The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS, ALLEGED MURDER AT LIMEHOUSE.

Whether Lord Napier's defence was necessary or not—
and of this point he may, perhaps, himself be considered
the best judge—the Times is very glad that he has made
it, since it has led incidentally to his public and emphatic
avowal of the policy which dictated his final terms to
Theodore. He "felt that the honour of England stood
before all things." There is nothing very novel
in this sentiment itself. It has elicited cheers
at , many an after-dinner speech before that at
Welahpool, and will, we trust, elicit many more.
But the practical application to which it had been put by
the man who uttered it is something more than novel ;
in modern history it stands, to our thinking, alone, and
we cannot easily find language in which to say how much
we honour and admire the moral courage which made the
application . possible. Lord Napier himself is well
known to be one of the kindest-hearted and most con-
siderate of human beings, and it must have cost
him unspeakable suffering to think that it only wanted
one word of his to rescue many innocent fellow-
creatures women as well as men from the too ,
probable risk of a horrible death, and yet that he could
not say that word ; and, over and above his feeling as a
man, as a general, honourably anxious to succeed in the
discharge of his duty, and to win a soldier's best and
most•coveted reward, he had to feel that all he valued was
at stake upon that single throw ; that if his calculations
as to Theodore's conduct failed, and the cap- 1
tives were butchered, all the glory to be reaped
from the campaign was in a moment gone. Not
the capture of Magdala, the defeat and death of
Theodore, nor any series, however brilliant, of military
exploits could have atoned for this one tragedy. There ,
are men among us who would rather drag the nation
through any amount of dirt and dishonour than delibe-
rately sacrifice a single life—men who saw with regret the
righteous retribution inflicted upon even such a monster
as Theodore. Let us, then, make the most of a general
Who under the severest temptation to indulge this feeling
in himself and to conciliate it in others had, nevertheless,
the courage to act on the grand maxim that " the honour
of England stood before all things."
The Post holds that though possibly Theodore was the
great man his admirers represent him to have been, that
is no reason why, under the circumstances of his life and
his conduct towards us, he was to receive from us more
than his life with honourable treatment. And that offer
was made to him in plain terms, and ample time given to
him for decision. If he did not chose to believe in its
sincerity, that was clearly his affair, for which
Lord Napier cannot be held responsible ; and if
Theodore chose to trifle with his fate, and in the
crisis of his career to exhibit the absence of every great
quality which we are assured he possessed, and to fling
away his last chance, it is too much to carp at the course
which such a mixture of indecision, disbelief, and despair
imposed upon his antagonists. Lord Napier may rest
assured that the public opinion, not only of England, but
of Europe and the whole national world, will sustain him
in the course of policy he laid down for himself and
never swerved from in his treatment of Theodore. It
was simple, consistent, and just. The King pitted
himself against ns, and was fairly beaten on his own
ground ; his troops bad surrendered and been disarmed,
and if he would not trust to the generosity of
an antagonist who offered him the fairest terms he
could expect, but chose to die by his own hand, his blood
is upon his own head. It would have been most impolitic
to have left him alive and free in Magdala, and as he
refused to come out of it there was only one way left to
settle the question, and that way was adopted. But even
then his life would have been spared if he had consented
to spare it himself. The fact is, as Lord Napier puts it,
Theodore's high courage failed him at that supreme
moment, and in a paroxysm of despair he destroyed him-
self.

The Daily News says that the revolt of what is respec-
table in Conservatism from the tactics of Mr. Disraeli is
only a question of time. The party which follows that ver-
satile statesman has been educated out of its natural
perceptions ; and at the bidding of the sorcerer is ready to
believe and vote that black is white, that odd is even,
that right is wrong. It has been whirled out of its wits
by the rapidity of the evolutions which it has been
forced to go through ; and scarcely knows whether it
stands on its head or its heels. But even Mr. Disraeli's
arts of mystification are not endless ; and a time
of awakening will arrive. The scales will fall from the
eyes of the voluntarily blind ; the glamour will lose its
power ; the illusion will cease. There are in the Conserva-
tive party a few men of sense, sobriety, and honour, who
have viewed the strange practices of their titular teacher
with anger, and the credulous faith of his followers with
pity and shame. Of course they have shared the fate
which a small minority of sane men might expect in
a world of lunatics. They have been set down as
besides themselves, as devoured by envy and
personal pique, and as deserving only political
out!awry. The few who will not join the Conser-
vative party in its triumphal march over the brink
of a precipice are regarded with contemptuous aversion
by the heroes, who, with banners flying and trumpets
blowing, are rushing on to self-annihilation. The nobler
beasts of the field, obediently following the leadership of
the fox in an expedition against henroosts, would form as
close a parallel as can be suggested to the docile support
given by respectable peers and country gentlemen to Mr.
Disraeli's assault upon the places of the Whigs. The
above remarks refer more especially to Mr. Butler-
Johnstone, whom the Daily News calls an enlightened and
moderate Conservative.

The Times censures the Duke of Buckingham for his
conduct in the matter of the Darling grant. After review.
ing the origin of the dead-lock in Victoria, the Times pro-
ceeds to say : Unfortunately, when Sir Charles Darling
retired from the service, the Duke of Buckingham, who
had by that time accepted the seals of the Colonial
Office, wrote to Sir Henry Manners Sutton acquaint.
ing him with the fact of Sir Charles Darling's
retirement, and leaving him free to do what
he chose under the circumstances. Sir Henry
Manners Sutton sent a message to the Assembly, reeom.
mending the grant to their attention, and the Assembly
at once agreed upon a vote of £20,000, which was there-
upon 'included in the estimates and in the Appropriation
Bill. Thus a second time did a Governor of Vic-
toria, though on this occasion by the authority of the
Colonial Secretary, apply the powers of his position
to the assistance of the Assembly. Instead of
leaving the Assembly and the Council to settle their
differences as they might have done, he precipitated a new
conflict. The Council rejected the Appropriation Bill
with the obnoxious vote once more. The Duke of Bucking.
ham, conscious of his first error, wrote a second despatch,
telling Sir Henry Manners Sutton not to recommend the
grant a second time, unless on the express understanding
that it should be introduced in separate bill. The Ministry,
which had the confidence of the Assembly, persisted in
resigning upon receipt of this despatch, and after a long
delay Sir Henry Manners Sutton formed a new Ministry
and dissolved the Assembly. But the new Assembly has
proved of precisely the same temper as the old. The
Ministers and their supporters barely number a fourth of
the House, and the majority appear as resolute to push on
the Darling grant as ever.

The Standard thinks it is at all times a pleasing task to
render justice to those who make large sacrifices in order to
maintain their sincere convictions, and it is especially so
in the case of an official Liberal who breaks away from his
party on a question which they have mad a cardinal
feature of their policy. There have been too many
instances of late of " rising lawyers " who have proved
remarkably plastic -under the manipulation of Mr.
Gladstone, and who have been as ready as their leader
to throw overboard their " convictions of a lifetime "
when there was an, object to be gained by the
sacrifice. But the're is very little doubt that Sir Roundell
Palmer has upheld his convictions at the cost of letting
slip, for a time at least, the highest prize in his profession.
There is no lawyer in the ranks of the Liberal party who
has a higher title to the Lord Chancellorship on its next
avoidance, and there is no one who would fill it more
worthily or with more dignity. It is understood that
ostracism from the next Liberal Cabinet is the penalty
which Sir Boundell Palmer will have to pay for daring to
remain a consistent Churchman when the exigencies of his
leader required a laxer sense of self-respect and a less rigid
conscientousness.

The Telegraple reminds the Liberal voters that if they
wish to secure a triumph at the next election, they must
be guided by one paramount principle -that of unity
among themselves. If they wish to accomplish what must
be the great work of the session, the disestablishment of
the Irish Church, they must send such a Liberal majority
to Parliament as shall make resistance hopeless; and in
order to secure success they must learn from the example
of their opponents. Where do we ever find an instance of
divl,ion in the Tory camp, or of a superfluity of Tory
candidates fur any county or borougl► ? The " Constitu-
tional" party, as it is pleased to designate itself, is im-
ineagurahly superior to the Liberal in organisation, dis-
cipline, and strategy.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR FOPPERY.—Some years ago
a barn near Worcester was struck by lightning. Many of
the citizens had gone to the fire, when a fop met the cele-
brated Dr. G--n, and accosted him in this wise, " Can
You—ah—tell me, doctah, how fah they have succeeded in
extingnishing the conflagration of the—ah—unfortunate
felialis tarn ? " The doctor eyed the individual attentively,
and then, slipping his thumb and finger into his waistcoat
pocket, took out of it a couple of pills, and handed them to
him, saying, " Take these, sir, and go to bed, and if you 4;19
not feel better in tho morning, %WO my mgfrty,'l

A charge of wife murder, alleged to have been com-
mitted under very aggravated circumstances, has arisen
against a man named Ezra Neane, residing at No. 27,
Gill-street, Limehouse. The wife of the accused, Jessie
Neane, a woman 42 years of age, was found
about midnight on Saturday under the window
of the second floor of 27, Gill-street, lying help-
less and insensible on the pavement. A neighbour,
living nearly opposite, states that she saw the man Ezra
Neane fling the poor woman out of the window, or rather
force her out ; that when she clung with desperate
tenacity to the window sill, and hung on by her hands,
her assailant wrenched her hands loose, one by one, and
toppled her backwards on to the flags, some thirty feet
below. The woman was at once picked up and carried
to Dr. Nightingall's surgery, but when she was seen by
that gentleman he pronounced her to be dead from the
effects of the fall. The husband was forthwith arrested by
the police, and charged with causing the death of his wife.
The motives for the outrage have not been clearly ascer-
tained. The accused is a saddle-maker and has been for
some time past resident in Limehouse.