The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-30 00:00:00

THE SUN-, LONDON, TIIIIRSDAY EVENING, APRIL 30, 1868.

and bathed in perspiration to be called on again
and again before the curtain,—the pit rising to him.
After the play, most of the audience left, a comp F-
. to the actor which we cannot do better than
follow by leaving oat any details regarding
" The Spectre Bridegroom," a by no means bad
farce, and very well acted, though not over
strongly cast. It will be seen by the end
of the bill that our old, clever and conceited friend
Elliston had got up a spectacle at this time called
" The Coronation," in which, with all the airs of a
perfect mimic, he impersonated George the Fourth,
and he was not really unlike that great man in per-
son as well as in many traits of character. We do not
mean this a 3 a compliment, but doubtless iu those
days it would have been taken as one by this Pro-
tean artiste. The procession had a considerable suc-
cess, but Kean, as he called to Richmond—" Come
forth and singly face me," singly and signally out-
faced it ; and fit he should, for it was intellect,
genius and talent versus pageant.—Racing Times
and Amateur Dramatic Chronicle.

IS MR. WADE IV WE PRESIDENTIAL
SUCCESSION?

(Front the Anglo-American Times.)
The que4ion raised by the National Intelligencer,

whether Mr. Wade is in the succession, in the event

of the President being deposed, has been much dis-
cussed. The argument given in that journal is
attributed to no less a person than the Chief Jus-
tice himself, though the main point is a merequibble.
Last week we quoted the article of the Constitu-
tion providing for such vacancies. The word used
is "officer," and on that the point hinges. Tech-

nically it is said that neither the President of the
Senate nor the Speaker of the douse is an officer,
and if this holds,. neither Mr. Wade nor Mrs
Colfax are eligible. By a law of Congress it is
provided that when the elected President and
Vice-President are removed or disqualified,
the officer presiding in the Senate shall assume the
office, and failing him the Speaker of the House of
Representatives. But it is alleged that this law is
unconstitutional. The fact is, that the President's
example has been contagious, and every culprit con-
demned, and every law that militates against the
freedom and property, no matter how acquired,
of the citizen is declared by the injured in-
dividual to be unconstitutional. Indeed the
Supreme Court will have to be set up as masons
set up a sieve for sifting, into which the Acts
passed by the Legislature must be thrown and
shaken, and the big unpalatable lumps jerked back
into the Capitol. It is alleged that both Wade and
Colfax are Congressmen, and the Constitution pro-
vides that no officer of the United States shall serve
as a Congressman while in office, therefore neither
Wade nor Colfax are officers, and consequently are
ineligible. Even were they officers, as Congress-
men they cannot serve as President or Vice-Presi-
dent yet, as Congressmen only, are they in the suc-
cession. A Congressman may be expelled, but can-
not be impeached, and any Congressman selected
to act as President could not be impeached, while
the Constitution provides that the President can be
impeached, and thus the question is argued. The
Vice-President elected by the people is, ex officio,
President of the Senate, and therefore he is a Con-
gressman, as he sits in the Senate, and gives
a casting vote when numbers are even. Ile
is clearly an officer, and Andrew Johnson, in
virtue of being such an officer, succeeded to the
Presidency ; nor can we sec why Mr. Wade, who
succeeded Mr. Johnson, should be barred from the
higher post if it became vacant. Mr. Johnson
ceased to sit in the Senate when he became Presi-
dent, and Mr. Wade would also cease to be a Con-
gressman if he succeeded. A man is not rendered
ineligible for any office by being a Congressman :
he simply vacates the one position.and takes up the
other, losing the privileges he before enjoyed and
assuming the responsibilities of his office. The
Constitution lays down who are ineligible for
the Presidency—a man under thirty-five years
of age, or not a native of the United
States, or being born in the county, and over 35 if
he has not resided in the United States for the pre-
ceding 14 years ; but it does not say that a Con-
gressman is ineligible, and if it did, it is a barrier
easily removed by resigning Ids Representative
functions. On looking over Dr. Evans's work we
find that an appeal can be male to the country for
the election of a President, iu case of the removal
by death or other causes of both the President and
Vice-President, for which election the day fixed is the
first Wednesday of the December following, or if
this is too close a date, the same dsy of the follow-
ing year. This certainly does not ai 1 in the pre-
sent emergency, considering that the regular elec-
tion must come off on the fiest Wednesday of next
December, whether Andrew Johnson is deposed or
not. The question is, who is to act in the mean-
time ; and the attempt is made to show that it
must be one of the two great functionaries—the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or the mili-
tary officer Commanding-in-chief. There is
nothing in the Constitution indicating either
of these officers, while it is clear that Con-
gress is authorised •to designate the person,
and that it has designated that person by
enacting that the President of the Senate shall
succee; and if he be ineligible, by reason of age,
place of birth, or the required length of residence
within the States, then the Speaker of the house
shall discharge the functions till the next Presiden-
tial election. If there be no Constitutional prece-
dent, in any emergency such questions are sure to
suggest themselves to some minds, and to assume
an importance they do not possess ; but Congress
'will give little heed to them, and we would like to
know who is going to dispute the right of Ben
Wade to the chair, if it becomes vacant.

SECRET HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

• (Front ,Wilkes' Spirit of the Times.) - -
u TIPPOO SAM, the celebrated leading performer of Van
Amburgh's Caravan, is 200 years old, and large in propor-
tion. Ho is a native of Ceylon, and is the largest of his
race in America. The elephant is not native to A mee
rice, although McKean Buchanan, whose biography
will be found below, saw him in California in the fall
of 1849 or the spring of 1850. Tippoo's dignity and
colossal stature have made him quite popular in the
West, especially in the Western Reserve of Ohio,
where many children have been named after
him. Tippoo once fell through a bridge crossing a small
tributary of the Mississippi, twelve hundred miles from its
mouth, and dropped on a small boat in which a lady was
fishing for perch. Of course the boat was crushed, but
the lady was not immediately killed; she was, however,
carried away by the current, and drowned before she
reached the mouth of the Father of Waters.
Tippoo Saib is in many respects an elephant of a de-
voted and self-sacrificing disposition. During the war,
having espoused the cause of the South, he was
besieged by an invading army in the fortified town of
Petersburg, Va. Provisions were scarce, mint was dear,
old julep was unknown, and amusements were at a dis-
count—profound gloom pervaded the city. In this emer-
gency an old Virginian gentleman bethought himself of
ye ancient game of Pharaoh. Cards and a lay-
out were speedily obtained, but chops were not to be
had. On the impulse of the moment Tippoo strode into
the Town Council and magnanimously offered one of his
ivory tusks to be sawed off and turned into whites,
reds, and blues. The offer was gratefully accepted, the
tusk skilfully extracted by an eminent dentist now pulling
in this city, and turned into reds and blues, as the true
Virginian never plays whites ; besides, the combination of
colours would have been Yankeeish, and Petersburgh
was again indifferent to the horrors of war. It was
on a lofty stack of these same chips that Tom taus,
the Mobile poet, placed a copper, and turned to read
the pedigrees of Fly-by-Night, when the concus-
sion of Butler's bombarding guns knocked the copper
off, unseen by the abstracted poet, and the pile
was scooped in by the bank on the next turn. It is calcu-
lated that but for this unfortunate event Tom Eans
would hive been the richest literary man in America.
As it is. lie has never received his full mood of praise,
although he handles the papers with remarkable ability.
Pippo Saib is a canvas-backed elephant in the summer
:tnd a dweller in cities during the winter; is tolerably
well-disposed towards the large circle of acquaint-
mees, having killed only siven keepers in the
nurse of his placid and peetaral existence—swans the
.'Mississippi once at St. Louis, and dammed up the river
so that the levee was completely submerged, and Charley
illard was entirely ruined by the consequent damage to
li3 cotton, which lay on the bank. Tippoo lives princi
pelly on hay, but is not averse to apples, ginger-
bread, tin horns, Stewart's gum-drops, sandwiches,
jujube paste, or saleratus biscuit. Knocked a boy's
;tend off once in Crestdine by throwing his trunk at him,
for tempting him with a red apple and ringing in
i slug of `Solace' tobacco on him. Bears malice a
long time. Got down on George Hunan 1 when that
gentleman was aide-de-camp to Warren Hastings in India
tied, a century later, when Mr. Barnum imported Tippoo to
his country, the ship touched at Amsterdam fur shore re-
Scesbments, but the implacable monster. refused to go on
;bore, because he was told the country was named after
he gay and thoughtless young dragoon on Hastings'
tall. He is said to have a very low opinion of Gordon
Cummings, Spoke, Burton, and other travellers, and asked
Van Atnburgh once why it was that African explorers are so
heedless of the requirements and delights of female society.