The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—ir would seem that in the interval
which has elapsed between the battle of Fredericks-
burg and the commencement of the new year the
advocates of more conciliatory and more violent
counsels have fairly fought their battle out, and that
victory has declared in favour of the latter. Mr.
Lincoln has finally adhered to the policy from which
he showed at one moment some inclination to draw
back. He has kept his promise to the very letter ;
he has declared the negroes in the States now at
open war with the North free, except within cer-
tain districts occupied by the Federal forces, and
has pledged the Government of the United States
to recognise and support the freedom so granted by
their naval and military force. From this Procla-
mation Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mary-
land are exempt; so that it would seem to be the
policy of the President to interpose an isthmus of
slavery between the two masses of free States
which are to extend to the North and South of it.
Pronounced under other circumstances, by another
person, and at another time, such a Proclamation
might well excite once more the enthusiasm which
penetrated the whole mind of England in the days
of Wilberforce and Clarkson. We should most
unfeignedly rejoice were the words to which the
President has given utterance capable of carrying
with them their own fulfilment. To slavery we
have ever entertained the most rooted aversion. Not
all the valour, not all the success of the South, has
ever blinded us to this black spot on their fair
escocheon. But even tainted as they are with this
foul stain they have commanded our admiration
and our sympathy from the gallantry with which
they maintained their cause, and from the obvious
truth that the struggle was for separation on the
one part and compulsory retention on the other,
the emancipation or continued slavery of the negro
being only used as means to forward the ends
of the North. While it was supposed that the
South could be brought back by giving every
security for the continuance of slavery, the North
never dreamt of emancipation. When it was found
that no such conciliation was possible, the North,
es a weapon of war, and not as a concession to prin-
ciple, has finally decided on emancipation. That
this measure is no homage to principle or conviction,
but merely a means of raising up a domestic enemy
against the Southerners in the midstof the Southern
States, is abundantly proved from the fact that
slavery, so odious in Alabama, is tolerated in Ken-
tucky. Its abolition is a punishment to rebels : its
retention is a reward to patriots; it is not the ac-
cursed thing to be rooted out at all hazards. Its
abolition is the punishment of rebellion ; its reten-
tion is the reward of adherence to the Union.
Still, though there is little homage to principle
in the President's Proclamation, any attempt on
the part of the American Government, however,
tardily, reluctantly, and partially made, to emend-
,: pate any portion of the negro race, must have an
effect on the opinion of mankind, and tend to what
we have never doubted would in some way or other
be the final result of this war, the abolition of
slavery. But our exultation is by no means with-
out misgivings. The President has proclaimed free-
dom, but he is without power to enforce his Pro-
clamation. Except in the neighbourhood of New
Orleans, where. General Butler has already done all
that is possible to create a servile war, the President
of the United States has no power whatever to en-
force his Proclamation. If the blacks are to obtain
the freedom he promises them, it must be by their
own hands. They must rise upon a more numerous,
more intelligent, better armed, and braver corn-
, munity of whites, and exterminate them, their wives
and children, by fire, and sword. The President of
the United States may summon them to this act, but
he is powerless to assist them in its execution. Nay,
this is the very reason why they are summoned.
The armies of the South have gained a clear sups-
_ riorityover the armies of the North, and it is to re-
dress this balance that the negro, burning, ravish-
ing, massacring, and destroying, is summoned to the
conflict. If these things are not done at all, there
will be for the present at least, no emancipation ;
if they are done, they will provoke retaliatory
action, which is but too likely to end in the ex-
termination of their perpetrators. In neither
case has the friend of humanity any cause
to rejoice. It must also be remembered that
this act of the President, if it is proposed to
strike off the fetters of one race, is a flagrant attack
on the liberties of another. The attempt to free the
blacks is a flagrant attack on the liberties of the
whites. Nothing can be more unconstitutional,
more illegal, more entirely subversive of the com-
pact on which the American Confederacy rests,
than the claim set up by the President to interfere
with the laws of individual States by his Proclama-
tion, unless, indeed, it be the attempt of Congress
to dismember the ancient State of Virginia, and
. create a new State upon its ruins. It is prepos-
terous to say that war gives these powers ; they are
the purest usurpation, and, though now used against
the enemies of the Union, are full of evil presage
for the liberties of the States that still adhere to it.
• It is true that the President advises the negroes to
e-abstain from all violence except in self-defence, and
.to labour for reasonable wages. But the President
•- well knows that not a slaveholder in the South will
"'Obey his Proclamation, that it can only be enforced
by violence, and that if the negroes obtain freedom
3 it will be by the utter destruction of their masters.
In such a state of society to speak of wages—that
is, of a contract between master and servant—is a
srcruel mockery. In the South the negro can only
'-exist apart from his master by a return to the ea-
! 'age state—a state in which, amid blood and anarchy
and desolation, he may frequently regret the fet-
„yrs he has broken, and even the master he has de-
atroyed. He cannot hope for a better situation than
that of his race in the North—a situation of degra-
dation, humiliation, and destitution which leaves
the slave very little to envy. Mr. Lincoln bases his

"ttict on military necessity, and invokes the conside-
rate judgment of mankind and the judgment of
',Almighty God. He has characterised his own act;
mankind will be slow to believe that an act avow.
.edly the result of military considerations has been
dictated by a sincere desire for the benefit of those

*ho, under the semblance of emancipation, are thus
'marked out for destruction, and He who made mal
in His own image can scarcely, we may presume to
think, look with approbation on a measure which,
under the pretence of emancipation, intends to re-
duce the South to the frightful condition of St.
Domingo.
~„ HERALD—What with Elliots and Russells, Euro-
pean diplomacy has had a busy time of it during
the last month or two. It was always known that
Earl Russell—the head of the family we suppose
we
:caj call him—had an adventurous turn of mind.
in
Sydney Smith has immortalised his courage;
of course previously to the Vienna escapade; but
the moat ardent admirersaction
spirit of of his lordship's bold im-
promptuthe man as he now etandsoeuld hardly have realised
uitionNfest before us. Cavour
donspirait totsiours ; Lo
secret intrigue.
reputation for the talent of saepoleon has
a great
what have their panegyrists toßut i
.recklessness of our Whig
pare with the energetic show that will com- I
threee men in
said, in an
Foreign Secretary.
' There are only
~ You Europe," Napoleon is reported to have
v interesting conversation with Cavour,
and I,
zzlni' and --" Palmerston, said the Post—Ma ' the
Daily News. Now the secret is out. It w
the firebrand Palmerston, nor the terrible M:zs nzienori.
It must have been the great Earl Russell, the hot
of Reform battles, the author of the Durham letter
and of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. We thought
the counts of the indictment against this eminent
diplomatist were all made out. There is the Danish
question, the Eastern question, the American ques-
tion. On each of these Lord Russell is to be tried
before :he highest tribunals of the land. But this
i
not enough for his ambitious mind. Foiled in
Schleswig
the courage to
and befooled by the Greeks, he has had
His
last challenge the Pope and beard Napo-
leon.ffort is to supplsnt the Fiench
Emperor at the Vatican, and substitute for the pro-
tection of his Catholic
aid of Protestant England.
Napoleon 111. the
The story seems too
monstrous to be believed. B
Lord Russell seriously conceivedt it
this
is sober fact.
Odo Russell as seriously set about idea, and Mr.
into execution. On the 20th December carrying it
de Lhuys states that the proposal had been
Drouyn
already