The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-15 00:00:00

Repeal is not an act of justice but only a mischiev
ous delusion, an effort to degrade Ireland from a
component and equal part of a great empire either
into the mere dependency she was till Castlereagh
terminated her humiliation, or a poverty-stricken
and powerless republic. Whilst her rights are pre-
served, while her share of representation is equal
and her sons promoted indifferently with Scotch-
men and Englishmen, while one Irishman can be
Premier and another Viceroy of India, Ireland has
no more right of revolt than Wales, or Cornwall, or
Lincolnshire, and the right of every nation to exist
would justify any measure of repression. But it if
just a little odd that the men who so savagely cert.
sure O'Connell for advising Repeal by moral force
are those who justify Mr. Davis in securing Re•
peal by arms. Is slavery the higher law which
hallows every act undertaken in its defence. O'Con-
nell distinctly believed that the divergence between
the two islands, the difference of race, creed, and
aspirations, of history and of sympathies, of manners
and of necessities, rendered a genuine unity hope-
less, and he drew the corollary that for the weaker
party separation was the alternative. That separa-
tion he strove to secure morally, by the machinery
which, it having already secured emancipation, he
looked upon as irresistible. He was, we believe,
utterly in the wrong, wrong in his avowed object,
which was independence, wrong in his secret object,
which was, we fear, union with France, wrong in
his choice of machinery, most wrong of all in be-
lieving that it was possible for an English Ministry
to consent to his plans. But Ireland, which suffers
from all the differences he so keenly perceived,
from that haughty want of appreciation we display
towards all whom we do not eomprehend, may well
be forgiven for honouring the man who suggested
an unwise course out of abounding love for her, who
holding in the Imperial Legislature the balance of
power was willing to sacrifice a position such as no
Irish Catholic ever attained in order to secure, as he
thought, the future of the people who believed that
having secured them justice he could win for them
Utopia. He failed, as he deserved in such a cause
to fail, but to our minds the fact most creditable to
the people of Ireland in all this demonstration is
that O'Connell having once manifestly, egregiously,
ridiculously failed, they have forgotten the grievous
failure to remember only the grand success. When
we are as sympathetic to our great men, place
Cromwell by the side of Elizabeth, the man who
won the Reform Bill by the side of the man who
won Waterloo, we shall have earned a new claim to
the admiration of the world. And when we do we
doubt not we shall feel the American sneer at our
admiration for such doubtful excellence, as Irishmen
feel now our sneers at their appreciation of O'Con-
nell.

THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE LAST EVENTS
OF THE WAR IN AMERICA.—The military move-
ments in America has never been more interesting
than at the present moment. The most important
of the operations is the siege of Atlanta. It is sup-
posed that Johnston thought it prudent to abandon
the town, and that the appointment of Hood to the
chief command represented the resolution of the
Confederate Government to risk a battle for the
maintenance of the position. The whole progress
of the campaign proves the great superiority of the
Federal force, and Sherman appears to have pro-
fited by his advantages with remarkable skill and
daring. For more than a hundred miles, he turned
every defensive position which impeded his ad-
vance, and he reached the outskirts of Atlanta
without having been forced to engage in a single
pitched pattle. As the Confederates were, as usual,
weak in cavalry, the Northern horse passed with
impunity southward, and in a wide circuit through
Georgia and Alabama they destroyed railroads and
property, and temporarily interrupted the com-
munication between Atlanta anu Montgomery. In
the meantime, General Sherman, after crossing the
Chattahoochie, approached the suburbs of Atlanta,
when he was attacked by Hood with the usual
vigour of the Confederate leaders, and for a time
was exposed to considerable danger. Two days
afterwards a general engagement ended with re-
sults which are for the present doubtful, as both
parties claim the victory. As Sherman's official
despatches have been withheld from publication,
there would be sufficient reason to trust in the
Confederate account, if it were not also stated that
Atlanta was undergoing bombardment, and that
a part of the town was already in flames. The
capture of the place would complete the triumph of
the Federal arms in the West, and Atlanta, like
Chattanooga, might in its turn become the base of
a new advance through the yet unconquered regions
of the Confederacy. On the other hand, a check in-
flicted on Sherman might involve dangerous comes
quences, as the outlying forces of 'Wheeler and of
Forrest are at last moving towards the Federal rear,
end it is stated that the Confederates have taken
a Federal camp at Decatur. The American
habit of repeating popular names of places
causes frequent confusion, and the friends of
the North endeavour to persuade themselves
that General Hardee's enterprise has been directed
against Decatur in Alabama. It is, however, far
more probable that the Confederates are endeavour-
ing to cut the enemy's communications at Decatur
in Georgia than that they are gratuitously fighting
in the heart of their own country with an enemy
who is not known to have found his way to the
south of Atlanta. If Longatreet's corps has really
been detached from Virginia to Georgia, the Federal
superiority of force may perhaps be reversed. The
knowledge that such a movement had taken place
would account for Grant's renewed activity, though
it is difficult to conjecture his reasons for his recent
change of position. His Northern admirers for
some weeks asserted,with rociferous unanimity that
the Lieut.-General would starve Richmond into
surrender by operating with his left on the pivot of
his position before Petersburg. But he found it ne-
cessary or convenient to move on his right, and to
place his troops on both sides of the James River,
in the neighbourhood of Fort Darling, which is on
the right bank, and within ten miles from Rich-
mond. It would seem that the task of Lee and
Beauregard must have been greatly simplified by
the change. From later accounts it appears that
Grant must have afterwards returned, with at least
a portion of his force, to his former position before
Petersburg; for be is stated to have successfully
assaulted a line of Confederate entrenchments at
that place, though the ultimate result of the en-
gagement, which was still pending, is not yet
known. It may possibly bs still his intention to
make his main attack on Richmond from the south,
but such a course would be by no means free from
risk. Fort Darling repelled M'Clellan's gunboats
in 1862 with little difficulty, and the river above is
defended by the Confederate rams. If Grant attempts
to cut the Danville railway in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of Richmond he will expose his flank
and rear to the attacks of the garrison of Peters-
burg. The direct line of advance on the left bank of
James River, by Malvern and White Oak Swamp,
has already been considered and disapproved. Even
the correspondents and writers of the New York
papers will scarcely pledge themselves to a ninth
or tenth plan of campaign, after adopting all
Grant's previous combinations with enthusiastic ap-
proval. There is no reason to suppose that the de-
fences of Richmond have been neglected in the
direction of Malvern or Fort Darling ; but it is
not impossible that the garrison may have been
largely reduced by detachments to Northern Vir-
ginia, and perhaps to Georgia. If General Lee felt
himself safe in his fortifications at Richmond, he
might be glad to economise his stores by movements
which at the same time promised considerable mili-
tary advantage.
THE " EXAMINER" ON THE HEALTH OF WATER.
ING PLACES.—Some of the watering places are very
much displeased, and not without reason, at the
figure they make in the Registrars General's tables
of mortality. And necessarily there is fallacy in
these accounts, for it is impossible to distinguish
the deaths of visitors from the deaths of residents ;
and the former swell the death-rate in some in-
stances very considerably, and at the same time
unduly as regards the question of salubrity. We
will take two extreme examples, Brighton and Bath,
which have the high death-rate of twenty in the
thousand. To compare that death-rate with the
death-rate of a rural district would be like compar-
ing the death-rate of a hospital with that of a pro-
portionate number of private houses. Brighton is
the great sea-side hospital of London. The ailing
and convalescent go to Brighton to get health and
strength, and the incurable go there for their last
chance, and to die. It is probably becahse the
place is so healthy that its death-rate is raised so
high by the mortality of its invalid visitors. It is
impossible to traverse the cliffs without seeing both
the health the air will give, and the stages of
diseases and decay which are past cure. I3righton
is, indeed, the incurable patient's forlorn hope.
The death-rate, which is swelled by this class, must
not be taken as the criterion of the ge-
neral sanitary condition ; and the same remark
applies to three other places which have the same
high rate, probably from the same cause—Ton-
bridge Wells, Buxton, and Malvern, all haunts of
invalids. Bath is another example, but not quite
of the same class. It is the refuge of the aged, and
balks death of many who have long passed the ap-
pointed threescore and ten. Dryden says of his
good parson—

Of sixty years he seemed, and well might last
To sixty more, but that he lived too fast.
A description which must not be understood in the
present sense of the phrase, as the model pastor
" made almost a sin of abstinence," and lived too
fast in speeding to heaven. Neither this sort of
excess, nor any other, is to be seen in the folks who
well might last to a hundred in Bath; but we be-
lieve that temperate good living contributes much
to the extraordinary longevity of the place, and
nowhere is marketing batter and cheaper. But