The Sun. — 1856-08-25 (London, England)

BOMBA. might have made of it against French interference, and what a taunt for the British Government !  What political sympathy these men may fairly elaim from Englishmen we are not prepared to say. It may be none. The voice 'lf humanity, however, pleads very powerfully on their behalf. Whatever they are or are not, they are men—not a few of them educated gentlemen—and their cry is very heartrending. The reader has but to turn to another column to be assured on this head. There he will find a letter from Louis BLANC, through which they are suffered to speak. The cruelties known to have been perpetrated in French Guiana on the poor exiles have not, we are now told, ceased. To have them transported to a pestilential island, far away from friends and home, is not enough, nor to keep them when they are there either—though years have elapsed, and an admirable occasion for showing them mercy has presented itself—they must be made to endure all that brutal malice can inflict. They are " unspeakably tortured," and that "on the flimsiest pretences ;" and have the mortification to reflect that, confiding in the specious promises of their Imperial gaoler, the people of this country and other European countries believe them to be comparatively free, and enduring no other pangs than those of enforced exile.  Let the poor wretches speak for themselves. They are not criminal convicts, but political prisoners—men who never were tried at all, but were condemned and expatriated wholesale. "Out of five men lately arrested for some talk it had been the fancy of the overseer to invent, two were tied to a stake and dealt with as the most vile criminals. As they were reluctant to submit to an ignominious punishment, soldiers were called for, who, rushing upon the victims, bruised them with blows, tore off their beards, and, reckless of the shrieks With which wild beasts would have been moved, bound them with cords so fast us to make the blood gush ! To relate all we suffer, is more than we can possibly do. Our cheeks kindle with shame, and our hearts are bleeding. Suffice to say, that while the French Government has its clemency cried up everywhere—there are Frenchmen in Guiana who do gasp for life. Nor are they allowed the sojourn of the Island of Despair, humble as it is ; barbarous administrators drag them violently on the continent, to compel them to a labour of eight hours a day in the marshy forests, from which Pestilential vapours are continually rising. We refused to submit to this outrage upon laws, to this murderous attempt ; we claimed promised liberty. The answer is death—a magnanimous  answer after the birth of a Prince. Is there, indeed, for us any other prospect but imminent death. With no proper food, no garments, no shoes, no wine since February last, is there any chance that we should long be able to bear both the influences of an exhausting toil and a deadly climate ? May public opinion be moved at our misfortunes, and energetically rise against deeds so well calculated to bring to shame a nation reputed the most enlightened and civilised in the world." To which we say—Amen ! The Emperor outdoes the King ! and, disgraced as the Neapolitans are, the French people are more so. What !men, scholars, gentlemen, who have had no trial, and whose offences are of a political nature, have to " gasp for life" in the " Island of Despair," and "be compelled to labour eight hours a day in the marshy forests, from which pestilential vapours are continually rising I" The barbarity of such treatment is an outrage on every notion of civilisation—a libel on savagery itself. IA there no taker of King