The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-18 00:00:00

SURREY SESSIONS—Dec. 17.

Rff,.‘ry Abbott, 24, lighterman, was indicted for
stealing from a barge on the river Thames 11 hides,
value £l2, the property of Messrs. Pillow and Son,
of Wellington chambers, London-bridge.
Mr. Lilley defended the prisoner.
'Thomas Blackman, a lightermm in the employ
of the prosecutors, said on the 11th ultimo he was
engaged in removing 300 foreign hides from a ship
to East-lane stairs. -He left them all secure while
he went to have his supper, and on his return he
found that the cargo had been disturbed, and on
examination he missed 11 hides. Information was
given to the police.
A carman named Saunders said that on the
morning of the 12th of November the prisoner and
another man engaged him, with his horse and cart,
to remove a quantity of hides from Greenwich. He
accordingly went there, and delivered the 11 hides
to Mr. House, a tanner, of Bermondsey.
Mr. House said that the prisoner and another
man came to his place on the night of the 11th of
November, and asked him if he could prepare acme
raw hides for them. He told them he could, and
they were brought to him by last witness. He
kept the strings they were tied with, and handed
them over to the Thames police constables.
A young man employed on board the ship from

which the lighterman took them said he tied the
hides up, and he identified the strings as some of
those ho had used. _ _

Mr, Lilley made a most ingenious defence, con-
tending that there was no evidence to show that the
prisoner was connected with the robbery.
The jury consulted a few minutes, and returned
a ver4ct of acquittal.
Timothy Linnegan, 26, was indicted for embezzl-
ing various sums of money belonging to his master,
Mr. Joseph Musselwhite, dairyman and cowkeeper,
Cornwall-road, Lambeth.
Mr. Lilley, instructed by Mr. Neale, prosecuted,
and Mr. Sharpe defended the prisoner.
It appeared that the prisoner had been seven
years in the prosecutor's service, receiving an excel-
lent salary, and the utmost confidence was placed
in him. He, however, was on the point of establish-
ing a business of his own, to the injury of his mas•
ter, when the latter discovered that he had been
plundered. An inquiry was instituted, and through
the means of Sergeant. Barrett, 16 L, his delinquen-
cies were brought to light. Among the customers
were publicans, who had paid the prisoner on re-
ceipt of the milk, and others, for which he had not
accounted.
Evidence was given at some length, and the jury
returned a verdict of guilty.
The Chairman said it was a bad case. The sen-
tence of the Court was that he be imprisoned in the
House of Correction for 12 months, with hard labour.

A CANADIAN VIEW OF THE ANGLO•
AMERICAN DIFFICULTY.

The Daily Commercial Advertiser of Montreal, Nov, 26,
in an article on the topic of the day, says :

" When the paper blockade of the Southern coast,
from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, was proclaimed,
the Federal Government informed the British Minister
that neutral vessels would be allowed 15 days after noti-
fication of the state of blockade to clear with their cargoes;
yet in defiance of this declaration British vessels were seized
and condemned as prizes for having trusted to it; and the
excuse of the Federal Government was that, the law had
decided against the executive. When British subjects were
seized, and their papers searched, contrary to the constitu-
tion, and these British subjects were imprisoned upon a
secret accusation, deprived of habeas corpus and of consti-
tutional tr ial, the defence of the Federal Government was
that the executive was above the constitution and the law.
So, when British proper:y was to be confiscated, the law
was too powerful to allow the executive to alleviate the ope-
ration of an executive act; and when British persons,
guilty of no offence, were to be imprisoned without cause,
and discharged without trial, the law was too weak to afford
them the least protection. British subjects have been
arrested and imprisoned the moment they landed in the
United States, on the information of spies, for sentiments
uttered on board a British vessel on the high seas, or in
British territory; and therefore out of the jurisdiction of
the United States. British vessels have been condemned

for sailing to and from Confederate ports, where no blockade
had been attempted, contrary to the law of nations, and in
direct defiance of the law of blockade, as laid down by
Wheaton, the standard American authority. British terri-
tory had been violated by armed Federal troops invading
Canada to arrest deserters. British laws have been broken
by Federal recruiting agents in all parts of the province,
and by the purchase in, and carriage of contraband of war
through, our territory. In spite of treaties giving to British
subjects the right of free ingress and egress through the
United States, they have been impeded in their lawful busi-
ness by passport regulations specially designed to harass and
annoy; although, as regards the inhabitants of the British
provinces against whom these regulations are chiefly directed
there is no instance of their having taken service against
tho Federal Government, while it is notorious that hundreds
of their misguided countrymen are serving in its armies.
The British Minister at Washington has been subjected to
studied insults, and to indignities worthy of the vulgar, ig-
norant ruffians who administer the Federal Government;
and which have been tolerated so long only because it was
evident that they knew no better, and considered the man-
ners of the bar-room and the flat-boat the true diplomatic
style. And to crown all the causes of offence, the national
dignity has been rudely struck in its tenderest part by the
violation of its flag and sanctuary on the high seas.
" It would be folly to suppose that all these outrageous
acts were accidents of the position, and did not spring from
a determination on the part of the Federal press and Govern-
ment to force a quarrel on Great Britain, or compel her to
accept degradation in the eyes of the world as the price of
peace. Before the news of the latest and most gross offences
had reached England the national patience was nearly ex-
hausted; and the last mail brought many a quiet warning
that the limit of forbearance was almost passed. The storm
of anger which these added outrages will arouse will be so
universal, and so violent that no Government will be able to
stay it. Reasoning from the disinclination which the British
Government and peoplo have always shown to a breach of
friendly relatiops with the United States, and the wrongs
which they have repeatedly mitered to avoid it, the Eedoral
Government appears to have concluded that there was no
limit to their endurance, and it tould adopta tone and course
of action towards them which no other power would sub-
mit to. It has chosen to forget that besides the natural dis-
inclination to war which a commercial country must always
feel, Great Britain had peculiar material interests dependent
on peace with the United States, which she would sacrifice
for no ordinary cause. _ _

" In the first place, the United States was her best cus-
tomer for manufactured goods, and in the second, she was
dependent upon it for raw materials. But these two power-
ful advocates for peace have ceased to plead ; British manu-
factures have been shut out from the North by a designedly
hostile tariff; and Great Britain is deprived both of cotton
for her looms, and a market for her goods, by the blockade
of the South. War with the United States will now take
from her no important trade, while it will remove the em-
bargo which threatens her manufactories with enforced idle-
ness, and her factory population with sore distress, and open
up a market for her wares superior to any she possesses in
the world. Heretofore all her interests were in favour of
peace with the United States, now they are in favour of
war. Nothing but aggession to the point of defiance would
justify intervention at this period of the struggle between
the Federal Government and the Confederate States ; but
this condition of aggression has been reached, and the na-
tional dignity no less than the national interests require
that the-challenge shall be accepted. It cannot be shown
that the British Government or people have given any just
cause for the violent hostility displayed against them by
the United States. None of its rights have been infringed,
none of its liberties assailed by them. Great Britain has
declared through its Ministers, its Legislature, and its
press, a deterMination to observe a strict neutrality, no
matter what the cost to its own interests. It has recognised
a blockade' never efficient, as a pledge of its intention to
hold to the spirit rather than the letter of non-intervention,
and to afford no pretext for the charge that it had sought
to embarrass the United States in the hour of difficulty and
trial, Not one of her public acts can be pointed to as show-
ing hostility to the Union, adherents to its enemies, or a
design tiiassist ',its dissolution. On the side of the United
States there has been nothing but outrage, violence, injury,
and threats; and on that of Great Britain, nothing but
loyal neutrality, forbearance, and toleration for the diffi-
cultiefoi an avowed and threatening foe. Had Great Bri-
tain recognised the Confederate States when they consoli-
dated their Government she would have been strictly in
her right according to American authority, and practice ;
and according to her own doctrine in similar European
cases. Had she broken the blockade she would have been
justified, not only by international law, but by the reading
of it propounded by American statesmen and jurists. Had
she refused to allow an embargo to be placed upon a staple
furnishing employment to millions, she would but have de-
fended the rights of peaceful industry to be protected from
the worst calamities of war. The sins of her people against
the Union have been confined to refusing to believe that a
republican federation once dissolved can be re-united by
the sword, and cemented together by the blood of its
children shed by each other's hands; to laughing at the
threats of the conquest of their territory by the heroes of
Bull's Run ; and, worst crime of all, declining to exchange
'their gold for Federal Bonds to continue a destructive and
futile strife, and to be repaid by repudiation.
" The,United States had begun to threaten England with
war before she had begun to laugh at Bull Run, or refused
to loan her money for a bad purpose on a worse security.
Before the first secession gun was fired at Sumter the admi-
nistration journals had poured broadsides of abuse and
threats iato perfidious Albion. While yet Mr. Lincoln's
election was in debate, his future Secretary of State in his
stum orations proclaimed the early accomplishment of the
manifest destinyof the Union to absorb the British provinces,
whether they and the mother country said yea or nay. No
sooner had secession begun, than the Northern filibu• taring
minds turn towards them fir compensation, and the Fede-
ral journals boasted that the loss at the South might be made
good by the gained East, West, and North. The motley ar-
ray of three months' volunteers, the men who were to termi-
nate the rebellion, and restore the Union, according to Mr.
Seward, in 60 days, had hardly gathered at Washington
before the British possessions in America were threatened
with the conquest which was to occupy a fraction of the
balance of their term of service. To all these threats, and
this consistent, if causeless hostility, the Government of
Great Britain has replied by keeping on the even tenor of
its way, and quietly providing against a surprise ; it has
reinforced its garrisons sufficiently to render a coup de main
impossible, and at the same time done it so moderately that
the accession did not become a menace; it has placed its
magazines on a war footing, and its fortresses in a perfect
position of defence; it has ordered the whole gunboat fleet
to be fitted for immediate service ; it has hastened the com-
pletion of the iron-cased steamers building,and given orders
for more. It has a fleet more formidable in every element
than ever went forth to battle, an army not only large in
numbers,, for the Volunteers will take care of England, but
trained to war in the Crimea and in India. If the United
States wants war it has only to stretch forth its hand and
take it ; but it will not be a little war like that of the Revo-
lution, or that of 1812, when Great Britain had all Europe
on its hands, but a great,war with the strongest military
and naval power in the world, and in the best state of pre-
paration—a power whose first blow will tear the South for