty between us and the States
respecting critniAal PtreAces can relate only
, ,

to those a things which it was known at the time '
both pa rties regarded as such. This single considera-
tion to our minds is decisive. Lord ASHBURToN
never • dreamed of anything done by a fugitive from
slaver y, necessary to his escape, as being a crime.
The 1 kmerican negotiators well.knew this. Murder,
then fore, in the treaty could only mean what both
sides considered t obe murder, and we question whe-
ther eve.l the Government of Missouri would have
the hardiho of 1 to say that our Plenipotentiary would
have regarchlti ANDERSON'S act as murder ; and, if
so, there is an nnd of the matter. But, even if this
were disputed, it would be only a case of ambiguous
language in a treaty to be settled by a fresh con-
vention. There is, however, no ambiguity. Ac-
cording to the laws of Canada, killing a kidnapper
is not murder, it is justifiable homicide—the desert
of every kidnapper; tend ANDERSON deserves the
Victoria Cross, not the kidnappers' slow fire.

Sir FRANCIS BARING, i t will be perceived, has
written a very sensible corn munication to his con-
stituents at Portsmouth,in reference to the prospects
of Reform in this now rapidly on-coming session
of Parliament. His views upon the subject, we
repeat, are eminently sensible throughout ; they
are admirably well considered; and—alas ! that,
having said this, we should be compelled to add, as
we nevertheless can alone add in logical sequence
—they are views fraught with anything rather
than with encouragement. What occurred in
regard to Reform in 1860, he candidly
avows that he anticipates will be repeated
now in 1861. The indifference manifested in
the House of Commons last year to the insisting
upon any grand and comprehensive measure for the
rearrangement of our representative system from
its foundations upwards, he believes to have been
entertained upon the same question out of it. Not
that either within or without Parliament he conceives,
for an instant, that there is discernible anywhere
the slightest evidence of antagonism to that cause
which it has long since been matter of noto-
riety that almost every man of any note whatever
has more or less earnestly advocated. Nay, Sir
FRANCIS observes very admirably, because with
the fullest reason, that " Public Men" generally
have, upon this Reform question, in a truly remark-
able manner " concurred" (that is the cant phrase of
the hour politically—a phrase surely without which
Parliamentary debate must altogether cease and
determine) have in a most exceptional way, we
might even go so far as to say. in a wholly
unparalleled way, " concurred"—namely, in recog-
nising, if not its necessity, at any rate its expedi-
ency. As far back as 1848, he reminds the electors
of Portsmouth, and through them the electors of
all the other constituencies throughout the
United Kingdom, Lord JOHN, himself one
of the Dii majores of Reform, if not its
recognised JUPITER TONANS, bad admitted the
necessity of a new and sweeping alteration. But
the mere mention of the year in which Lord
JOHN thus broke away at last from the temporary
trammels of Finality, is a vivid reminder enough
of the inopportuneness, so to speak, of his ac-
knowledgment.
" The Times were out of joint.
0 cursed spite 1"--
not that

" Ever he was born to set it right"—

but that Anybody was called upon to do so, at that
period of turmoil and revolution all over Christen-
dom. " Sir ROBERT," adds the right hon. mem-
' ber for Portsmouth, "concurred [concurred again !]
in that view "—so that Lord JOHN, as leader
of the Liberals, saw the " ehiefest " man
upon the side of the Conservatives (though
one no longer their Leader, Friend, Guide,
and Philosopher) coinciding entirely with him
upon this vital part of the policy of the
noble lord's Government. " The Administrations,"
adds Sir FRANCIS BARING, summing up the whole
coincidence of all the different parties and sections
of parties together, in respect to the universally
admitted necessity of Reform, " the Administrations
of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, of Lord ABERDEEN, of
Lord DERBY, of Lord PALMERSTON, have, in turn,
proposed Bills, differing, indeed, the one from the
other, but all calculated to effect a large increase
in the number of electors." Nay, the right hon.
baronet says further, upon the subject of this
extraordinary Unanimity—" I do not recollect a
single leading member of the House of Commons
who has recorded his dissent from this view"—or
who, in other words, he might have said, has re-
frained from avowing his formal recognition of its
perfect reasonableness. Yet is spite of all this
apparently auspicious unanimity, there was, as
Sir FRANCIS intimates with painful truth, a
general disinclination—there has been this dis-
inclination—there is this disinclination still—to
face the question manfully, to argue it out into
a perfected enactment. This—with the Govern.
ment all Reformers ! This—with the Opposition
all Reformers ! With Reformers below the gang-
way, to the right and to the left of Mr. Speaker !
And with Reformers all over the land, in every
shire, in every town, in every parish—electors and
non-electors, all Reformers ! " Is it necessary," asks
Sir FRANCIS BARING, within view of this ano-
malous unanimity, in advocating reform, and yet
also in treating it with obvious indifference—" Is
it necessary, then, that all action and improve-
ment shall cease ? Are we to wait until
pressure in a moment of excitement shall
force the question on the decision of the
House ? " And he answers his own query
immediately, and in the manner following :—" I
think not, and shall be prepared to support such
partial extensions of the suffrage as may not
bo inconsistent with a fair representation
of the different interests, not as a settle-
ment, but as steps in the right road, appa-
rently slower, but less likely to create alarm."
"I may be told," says the member for Portsmouth
in continuation, " that this is bit-by bit reform,'
and probably those who are most anxious fore great
change will be most hostile to such a course. But
a nickname is not an argument." Admirably put
—" a nickname is not an argument !" Would that
the truth of this wise apophthegm could but have
been recognised two or three years ago, when one
of the very best portions of Mr.DisRAELI's elastic and
expansive Reform Bill was foolishly and most frivo-
louslyset aside because somebody,with a shallowaffec-
tation of wit, dubbed that portion of it the section of
the " Fancy Franchises." Let the House of Com-
mons—let the English people, be wiser in future.
And if we cannot contrive, somehow or another, to
obtain a large and comprehensive measure of
Reform, let us, in the name of common sense, con-
tent ourselves with getting it piecemeal or—Bit-
by-bit !

Elsewhere will be found a portentous document
addressed to the Earl of ELGIN by "LEE, the
Faithful King Chung Wang and Commander-in-
Chief of the Imperial Forces of the Taeping Teen
Kok Dynasty." This communication having been
addressed to her MAJESTY'S Ambassador Extra-
ordinary out in China immediately after the
conclusion of peace between the Allies and
the Emperor HEIN FUNG, head of the Tartar
Dynasty! Between the Tartars and the Taepings,
as between the two stools of the proverb, it will be
well if European diplomacy does no.t in the lase of