The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-25 00:00:00

sr.IRIT OF
_TVE_PUBLI9 JOURNALS.'

The public will learn with great satisfaction that Mr.
Speke is said to be alive and Nfell. He is said to be living
itt Padstovr„ Cornwall. But, asks the Zaia, what Is the
cause of his eittraot)inSay escapade guppOAng him to
be iris posseSsiot! 0 al his fkiiiti4, and to
this at wi he44Tbetite reaniutioU Of :IFithdrav4ng ;Ira:
self either for a tune or perritanentlY frein the soctleWOf
all who knew him, it difficult to imagine .14, M' bie heart-
less and mischlevous :acV. ge has brought the -most
poignant distress otilififrienas, die hiainbjeCtect the" to
infinite inctintenienCe and anxiety, he has inflicted no
little labour on the police, and he has terrified the more
timid part of the public beyond measure. In short, he has
made a public scandal, for which he will assuredly have to
do penance. A man has, indeed, a right to go where he
pleases, but he has no right to make off under circumstances
which' Must bring suspicion of the most heinous crime
upon the4neighbourhood, and possibly upon some innocent
person. He has no right to make appointments for the
purpose of persuading the world that he intended to go
out only for an hour, the necessary consequences being a
belief that he has met a violent end. Such conduct is not
only an offence against morality, but against the public
peace, though from its rarity it has never been brought
under the penalties of the law. This strange affair con-
firms a remark we made in first commenting upon the
subject—that it was a mistaken method to suggest only
reasonable hypotheses when speculating on actions which
were probably completely Unreasonable. It is quite
natural that people in general should have thought it
impossible that Mr. Speke should be alive and in posses-
pion of his liberty. They could not conceive such cunning
and perversity as were indicated by the order to the
groom to be in waiting the next evening at the station,
the guying of the hat, and the appointment made
for half-past six ; that, moreover, he should leave family
and friends'in the deepest trouble, and remain indifferent
to every call of affection or honour week after week. But
,experience in the morbid part of human nature teaches
that men do these things, and that the very qualities
which make the action strange and repulsive to the rest of
the world' exercise a fascination over them. After the
painful anxiety this eyelet has produced, it will be a relief
if we are assured that it has only been the result of eccen-
,iricity and folly carried to their extremes, and that thcre
ig,nO reason t4I believe London to be more unsafe now than
it has hitherto been. Great crimes are rare in this metropolis,
considering its enormous extent and population, and it
may b&said confidently that in no great city of the world
are the streets more safe to one whO goes about his busi-
ness steadily and soberly.

For the full and complete solution the Herald supposes
we must wait awhile, until it shall please the person best
able to';inform us upon the matter. But that some such
explanation will be forthcoming we can hardly doubt. Mr.
Speke owes: it to himself, no less than to his family, his
friends, an the public, to tell us not only why he left
London, but. why, when he had left it, he remained so
obstinately silent as to his whereabouts, while his name
was in everybody's mouth, and placards offering £5OO for
his disc:Overy were on every street wall. At the same
time, what we know already chews how difficult it is to
draw a correct inference from a given set of somewhat
singular circumstances. A number of sharp-witted folks
have busied4themselves in accounting for the missing cler-
gyman, and almost by common consent they satisfied
themselves that he had been brutally murdered. The
facts were elicited bit by bit, but we were assured that
.they all shewed a settled purpose in coming to London,
ancl,a series of arrangements for spending his time while
in it, rendering any sudden start highly improbable. We
shall hope to hear before long what Mr. Speke has to say
for himself, or what his friends can say for him. It
may be that he went off on some sudden impulse, but why
did he keep silence so long ? Perhaps he will publish his
.experiences in a handsome volume, for though he has not
gone very far, he must have a good deal to tell.

It has long been a. common complaint of our ambassa-
dors and Ministers, the Post reminds us, that they are
unable to negotiate with effect, because every petty prince
and his courtiers are aware that there is nothing to gain
or lose by them. We have treated our diplomatic service
of late years in the same manner as we have treated all
the other belongings of the old privileged class. We have
made it thoroughly uncomfortable and unremunerative.
There is no career in the service of the Crown so
thoroughly unprofitable and discouraging. The road to
diplomatic honours is long and difficult. When they are
attained they are not worth having. It is not going too
far to say that there is not a single British embassy or
mission of which the salary is equal to the official claims
upon it. The public, and especially the House of
Commons, is apt to think that no one is concerned
in this grievance but the ambassadors themselves ;
and that there is certainly no want of candidates
for diplomatic employment. The truth, nevertheless, re-
mains, that a physician, a barrister in fair practice, or a
prosperous clergyman, are far better paid while living in
privacy:at home than the men who, towards the close of
life, are at last promoted to represent the majesty and
power of England at the most brilliant Courts in the
world. An embassy of the right sort would have pre-
vented the war in Persia a few years ago, as it did for-
merly in the time of Sir John Malcolm ; and ten or
twenty thousand pounds properly expended at the right
time would have saved us all the millions we are now
throwing away in Abyssinia. Moreover, it is worth con-
sideration that money expended on the sober magnificence
of foreign embassies is no loss to the national treasury
whatever. Missions of equal splendour are returned to
us, and we may by active negotiations reap whatever trade
advantage we will without the burden of wars. By and
by, in due course also, the Sovereign often comes himself
to see us, and pays his travelling expenses royally in fifty
wads. It may be worth while to think of these things
before our penny wisdom brings about some other little
war.

It is doubtful, says the Daily News, whether the United
States Congress will be content to leave the President in
the undisputed possession of the Presidency till the end of
his term. The crisis of the dispute between the two
hostile powers of the Government has now evidently
arrived. But nothing can be more unfortunate for himself
than the clumsy and unstatesmanlike way in which Mr.
Johnson has brought the crisis about. His correspondence
with General Grant has been read all over the Union, and
has rendered it clear to both friends and enemies that Mr.
Johnson is actively desirous to frustrate the law which
it is his function to execute. He seems to be de-
termined to push matters to extremes, and his
opponents never had so many reasons to accept the issue
and to fight it out at once. He has never consented to
compromises, and seems now to have resolved to force on
Congress an uncompromising policy. With what hope, or
with what calculation of chances, if with any, he does
this it is hard even to guess, unless he speculates on the
possibility of nomination for the Presidency by the com-
bined Democrats and disloyalists of both North and South.
But whatever his motives may be, his action is calculated
to undo his friends, and to serve his enemies.

The members of the United Executive Relief Committee
sitting at the Mansion House at their last regular weekly
meeting adjourned without making a single grant. It was
not that they were without funds. Neither was relief
withheld because of any marked decrease in the excel).
tional distress in the East of London. But there was a
" strike" in the Isle of Dogs, or an allegation of a strike,
and the ugly question of trades-unionism was pressed home
on the attention of the committee by Mr. Samuda. Messrs.
Pontifex and Co. had that morning published a statement
that thirty carpenters, employed temporarily by them at
Millwall (to repair, it was presumed, certain damages
caused by a recent fire), had struck work under circum-
stances which seemed to constitute a peculiar aggra-
vation. Supposing, says the Standard, it were really
true that thirty men had struck work in the manner
stated, why should the committee stay their hands and
cease to mitigate the wide-spread distress of the Eastern
parishes? These carpenters were not shipwrights, and if
they were, it is evident that East London distress extends
much wider than the Isle of Dogs. But the question was
put on a very broad basis. The offer which Mr. Bullivant
had brought forward for the building of one or two iron
ships had fallen through, and there was too much reason
to fear that the failure was due to the interference of the
trades unions. It was thought exceedingly likely that the
affair at Messrs. Pontifex's would be traceable to a similar
Cause, and it was suggested that there was danger lest the
unionist element should also receive support—directly or
indirectly—from the charitable subscriptions of the public.
The case, the Standard admits, is a very sad one
still, the United Executive was not constituted for the
purpose of destroying trades unions, though it is un
doubtedly the duty of its members to see, so far as lies
in their power, that public charity shall Slot be perverted
into the promotion of those restrictive and mischievous in-
st; tu ti °us.

Sir Colman O'Loollen has, in the opinion of the Tele-
giwidt, fallen into a common error of amateur legislators,
and, in a measure inst introduced, has mixed up together
things that are t( itally distinct. His Bank Holidays' Bill has
two separate objects—one to increase the number of fixed
holidays for the special belloof of bank and custom-110113e
cleAs ; the second, to consult the conveniences of flier-
cmtile iyrn lv a:tering the due date of bills. Some of the
iindoubt..;.lly improvements on existing
and may be a•lopted ; others ought certainly to be
r.,jected. For instance, the enactment of a bank holiday
on ti;e 2'";th of Dec:nd-ier, or St. Stephen's Day, as
Sir Colman persists in calling it, is an innovation
that might cause grave inconvenience in London. The
him. member can hardly he considered an authority on
such matters as the business arrangements of this metro-
; if he knew much about them, he would admit that
while Boxing Day is an occasion of idleness and dissipa•
tion for two-thirds of those living within the sound of Bow
bells, it is a day of specially hard work for the remainder.
To enforce a cessation of bank facilities on that day would,
to a, considerable extent, make the five following days of
the year a term of greater slavery than they now are, by
compressing more labour within the short spans which
winch up Vlo Yt4le; Pr4cCe4rOsi

LAW.AZTD POLION.

INPORTAVT CASE BEFORE THE PRIVY COi7N6IL.—An
application was made on Monday to the Judicial Com-
mittee Of the Privy Council for special leave to appeal
from a decision of the Court of Chancery at Bermuda.
The circumstances were peculiar, and the Colenso case, it
was mentioned, was supposed to govern the present•bne.
The 'governor of the colony had, on the part of the Crown,
presented a clergyinen, and his induction had been re-
fused. That were two livings, and in one case he was
opposed by force. The Crown applied to the Court of
Chancery, and the application was refused on the ground
that the Colenso case was in point, but the Solicitor-
General submitted that it could not govern the present
application, as the Bishop of Bermuda and the bishops in
Africa were different, and the same view could rot pre-
vail. Their lordships granted the application.
FRAUDULENT BANKRUPTCY.—At the Mansion House,
Alexander Hannah and William Patterson were charged
before Mr. Alderman Lusk, M.P., with various offences
under the Bankruptcy Act of 1861, with intent to defraud
their creditors. The prisoners had been grocers and tea-
dealers in the Nlw North-road since the beginning of
1867, and for a short time they paid ready money for
their goods ; and within the three months previous
to their adjudication as bankrupts they had obtained
on credit from various wholesale merchants in the City
£2,000 worth of teas. As soon as the chests were
delivered in the New North-road they were sent to Glas-
gow, where they were sold by auction by direction of the
prisoners, by Messrs. John and James Morrison, of Ren-
field-street. The prisoner Patterson had hired a room in
a house in Elder-street, Edinburgh, in which he stored
upwards of 100 boxes of tea, of the value of about £l5O,
which were seised after the adjudication in bankruptcy,
by order of Mr. Commissioner Winslow. The prisoners
were apprehended at a fishing village in Wigtonshire, by
John Mark Bull, a City detective sergeant, and Patterson
then gave up a book containing entries of all the transac-
tions with the London merchants and Glasgow auctioneers.
Both prisoners were committed for trial.