The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-02 00:00:00

THE MIN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 2, 1864,

poet does, which as happily and even more exactly describes
what the painter does :
" And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown (the painter's pencil),
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
What glorious airy nothings have found habitation here!
(Cheers.) Vainly might imagination have striven to body
forth that terrible, that magnificent fancy of the "Grave
of Franklin," to which the genius of Sir Edwin Landseer
has here given shape for ever. (Cheers.) And what lover
of his country has not dimly brought before his mind the
grave of that other English hero, also with such solemn
beauty depicted on these walls—where, among the hills
and woods of his beloved Chilterns, with arms reversed
and heads uncovered, his pious Puritan soldiers bear
the illustrious Hampden to his final home ! (Loud cheers.)
May we not say of a picture such as this by Mr Calderon
that it is a piece of English history ? Will it, indeed, be
too much to say that literature's best representatives in this
room, after all, are not the distinguished men you have in-
vited to your tables so much as the pictures that adorn your
walls? Take all the other various walks of literature, and
here you will find them expressed. Mr Forster then alluded
to some of the principal painters and pictures in the rooms
in connection with the departments of literature illustrated
by them; and concluded,—Sir Charles Eastlake, I will ask
you to permit me to make one allusion more. I have
spoken of the painters who are present on these walls; but
there are two great painters conspicuous by their absence
from them, and, having lately seen the extraordinary works
with which Mr Maclise and Mr Herbert are now adorning
the walls of the Palace at Westminster, I desire, however
feebly to repeat the praise I hear on every side, that what
has so been done not merely reflects an honour on this
Academy. but sheds a glory on the country. (Cheers.) Such
works are national in the highest sense ; and the men who
can produce them—who can so celebrate our history, and
give visible embodiment to the grandest and most sacred
traditions of our race—the men, I say, who so can execute
a national work, are entitled to no niggardly national re-
ward. (Loud cheers.)
Several other toasts having been given, the company
separated,

been a more flagitious robbery of the Government
by the mass of the wealthy population than was
ever before experienced in a civilised country. And
if the income and property tax is to produce no more
in the future than it produced last year, and no
other form of taxation is substituted, what is to pre-
vent a repudiation of the debt? And is it not the
fear that this, after all, must be the result if the war
be prolonged, that keeps gold at so high a premium?
The debates on the expulsion of Mr. Long have
been brought to a close after four days waste of
time. Mr. Speaker Colfax, finding public opinion to
be against him, and the Republicans out of the
house to be as much scandalised as the Democrats
both in and out of it were disgusted, withdrew
tardily end ungraciously from the invidious position
into which he had thrust himself, and eoneented to
substitute a motion of censure for one of expulsion,
which was carried by a majority of 80 against 70.
The only result upon Mr. Colfax is loss of repute,
and upon Mr. Long of an advance from the position
of a follower to that of a leader of the peace party.
The result upon the character of the house itself is
more deplorable than upon that of its Speaker.
The intolerant majority have shown a hatred of free
discussion unworthy of a republic, unworthy of a re-
presentative body, unworthy of American history,
and unworthy of a British ancestry; and proved but
too surely that if they numbered the full two-thirds
of the Assembly which they disgrace they would ex-
pel the other third and usurp the Government. If
under a monarchy, which Americans affect to con-
sider less adapted to liberty than a republic, it was
sever thought of expelling a Chatham, a Burke, or
a Fox for advocating peace with a revolted depend-
ency of the Empire, these degenerate descendants
of British grandfathers might well ask whether they
were themselves worthy of the liberty which they
would deny to others, and whether they are not at
heart despots and tyrants, only to be kept in order
and in their proper place by the still greater despot
whom the war is nursing and training to rule over
them? Such a despot, if he come, will find every-
thing prepared for him. The men of money are
longing for him, the press will worship him, and the
politicians will lie down in the gutters that he may

tread upon them, pro tided he wili afterwards give
them p.lace or subsidy to reward them for their
baseness.

A curious revelation has just been made by Mr.
Thurlow Weed, which, if correct, shows two things

—first, that Mr. Lincoln's desiro for rc,-election
dates only from the year 1863 ; and second, that
prior to that time he was of opinion that a candidate
nominated by the Democratic party would be elected
in 1861. " Soon after the elections of 1862," slys
Mr. Weed in the Albany Evening Journal, "Mr.
Lincoln remarked to me that, as Governor of
the Empire State and representative man of
the Democratic party, Governor Seymour had
the power to render great public service, and that if
he exerted that power against the rebellion for his
country he would be our next President. I thiuk
Mr. Lincoln authorised me to say so from him to Go
vernor Seymour. At any rate, I did repeat the con-
versation to him. But the gentleman's proclivities
were in the wrong direction. Governor Seymour

made his bed with Vallandigham, thus depriving
his country of the advantages of his high position,
and himself of a golden opportunity." It may appear
to Mr. Weed and other Republican leaders that Mr.
Seymour made a mistake when he refused to join
his political fortunes with theirs, and declined to
abandon his life-long conviction in favour of the
State-rights of New York, and the Constitution of
the United States, for the sake rf a-1y chances of
power that he might have obtained by becoming a
renegade ; but it does not so appear to his friends,
or to any one who thinks an honourable opponent
more respectable than a time serving and un principled
supportor. Governor Seymour's " proclivities," as
Mr. Weed terms them, are in the direction of peace,
economy, law, liberty, and a Union to be maintained
by mutual consent, not by force and conquest; and
it is only in so far as he has seemed to turn from
these, any;to support the war, which in his heart he
con‘lerre-os, that he has lost influence. his fault as
7_ public man, which he shares with fully one-half
of his party, is, not that his principles are wrong,
but that he lacks the courage to act up to them.
If ho desires to be President of the United States,
he has certainly not weakened any chance which he
may ever have had of attaining that once easy but
now perilous position by lie adherence to the Con-
stitution which Mr. Lincoln and his associates have
temporarily overthrown. Governor Seymour is
netute enough to see that the President's favour
can do nothing towards nominating a successor. It
is his disfavour which gives strength to his rivals
and invests them with importance. He treated
General Fremout with injustice, and one-half of
his own party will aid to put General Fremont in
his place. He behaved to General M'Clellan with
gross ingratitude, and deprived the army of its
best General at a time when there was scarcely
another General in the service fit to be a
corporal, and the consequence was that Gene-
ral I‘l‘Clellan became the idol of the Demo-
cratic party, and is the most formidable of all the
candidates now in the field for the Presidency. Mr.
Weed has alike mistaken Mr. Lincoln's influence
and Mr. Seymour's strength. Every day that passes
sees a diminution of Mr. Lincoln's populaiiey,
in the highest
while every day adds to the popularity of the men
who love liberty above dominion,
ranks of whom Mr. Seymour is placed, and in which
he could not have maintained himself if he had
been so false to his convictions as to have joined
Mr. Lincoln, Governor Seymour, however, must
be bolder if he would serve his country or his
party
in the evil times that are so rapidly approaching.
If men of his talents, honesty, and principles keep
silent and inactive when they should speak out,
and, if need be, peril their lives and their fortunes
in the public service, the cause of American liberty
is lost, and a nobler inheritance than the Union is
at an end for ever.
The tide of emigration pours into this city like a
flood. One vessel from Liverpool brought upwards
of 950 souls at the commencement of the week, and
as scarcely a day passes without one or two
arrivals
in steam or sailing ships, each as heavily laden with
human life as its decks will carry, it would seem as
if theexpected average of 5,000 per week would soon
be overpassed, and that as many as 1,000 persons a
day would for some time to come be withdrawn from
the European and added to the American popula-
tion. Mr. satisfied
Seward, however, is not entirely
with these arrivals. They include too many women
and children, and too many decrepid old men—
" simious and simi-human," as they were once de-
scribed by Mr. John Mitchell—to be quite to his
mind. He wants able-bodied men only,
and though
his desire and the motives that
of Irish to the
prompt it are in
accordance with those of the majority in both
Houses of Congress,
his proposition to pay the cost
of transferring a few extra thousands
hungry shores of this country has not met with
much favour. It
is true that the small sum of
25,000 dols,scarccly more thani3soo sterling,whien
he proposed that Congress should devote to the pur-
pose, would do little more than bring out one good
shipload, such as arrived in this
port on Monday.
Ic is possible, therefore, that the house of Repre-
sentatives may only have given his draught of a
bill a cold reception, because it
proposed to do so
little, and that it will bo prepared to do more
favourably hereafter upon some larger projsct. But
if now or hereafter any agents of the Federal Go-
vernment land in Ireland in search of able-bodied
men, whose passage they offer to pay to America,it should be understood, once for all, by the British
Government and the people, that they are wanted
as soldiers only,
and not as workmen, and that the
ordinary emigration from Ireland and Germany
is rapidly
filling up the gaps in the ranks of labour
which the war has created. There may be
patriotism in the undertaking, as the Ame-
ricans understand the word, but there is neither
benevolence nor philanthropy-
" Food fcr powder"
is what the Federal Goverement demands ; and, as
young Americans no longer desire to offer them-
selves as aliment to pamper the greedy maw of the
War Demon, young Irishmen and Germans must be
sought, if craft or cash can procure them. Perhaps,
had Mr. Seward asked for a million dollars be might
have attained them, but 25,000 was palpably too
. small a sum to be taken into consideration.
Today was announced to be the last of voluntary
enlistment in the Federal army, after wb.'eh tit:3

draught was to conittience. But, as every one ex•
pected, there is to be no draught, at least for the
present. Doubtless, it will be discovered at Wash-
ington that the quota of New York and every other
city likely to be restive are full, and that patriotism
and 700 dots of bounty money to each recruit may
suffice to fill the armies of the ITnion, 89 far, at
least, as they are concerned, The threat or a Con-
scription excites no further terror. The working
classes have heard it so often that they look upon
its enforcement with about the same incredulity as
they regard the predictions of a celebrated divine
that the end of the world is fixed for the year 186 G.

SPIRIT OF TIM PtTBLIC JOURNALS,

THE "SPECTATOR" ON THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE
POLICE.—There may be many opinions about the
Shakspere eelebration last Saturday. Some may
thitik that " an eminent tragedian" planting an
oak at the foot of Primrose-hill is a noble and im-
posing spectacle. Others might contend that any
kind of celebration may teach some persons, who
otherwise would not, to recognize that merit may
exist and glory be won in the closet no less than
in practical life. And others, again, may regard
the whole affair as a harmless tomfoolery. Even
these last, however, would be willing that those
who like tomfoolery should have their fill, and if
the imposing spectacle was too short should eke
out the day's amusement by a supplementary en-
tertainment. When the tree had been planted,
and the watering-pot emptied, and the verses in-
audibly recited by a lady unaccustomed to public
speaking; —things all very beautiful from an
aesthetic point of view, but perhaps just a little
tame,—a body of impassioned orators denouncing
the aristocracy for a crime which they never com-
mitted seemed the very farce that, was wanted to
complete the day. Mr. Phelps could not reason-
ably be expected to be as pre-eminently funny as at
Drury-lane, and Mr. Edmond Beales might well
have extorted from the audience the wondering ex-
clamation, " Why this is more excellent fooling
than the other 1" But alas! we shall never know
Z.) which of these two notabilities the palm should
have been awarded, nor fathom those mysterious
plots, by which Mr. Gladstone and Lord Shaftes-
bury had deceived the unsuspecting nature of
Garibaldi, but not the watchful jealousy of the
Working Men's Committee. For Authority was
on the ground in the shape of an inspector and
" large bodies" of police, and beyond arresting a
pickpocket or two had found no occupation for their
energies. To suppose that so important a person
as an inspector of police was to go home without
asserting himself is obviously absurd, and any re-
flections upon a Cabinet Minister would naturally
be irritating to one who, though in a subordinate
position, is still a servant of the Crown. The inspec-
tor determined to assert himself by silencing Mr.
Beales. Fortunately a general order existed forbid-
ding the holding of public meetings in the parks,
and the inspector, followed by " more than a dozen
policemen," approached the learned gentleman.
Whether he took Mr. Beales, who was addressing
the populace from the top of a bench, by the ancle,
just as the keeper grasped thgi insane gentleman
who was making love to Mrs. Nicklehy over the
garden wall, we are not informed, hilt the speaker
felt probably that his position was insecure, and,
like the lunatic alluded to, came down. Up to that
moment there had not been the slightest sign of
disturbance, but of course people now began to hiss.
For a moment it looked as if the consequential fus-
siness of this policeman might lead to a breach of
the peace, and so produce the very evil against
which doubtless he meant to guard. But fortunately
the Working Men's Committee were wiser than
could have been expected, considering the eery
ridiculous opinions they had come there to express,
They exerted themselves to quiet the discontented,
and the crowd dispersed, leaving the inspector in
possession of the field. We can only hope that Sir
Richard Mayne will take some steps to reward the
victors. The issue of a medal to every policeman
who was on Primrose Hill that day is the very least
that will adequately mark what society owes them,
and by way of design we beg to suggest to the
engraver the inspector driving back with his trun-
cheon the hcrrors of anarchy. Prevention, it is
commonly said, is better than cure, but the maxim,
in politics at least, only applies when the evil is
sure to happen if not prevented. When there is a
reasonable chance that it may be avoided altogether,
we agree with the late Sir George Lewis that cure
is better than prevention. Talk is the surest of
safety valves, and so long as foolish people can meet
and proclaim their fancied vex wigs they are not
likely to do anything more. Leave the meetings
alone and they will separate peaceably enough
when the orators are exhausted, or the audience
want their tea, or it begins to rain. Disperse
them by force and you provoke the violence
you desire to prevent. If it be argued that the parks
are not the proper places for meetings, and that they
are only thrown open to the public for purposes of
recreation, wo reply that from the first the English
people have been wont to amuse themselves moult
tristemeM, and that political spouting is one of
their recreations. To say that it prevents other
people from enjoying the parks is absurd. Nobody
need go near the talkers unless he likes, and all the
Sunday preachers that ever gathered in Hyde-park
have still left ample space for a far greater number
of walkers than arc ever likely to be there. Be-
sides, it is obvious that when you gather people
round a preacher they occupy much less space than
they would do when scattered over the park. On
this partioslar occasion at all events it was impos-
sible that any one should be molested. Mr.
Cowper had granted permission to plant the tree.
Everybody who went to Primrose-hill last Satur-
day knew that he was going into a crowd, and
whether the speakers talked rubbish about Shak-
spere or Garibaldi, about the dead poet or the lie ing
hero, was a matter of no possible importance to any
one.
THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE EMPEROR
AND M. THIEKS.—The course which M. Thiers has
recently adopted, when the financial measures of
the Government have been the subject of discune
sion, has naturally induced a portion of the French
press to consider what would have been the effect
upon French industry if the old order oz things
had endured—if Louis Philippe had never left
the Tuileries for Claremont, and if M. Thiers
were now, as he well might have been, the leader
of a Parliamentary majority and the first Minister
of a Constitutional Sovereign. 'His critics remark
that M. Thiers is as thorough a Protectionist as
he ever was, that he is all for keeping trade in its
old fetters, and that he relies on those artificial
props which were once supposed to be the firmest
supports of French industry. It is, therefore, a very
good thing that France has got rid of him as a
ruler. If his supremacy had lasted, the wonders of
the last few years would have been unknown. The
French wculd have had few railways, and bad ones ;
they would not have seen Paris built up from its
ruins in half a dozen years ; th3y would have had
no Treaty with England ; and, being condemned to
a perpetual system of protection, they would have
had the hopeless feeling that they and their chil-
dren for ever were fated to eat or pocket those slabs
of sugar which the State, for the benefit of beetroot-
growers, insists shall have no sugar in them. It is,
however, rather a hasty assumption that, because
M. Thiers was a Protectionist in his old days, and
because he is a hardened Protectionist now, he would
have been a Protectionist if he had been in office, or
that Constitutional Government could never have
given France the benefits of Free Trade. When a
Minister is really in office, he learns by the mere
fact of his being in office what are the wants and
wishes of the country, and free trade must some day
have made its way in France, whatever was the
Government that happened to rule there. The very
greatest merit of Constitutional Government is that
it encourages free discussion, and free discussion
makes people think and talk, until at last new
thoughts become familiar and the opinions of a
nation are changed. With railways, and partly
through the great development of English wealth,
came a new burst of commercial life and energy in
France ; and it is not probable that this energy
would have been arrested because M. Thiers was in
office, or that M Thiers, having the choice between
learning new truths and the abandonment of office,
would have disdained to show a docile mind. The
ee.amples of Spain and Italy show that constitutional
assemblies are capable of being convinced that the
mercantile interests of a nation are worth attending
to, and that, if a nation wants to get rich, it must not
stand aloof from the general current of the modern
world. It is true that in every country personal
influence does much, and that some one man is
generally conspicuous in the ordering of great
changes. Sir Robert Peel in England, the Emperor
in France, Marshal O'Donnell iu Spain, and Count
Cavour in Italy, have stamped a seal of their own
on the first beginning of a new national activity.
The gain to a nation in time and trouble, when it
gets a really superior man to conduct it through a
crisis of commercial enterprise, is so great that it is
impossible to estimate how much these countries
have profited by the exertions and the intervention
of the men who have started in them new notions
and given them a now vigour. Bat in a country so
great and so enlightened as France, Free Trade
must have come sooner or later • and it is far too
strong a criticism to say that, if learliamentary Go-
vernment had lasted, M. Thiers and his friends
would be now engaged in keeping France as cum•
partitively backward and etagnant as the was twenty
years ago. While, however, it is impossible to sup-
pose that M. Thiers or any one else could have kept
France for ever Protectionist, the personal contrast
between him tad the Emptrbr, to whom the rapid