The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-06 00:00:00

Tat SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 6,

no one would be surprised to hear that Washington '
had become the scene of the first great battle be-
tween slaveholders and freemen.
We were right in our conjectures as to the ships
burned. They were those in Norfolk Harbour,
and the Gosport Navy Yard was also completely
destroyed. It was done by the Unionists to pre-
vent their falling into the hands of the Virgi-
nians ; most of the ships were laid up in ordinary,
some, it is said, were of little value. They were
supposed, however, to be of some, or they would
not have been destroyed. They were the Pennsyl-
vania, 120 ; the Merrimac, 40, a certainly splendid
steam frigate; tha German Town, 22 ; the Colum-
bia, 50; the Raritan, 50 ; the Delaware, 84;
the Columbus, 80; the United States, 50; the
Dolphin, a brig of 4 guns ; one 84 on the stocks,
and possibly another or two. The PRESIDENT has,
however, still left him all the ships in active service ;
the Minnesota, the Niagara, and the Mississippi,
are all ready or nearly so for immediate duty, and

the number of smaller vessels of war is consider-
able. We should think the PRESIDENT, therefore,
will have little difficulty in blockading the five
Southern ports, through which alone the South
could export its produce in European bottoms, and
obtain supplies of every kind.

Some grave questions will, however, now be raised
respecting privateering and the right of blockade.
Europe is interested in them, and neither North nor
South is in a position to despise its voice. Some of
them will be mooted in the House to-night, and we
may hope to hear the opinion of the Government
lawyers on the most important points.

Between the imminent possibilities of a general
war in Europe and the actual horrors of a sanguinary
civil war in America—a civil war that may any
day flame out into a servile conflict upon the rising
of 4,000,000 negroes in armed insurrection—it seems
almost trifling with a dread emergency to dilate
now at any length upon the convivial doings of
Saturday evening in the principal room of the
Royal Academy. However, as the Ministers
themselves disdained not to participate, and that,
moreover, quite evidently con amore in those agree-
able proceedings, it were nothing less than a
prudish and squeamish affectation upon the part of
any mere outsider, any one not personally invested
with administrative responsibilities, to shrink from
—what, nevertheless, still does appear to us the
exceeding and almost indecorous incongruity of
descanting at this particular juncture upon an inci-
dent absolutely nothing less than frivolous, as
associated at such an interval as this with the
chiefs of Her Britannic MAJESTY'S Government.
It reminds one, of course, of the old proverbial
phrase about dancing over a Volcano. It is some-
thing, perhaps, more than the 999th thousandth
reminiscence of DAMOCLES feasting voluptuously
under the pendant blade glittering upon the
suspension of a hair. Yet it has its encouragement,
too, in some sort, this careless momentary aban-
donment, even at great crises like the present, this
seeming temporary forgetfulness of the toils and
responsibilities of office by the leaders of our Ad-
ministration. " All work and no play makes Jack
a dull boy," says the nursery distich. And the
truth, latent in the familiar aphorism, is applicable

alike to a burly "old boy" like Farmer BULL him-
self, and to his diplomatic representative, or, alter

ego, let us say, JOHN, commonly called Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. And so Ministers themselves hesitate

not to partake of the Academy hospitalities ye
once more—with unbent brows and forgotten red.

tape and loeked-up pigeon-holes crammed fu

(these last) with reams upon reams of " papers',
folded lengthways ! Prime Ministers and Secre-
taries of State, noble lords and right h m. gentle-

men, all with beaming faces and good appetites,
consequently crowded up the eastern staircase of the
National Gallery quite as pleasantly as the noble earl
and the right hon. gentleman the leaders of her
MAJESTY'S Opposition with their principal lieu-
tenants, to feast and chat on Saturday even•
ing last at that the ninety-third annual ban-
quet given each year to the most 'eminent
men of the time, by the gifted and
right hospitable Royal Academicians. This—not
merely the European crisis and the American en-
ternecine war to the contrary nevertheless notwith-

standing! But—what is if possible yet more sur

prising as an unlooked for appetizer under the cir-
cumstances—in flagrant despite of the glaring fact
that Government and Opposition still confront each
other ; breathing hard from their late tussle for the
mastery ; still we say confront each other like
skilled fencers at a duel for the life and death, their
swordblades crossed, their eyes keenly upon the
watch, every nerve and muscle upon the alert—
ready for the next move ! And that next move
probably at the present moment close upon us—
this very evening ! Yet--in defiance of that
most imminent among many other imminent, and
all of them momentous possibilities—there, at the
Royal Academy banquet, sat and feasted together
the antagonistic chiefE of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment and her MAJESTY'S Opposition.
Turning from the mere convivialities of Sahli.-
day evening to the more vital theme of the actual
position of parties as they now stand opposed to
each other in the House of Commons—one cannot
possibly but marvel whether, after all, the Conser-
vatives can make another fight of it in this matter
of the Budget after what has so very recently oc-
curred ! After—that is to say—the resolute strug-
gle that was made during the night between
Thursday and Friday last down at Westminster.
Has the country even, as yet, thoroughly estimated
what that fight actually was—how far it actually
went as a trial of strength bet ween the Government
and the Opposition ? Why, in connection in one
way or another, directly or indirectly, with that
division of Thursday night or Friday morning, out
of the whole mass of the 658 members set down

by the law of the land as constituting the sum
total of the House of Commons—only twenty-two
in all yet remain unaccounted for ! Is any one
incredulous ? The following will prove the extra-
ordinary fact we are here alluding to, will prove
this startling faet to absolute demonstration :
Ministerial majority . .. 299
Opposition minority.
Tellers 4
Speaker and Deputy-Speaker .• • • 2

Pairs
Vacant Seats

Left unaccounted for,

Total, Q.E.D.. .. 658
at is but very rarely indeed, we may confidently
assert, that parties are put to such a very close
Best as that—the whole House of Commons, with
tl'ae exception of no more than Twenty-Two " Ab-
si:ntees" (setting aside as of course of no account
whatever the nine "Vacant Seats") taking part in
Um contest between Government and Opposition.
And recollecting how the fact—as we have thus
sho/ ,vn quite clearly by a simple tabular arrangement
of I aumerals—recollecting, we say, how the fact
ate .nds actually thus with the contending Parties,
e cannot possibly do otherwise than marvel
low, or Where, or with what conceivable chance
(7f immediate success the Conservatives can again
show fight upon the Budget in a position directly
\utagonistic to the Government, There is certAinly

the Paper Duties Resolution still to be accepted
or rejected, or divided upon in committee of Ways
and Means, but that has virtually—the House and
the country understand clearly that has virtually
been already settled by the acceptance of the Tea
and Sugar Duties Resolution towards the end of
last week and the consequent rejection of Mr. HORS-
PALL'S Amendment. However, the Opposition will
—to use Mr. BUCKSTONE'S phrase, in " Grimshaw,
Bagshaw, and Bradshaw," have, by this evening,
had " a good think." They will have conned the
result of this last division ; they will have carefully
ruminated on the mystical majority whimsically
spoken of by Mr. DISRAELI as numerically a mino-
rity, at any rate as hardly a majority, seeing that it
was but yet in its teens—that (for the Opposition)
particularly tantalising and mysterious majority of
" Seventeen." And having thus deliberately re-
flected at their leisure upon the matter as it now is,
we shall hear this evening from the Right Hon.
Leaders:of the Opposition what will come of it.
Coming as the Academy Banquet did just
intermediately between the settlement of the Tea
and Sugar Duties Resolution, and the settlement
of the Paper Duties Resolution, it is really as if
on Saturday evening the opposing armies had sat
down for a pleasant amicable interval to eat salt
together, side by side to smoke the Calumet of
Peace complacently.

A society held its annual meeting last week which
he Conservatives, or a certain number of them,

have brought of late into no little notoriety. Not a
bill has been rejected lately in the Lords or the
Commons if its object was any extension of Religious
Liberty, which has not called forth some bitter de
nunciations, generally contemptuous of this society.
Yet it must have struck hearers or readers of the
speeches of the two Lord ROBERTS, the HARDYS,
the BENTINCKS, and all the class which threatened
to break loose from Mr. DISRAELI'S leadership, un•
less he headed " the Tory reaction," and which have
dragged him too far after them.---it must have struck
most hearers, that the society was, to them, rather
more alarming than contemptible. They exalted its
existence into a reason for refusing the slightest and
most reasonable concession, they even got up a
hostile society or societies ; and laid so much stress
on its exertions in the House of Commons, that
members who had charge of measures for religious
liberty, seemed to think it necessary to proclaim
aloud—" No connection with the shop at Sergeant's
Inn." On the last occasion of this kind, Sir
MORTON PETO himself, who wanted to obtain per-
mission for Nonconformists to bury a corpse with
Christian decency in the churchyards which they
are compelled to maintain, though he has subscribed
to the society, and though last year he spoke at its
annual meeting, thought he should promote his
object by proclaiming his regret that " Societies
for the liberation of Religion " and for " Church
Defence," should exist at all. Not indeed that he
gained much by sacrificing his society to his bill,
for it was lost by a larger majority than any of the
other bills for religious liberty rejected this session.
It is rather singular that this society should have
been adverted to of late as a discovery. It vas
detected by the living representative of the con-
queror at Blenheim, who represents the Great Duke
by fighting for the Church and all its abuses at the
head of its Evangelical Regiment. Church-rates
were tottering to their fall. The Abolition Bill had
passed the Commons by large majorities, it had in-
vaded and appalled the House of Lords, but the
Master of Evangelical Tactics bethought himself of
a committee of the House of Lords, and placing him-
selfat the head of one, extemporised in a short time
a defence of blue books, constructed of sandbags of
evidence of all kinds, in which it was hoped the
hostile shot would bury itself. Success was beyond
anticipation. The pro-rate witnesses made to be
sure, so far as we remember, a poor business of it ;
they agreed but in one thing—desire to keep the
Rate ; but as to how to keep it, no two of them
seemed to be of one mind.
Very conveniently for them, at least for their
present object—and the future must look.to itself
—they got before them, we believe, by their own
offer to give evidence, two members of the now
celebrated " Liberation Society "—Dr. FOSTER,
Chairman of its Parliamentary Committee, and the
well-known City merchant, SAMUEL MORLEY, Esq.,
an active, wealthy, and highly respected Noncon-
formist. These gentlemen told the committee very
frankly indeed they seemed pleased with
the opportunity of such a platform to
speak from—the constitution and object of their
society. In a long pupa state of existence
it had been designated the Anti-State Church
Society; but finding that opponents would confound
antagonism against an establishment of any Church,
with hostility to the Church itself which was estab-
lished, they rebaptised the society under a name
definitely expressing its object. To them, as to
the "Free Church" of Scotland, which assumed
that name to express its characteristic in regard
to State control, all Established Churches
appeared to be in bondage. They entered,
therefore, upon a new phase of existence,
under the full title of " The Society for
the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage"
—a title which the necessities of breviloquence
commonly shorten into that of the "Liberation So-

ciety."
Its representatives gladly described its objects,
though its title seems to do that sufficiently, and its
modes of operation. Meetings, lectures, tracts,
small books, and very frequently vestry meetings
called to lay church-rates, were all adverted to ; it
was also mentioned that it kept up an active cor-
respondence with all liberal constituencies, urging
them to look to the soundness of their represen-
tatives on questions of religious liberty. The
most amusing thing is, however, the use
made of • all this. Never, it seems, for
a long time has a Blue Book had such
a sale. Every incumbent of course must have
a copy ; and all at once Dr. FOSTER and Mr. MOR-
LEY became the talk of
the clerisy of the whole
kingdom. It may seem strange to those of us who
live in the daylight of common life, that a society,
which had been using every effort to become known
so old that we forget the year of itsebirth, and
all the time, which not only did not conceal its
objects, but proclaimed them on the house-tops
as far as it could,--that the fact of such
a society's existence should now for the first time
who speak of " a discovery" from the evidence of
d
dawn on the clerical min. No doubt with many
the above-named gentlemen, it is affectation to do
so; but we have little doubt that on the thousands
of the, State
throughout the country, the
clear
active perceptionpr
that a large number of very
t
ns at elections, intelligent persons
a c
persons
s clergy
too, really contemplated the peaceable liberation
of the Church from the State, saving always the
pecuniary rights of present incumbents and patrons,
came like a revelation, and a revelation, too, from
the infernal world, as they thought. _ .

Hitherto they had never demeaned themselves to
notice what they hardly knew of, and what, if they
did, seemed to them beneath contempt. They had
not, we believe, any realisation in their minds of
anything so definite and hostile. They thought
Dissenters had all the religious equality they could
want, what would they have? And they were

-1861

shocked to find that by equality the Disse rater
meant equality—Equality in the eye of the law and
Constitution of the country, not toleration. The
new light was the immediate parent of counter
societies. " Church Defence" societies were com-
menced to protect the Church from " libera-
tion" liberation from control, which many
of them long to be free from undoubtedly.
Doctors and proctors, bishops and arch-
deacons, sigh for it annually in Convocation ;
and when Government steps in and will have a
Divorce Bill, or anything of that kind,
they loudly protest but liberation " from State
patronage—that is quite another thing ; liberation
from privilege, preference, pay !—at that even the
most stiff-necked of them, the Oxfords, and the
Exeters, and the Archdeacon Denisons, shake their
heads.

We have given our readers in this very brief
sketch a faithful account, we believe, of the position
of the Liberation society which held its meeting
last week, and of the Church in relation to it. The
diminished majorites for measures of religious
liberty, in the house are, we have no doubt, entirely
due to the zeal aroused by the general knowledge
among the clergy of this society, and its isfluence
with constituencies. It may be observed that the
defalcations from the ranks of supporters of mea-
sures for religious liberty in the Commons, are
hardly to be perceived, but the clergy have whipped
up the perfunctory of the Tory ranks, and com-
pelled them to go up and vote, at the penalty of
losing their votes at the next election. HOW far
their policy is a wise one, remains to be seen. It
is nothing less than defending all abuses of
Church power as outposts of the Establishment.
If they be so, the clerical reaction may be right ;
the clergy, however, will do well to ask whether
each of the abuses they have this year defended so
pertinaciously, is not rather a position from which
the enemies of the Establishment assail it most
successfully.

LATEST

THORN, MAY 6.

Increased precautionary measures of a military
character have been taken at Warsaw on account
of the Russian Easter holydays.

Cannon have been planted in front of the Cathe
dral.

Arrests and judicial inquiries by the civil autho
rities continue to be made.

MADRID, APRIL 5.

The sitting of the Cortes will soon be closed.
The Government have not yet taken any defini-
tive resolution respecting the proposed annex-
ation of St. Domingo to Spain ; but it is believed
their reply will be in the affirmative.

BRESLAU, MAY 4.
Communication with Warsaw is difficult, as the
Government is said to intercept letters.

Count Zamoisky was at Warsaw on the Ist of
May, and, notwithstanding reports to the contrary,
was not to leave that city.
The rewards accorded to the generals, and the
thanks which the Emperor has addressed to General
Chruleff, have spread indignation among the people.

AGRAM, MAT 5

The Ban of Croatia has left for Vienna, accom-
panied by a numerous deputation, in order to make
representations to the Emperor respecting the re-
presentation of the military frontier in the Croa-
tian Diet, and the administrative incorporation of
Dalmatia with Croatia.

PESTH, MAY 5

Large bodies of troops have been despatched to
several places in various comitats, to enforce pay-
ment of the taxes.

The congregations of the comitats have remon
strated against these proceedings.

FRANCE.

PARIS, MAY 5,

The Xoniteur of to-day announces that the in-
terest on Treasury Bills has been reduced Q per
cent. The rates are fixed at 31, 4, and 44 per cent.,

according to the length of time the bills have to

run.

BOURSE, May 4.—The market has been buoyant
to-day, and a rather large amount of business done
at improved quotations. Threes, for the Account,
which opened at 69f 10c, are now at 69f 30c.
Railway shares have been also in demand, and
quotations generally higher.
The following were the last quotations :-
41 per per Cents ... 96 25 Credit Fonder 945
Do end month.... 96 25 i Belgian 41 —
3 per Cents
Do. end month 69 45 Roman
Bank Shares .. 2880 Austrian
Credit Mobilier.... 715 Spanish Three 3 49
Do. Account 717 50 , Home Debt
RAILWAYS.

Cash. Account.
Orleans
Northern
New ditto 9OO ..
Lyons and Mediterranean 975 .. 978 75
Geneva
Southern
Western
Eastern
Sardinian 385 .. 385
Austrian
Lombard , .......

SPAIN.

MADRID, MAY 3.

The Correspondencia Autografa of to-day says :
—" All the towns of San Domingo have issued a
pronunciarnento in favour of annexation to Spain."
The Correspondencia Autografa also asserts that
Spain has announced to the powers that she would
accept this annexation.

SPAIN AND SAN DOMINGO.

General Geffrard, President of Hayti, as has been
already announced, has published a protest against
the occupation of San Domingo by Spain. In this
document, which was published at Port-au-Prince
on April 6, the President says:—" By what right
do General Santana and his faction deliver up the
Dominican territory to Spain ? It is the will o
the population,' say they. Lying assertion ! That
population, trembling under the reign of terror
organised by General Santana, cannot manifest
any free will. A number of honest, enlightened,
and devoted patriots of the Dominican republic,
driven out of their country by General Santana,
protest with all their might against this alienation
of their country, and declare it to be a base act of
treason. No one will deny that Hayti has a great
interest that no foreign power should establish
itself in the eastern part of the island.
The moment that two peoples inhabit the same
island their destinies, with regard to any foreign
attempts on them, are necessarily connected together.
The political existence of the one is intimately
bound up with that of the other, and they are
bound to guarantee each other's safety. Suppose it
were possible that Scotland should pass all at once
under Russian or French rule, would it not be said
that the existence of England was profoundly
compromised ? Such are the necessary bones
between the eastern and western parts of Hayti."
The protest concludes as follows The Govern-
ment of Hayti, then, protests solemnly, in the face
of Europe and America, against all occupation of
the Dominican territory by Spain. It declares
that the Santana faction has no right to alienate, in
any respect whatever, that territory ; that it will
never recognise such accession ; that it publicly
makes all reserves on that point, as well as reserves
to itself the employment of all means that, under
the circumstances, may be adapted to preserve and
secure its most precious interests,"

FT.VE ARTS.

HOLM-AN ArNT.

At the German Gallery, 168, New Bond•street,
there are now on view, for a very few weeks, a
cluster of extraordinary productions from the hand
of this great artist.
Foremost amongst them, of course, his admitted
masterpiece—the chef d'ceuvre of that remarkable
school of Art-Revivalists, which has assumed to
itself the antique designation of the Pre-Raphael-
ites.

"The Finding of our Saviour in the Temple" is
the title (as all the connoisseurs of London know
full well by this time) of Mr. Hunt's chief glory as
a Painter.

Whatever exception may be taken to the school
of the Pre-Raphaelites, however numerous and
grotesque may be their eccentricities—who that
has but once looked upon that astonishing picture can
ever, ever lose the recollection of its inimitable grace,
of its delicious splendour in mere colouring, of its
abounding and bewitching loveliness ? It is the
world's latest and not its least illustration of the
exquisite truth latent in that first line of poetry
John Keats ever published, the opening verse of his
maiden poem of " Endymion"—

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever :"
And bearing in mind Holman Hunt's Great Work
here referred to, -vc e may, in the mere remembrance
of it, continue the impassioned quotation—

" Its loveliness increases ; it will never
Pass into nothingness ."
And now, in addition to the allurement thus
enshrined in the German Gallery in the form of this
capo d'opera of Holman Hunt's genius as a Pre-Ra-
phaelite, there are displayed upon the walls
of the ante-room, or vestibule to the inner apart-
ment in which "The Finding of our Savour in the
Temple" assembles day by day a moving throng
of admiring and awe-stricken spectators—we had
almost said of worshippers—several very remark-
able minor works from the same master hand. .

" Claudio and Isabella" we again greet with
pleasure—as they are pourtrayed in the famous
dungeon scene from Measure for Measure:—

" Claud. Death is a fearful thing !
Isab. And shamed life a hateful I"

Hundreds will recognise this singular cabinet pic-
ture of the captive brother and the nun sister
conferring together upon the awful theme of life
and death in the dungeon-window. Its colouring
is as fresh and radiant as when it hung first of all
upon the walls of the Royal Academy during—it
seems to us—a long past Exhibition.
Hard by—clustered together in a group upon the
same wall of the vestibule to the German Gallery
—are five sparkling and luminous water-colour
drawings of historic scenes recently brought back
by Mr. Hunt from the Holy Land. Cairo is revealed
to us in one, with " Sunset on the Gebel Mokattum."
Yonder is the distant sheen of the " Dead Sea," as

viewed from Siloam. Yonder " Nazareth ! "
Yonder the " Plain of Rephaim," beheld from the
height of Zion. And there—twinkling with arti-
ficial lights under the purple darkness—" Jerusalem
during Ramazan." These five pictures—with a
bloom upon them like so many plums dropped into
the art-lap of England—are of themselves worthy
of a pilgrimage to the German Gallery. Whoever
journeys thither to see them, however—will
not fail to advance a step further in his
pilgrimage, immediately afterwards : to cast another
wondering glance at Mr. Hunt's opus prcecipuum—
" The Finding" of the Redeemer of the World by
His Mother and His Foster Father in the Porch
of the Temple of God in Jerusalem.