The Sun. — 1862-11-27 (London, England)

TILE SUN, LONDON, TH.URSDAY EVENINI, INOVEMBEIC.27, 1862.  death—she was guilty of the heinous supplementary crime of endeavouring to fix her own deed of blood upon an innocent man, and that too an old man close upon ninety ! The extravagant,incoherent, statement delivered rEsselAraPbLeAre cd to a iaAisz's t vleerde d eventually,inconsequential,inattbeclose s e of b will secretrial inquiry, instituted by order of Sir GEORGE GREY, an inquiry conducted within closed doors at Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON'S chambers at Glasgow, as Sheriff of Lanarkshire, conducted there by Mr. YOUNG, the Scotch Solicitor-General— the proceedings of this secret supplementary investigation never yet have been made public in any way. And yet leading, as we all know, to the extraordinary result of the commutation of JESSIE ITLAUCIILAN'S sentence from one of death to one of penal servitude for life ! No wonder can it be to any one that under the circumstances, old Mr. FLEMING, the one accused by the convicted and condemned murderess, should have earnestly demanded a public inquiry in regard to himself so as effectually to clear himself from the possibility of any further suspicion. With what result his appeal to the Home Office has been made, our readers will have perceived on perusing the answer vouchsafed to that appeal by Sir G. GREY'S Secretary, an official letter which we gave to the public in our impression of last evening. Repelled peremptorily by the Home Secretary—old Mr. FLEMING has now but one alternative--namely, to appeal to Parliament.  We do not purpose to discuss just now the whole question of fortification, but merely to notice a plausible fallacy of the moment. Our readers well know that we think the money spent on them, if needed for defensive purposes, might have been used far more effectively. And, when we look at the vast suma being now sunk on Portsdown Hill, and glance away north, to our population sinking in feebleness, fever, and famine, through the want of adequate relief, we confess ourselves to be amongst those who do " sigh" at the sight of the Portsdown works. At this time they seem like monuments to the memory of the starved. Future generations will say, we think, " Better have fed Lancashire than have built miles of defences, at the best of disputed value, and which by that time will, we cannot doubt, bear the name of—" PALMERSTON Follies." Bat letting all this pass, an influential contemporary, yesterday, abetted the PALMERSTON expenditure, and expenditure always seems pleasant to it, by an appeal to the part which fortifications have played in modern wars. We do not dispute the part they have played, but one overlooked fact vitiates the inference in nearly every case, The fortifications referred to were nearly all of them of the class for which, with General BURGOYNE, we have always contended, in contrast with the class on which Lord PALMERSTON is now expending our eleven millions. He is building fixed forts at an enormous cost —to prove the value of which our contemporary adduces the resistance made by extemporized works !  The Crimean war is appealed to. Surely it was the extemporized not the fixed fortifications, which held the allies so long at bay. The improvised earthworks of Todleben caused all the serious difficulty, and after these were carried, the similar works to the Russian left of the city. The walls of Delhi were no doubt the ready defence of mutineers who perhaps might not have had ability to do what we certainly could have done, in throwing up earthworks—but at Lucknow nearly everything was created, as wanted, by our own men, and the enemy's works presented no difficulty to Lord