The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—Another great battle has been fought
among the woods of Virginia. tinwenri.d by a
struggle of nearly a week, the Federals returned to
the attack on Thursday, the 12th inst., and there
ensued what appears to have been one of the most
bloody encounters of the saf. The last of the first
series of battles left General Lee in front of S'pott-
sylvania Court-house, with the Federal army, re-
pulsed but not routed, before him. So undiminished
was the vigour of the Confederates that the last
attack had been theirs, and the greatest slaughter
inflicted on their adversaries had been in a contest

in which the Federals had to hold the ground they
had gained. But during the night of Wednesday
the Federal General Hancock changed his position
from the right to the left centre of the Federal line,
and at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, the
12th, he assaulted Lee's right. Of his success there
are the usual varying accounts. The first state-
ments, evidently derived from persons who quitted
the field while the battle was in progress, are to
the effect that Hancock captured 23 cannon and

3,000 prisoners, among whoin were three Generals.
But the battle which began at this early hour

continued during the whole day, and, according to
later intelligence, the course of the day's fighting
materially altered the position which Hancock had
gained in the morning. It seems that this attack
on the Confederate right was a surprise, and that
the capture of prisoners and cannon, even if as im-
portant as stated, could not be taken as a proof of
general success. The battle which followed was, on
the whole, to the advantage of the Confederates.
" Of the cannon captured," it is said, " many re-
mained on disputed ground on Thursday night,
while it is not perfectly clear that a number of them
were not recaptured by the Confederates." But still
more important is the news that no success what^
ever attended the Federals at other points of
the line, their assaults against Lee's centre and
left being invariably repulsed with great slaughter.
At nightfall the Confederates maintained their
position in front of Spottsylvania Court-house,
but during Thursday night Lee, repeating the
manceuvre which he has twice practised during the
campaign, retreated to take up a stronger position.
To this position General Grant, impeded by the
heavy fall of rain and the bad state of the roads,
could not readily follow him, and it is possible that
the carnage may again for a few days be stayed.
This great battle may, then, be said to have been
indecisive at a time when an indecisive battle is really
a victory to the South. The strategy of Grant con-
sists simply in pushing forward his whole force,
hurling it against the Southern positions, and in-
flicting loss on the enemy by submitting to a loss
which is probahly greater on his own side. The
battle of the 12th was no doubt one of the most
bloody of the war. The carnage, we are told, was
awful—" the men fell like grain." No estimate of
the loss is given. Such generalship as this, though
it certainly is not of a high order, may tend for a
time to keep up the courage of the North by inspir-
ing the belief that the South is likely to be wearied
out by the constant attack of armies more powerful
than its own. But such a plan of campaign may
soon be shown to be dangerous and even fatal. Gen.
Grant, with a fine army, has attacked position after
position, and been repulsed in a series of actions
which must very much have lessened his strength.
As yet his advance towards the Confederate capital
has not done much to inspire the North with hopes
of ultimate success. Although he has approached
nearer Richmond than any of his predecessors by
the same road, yet the price of gold obstinately
keeps up, and the tone of the Northern Press is far
less jubilant than at the time of Pope's or Hooker's
exploits. Indeed, to look for large results from the
present campaign requires a high degree of faith in
Federal good fortune. To expect that the most
splendid victory of Grant will do much to bring the
war to a close is to forget the character of the
Southern people and the vast extent of their terri-
tory. Even the sanguine North, when it sees these
successive days of bloodshed, which only end in
causing the Confederate army to draw back a short
distance to new positions that have been carefully
chosen and strengthened during three years past,
seems to feel the hopelessness of the contest in
which it is engaged. No one who considers the
matter can jail to perceive that the further Grant
advances through a depopulated country, along
wretched roads, and with the ever-lengthening line
of his communications exposed to the Confederate
cavalry and guerillas, the more unable will he be to
keep up his attacks on the Confederates, who, on the
contrary, fall back on their resources and fight in a
country which is entirely their own. Even if we
give the name of victories to the battles after which
General Grant advances, we may say that, after a
few more such victories, he will be undone. It is
not only the large number of men who are sub-
tracted from the army by death or wounds, but the
fact that the whole provisons of the army, both for
man and beast, have to be brought from a base of
operations a hundred miles distant, that the
wounded have to be taken back thither, and that,
in short, the great Federal army must be considered
as an expeditionary force sent into a country from
which it can gat her nothing, and through which it
must pass quickly or retreat. This is the state of
things in the fourth year of the war at the dis-
tance of less than a hundred miles from Washing-
ington. The lest and greatest invasion of Vir-
ginia only results in the retirement of the Confede-
rate General from one strong position to another,
after battles in which he appeared almost invari-
ably to have held his own. Although it was fore-
told at the outbreak of hostilities that the South
must be exhausted in a few weeks, yet we have
them in the campaign of 1864 confronting the
largest Federal army ever levied by an army which
which appears equally strong, equally well armed,
1 and fully able to defend its territory. To what
'esolution, what determination to be free, what
anirch:sity and hatred towards the North, does such
testify ! Is it likely that the men
a state or eq.'lnge
4 such an army out of their own re-
who have raise,
no help from foreign countries
sources, with little Oz.
will submit to a community whose Legislature even
now, in the crisis of the war, is busy with a bill
for giving to soldiers and sailors, both white and
coloured, homesteads from confiscated Confederate
estates ? Is it not evident that even if the cs:mpaign
were to place Richmond in the power of the FedeCele,
the war would continue with undiminished ferocity
in the great territory of Virginia as in the other
States of the South ? To our notions the only hope
of peace is in the recognition by General Grant that
the enterprise on which he is set is hopeless, and in
his retreat from a position which it will require
every day more skill to maintain. If the intelli.
Bence from Virginia be indecisive, from other parts
it is plainly unfavourable to the Federals. It is
said that Forrest's cavalry gained possession of
Sherman's railway communications, and had de-
stroyed Federal transports on the Tennessee and
Cumberland rivers. But the position of Banks is
still more lamentable. He appears to be entirely
hemmed in by the enemy. The Confederates have
erected batteries on the Red River, cutting off his
retreat ; his steamers with supplies and reinforce.
ments are sunk, and even the capture of Admiral
Porter's gunboats is considered inevitable. However
the war may go in Virginia, it is pretty clear that
the bold of the Federals is loosening on the South-
West, and that even their great resources are in-
sufficient for the permanent occupation of a territory
so vast.
HERALD._Professor Goldvrin Smith seems deter-
mined not to desert the cause of his allies, the
Federals of America. We should have little right
to interfere with this innoe::nt flirtation, and should
certainly allow a disinterested e !atonic affection to
reach its naturalend, did not Mr Smith:exaggyrated
friendship induce him to propound se2 timents
derogatory to the dignity of this country and
prejudicial to the law of nations. It is not
necessary to reopen the technical discussion as to
the character borne by the Confederate man of war
the Georgia. Our columns have shown more than
once, that this vessel, having received her equip-
ment abroad, cannot by any possibility come
under the terms of the Foreign Enlistment Act,
however clearly it may be made out that she was
originally built, in an English yard and afterwards
put into commission by President Davis. We
pass these considerations entirely, and so much
the more readily because they are familiar to
the British public, and also because Professor
Smith hardly ventures to bring any direct imputa-
tion against their conclusiveness. His present posi-
tion is, that the Georgia has committed offences of
so heinous a nature that our municipal law ought to
punish them, or, if it cannot do so 'without being
strained, it ought to be altered, mad that the law of
nations, founded as it is upon pure ethics, ought, at
any rate, to step in in order to provide an adequate
remedy. We will take the postscript of his most
recent letter to a contemporary first, as in that may
he supposed to lie the gist of his whole argument.
He assures us that the defence of the Confederate
practice, which, it is insinuated, is piratical, of
burning captured vessels, is based upon a celebrated
saying of Lord Stowell, that "a hostile ship may be
destroyed in order to prevent its escape." The pro-
fessor takes occasion to remark that Lord Stowell
little thought what modern practices would be.
We have purposely given the sense rather than the
exact words of Mr. Smith, for we might do him an
unintentional wrong if we quoted his obscure lan-
guage without referring to the previous portion of
his letter. Tee conclusion, however, at which he
arrives is dangerous to his case. Lord Stowell
would, we grant, he amazed at the course of ac ion
recommended by some of our aspiring jurists. The
founder of English mercantile law might well be
surprised to hear his canons, which were intended
for the protection of the weak against the strong,
applied to the creation of a supposed inviolability

for the powerful and ambitious aggressor. Let Proe-
fessor Smith beware of using a system of reasoning
which is essentially two-edged, or otherwise the
weapon upon whic'h he relies may injure his own
hand more than it can the body of his enemy. Bat
we daisb that the Confederate defence rests upon
the maxims cf an English jurist, however eminent ;
it appeals to far older and more generally recog-
nised authority. Civilian, of the greatest sepia-
tetion;ewho have spent the whole of their lives
in pronsotne, the interests of civilisation by
the introduction :4 the mild tenets of Chris-
tianity into war, heee admitted that, in
case of fire or any other oisasttn. which cannot be
provided against, it is lawful for us so deotroy even
a neighbour's house to ensure our oven personal
safety. The instance imagined is evident's'? one of
an extreme character, its necessity must not be a
matter of mere guess-work, but must be capable' of
demonstration. Confederate cruisers cleerly come
under this category. Neutral ports are closed
against prizes ; the dismissal of captured Federal
ships would lead to fatal information being given
to other vessels, their retention would hamper tilt
captor and expose him beyond a shadow of doubt
to immediate capture. The Southern captain would
willingly take his prize to port if he could, for,
after all, he destroys either his own property or that,
of the state from which he derives his commission-
We are not in the habit of blaming our Henry V.
because, completely outnumbered at Agincourt, he
declined, in the early part of that famous engage'
ment to keep prisoners, and was obliged to adopt AU
extremely sanguinary policy ; much less can we cell-
sure the Confederate officer who, when the ocean is
full of hostile vessels, is not regardless of the dictates
of humanity, who saves the lives of his prisoners at
the same time that by absolute necessity he is com-
pelled to burn their ship. All that we have a right
to expect from is that he respect the cargoes of nen°
tral nations, but he is called upon, neither by jus-
tice nor by expediency, to treat his enemy as it his
goods were inviolable. Having cleared away pre-
judice with which Professor Smith would fain mys-
tify us in a simple matter, we shall be the less iikels'
to concur in any attempt to strain or alter our moth'
cipal law. Our courts of justice are open to the
stronger as to the weaker party; but should the
cause of the latter triumph through the fair work-
ing out sf the institutions upon which we not un-
reasonably pride ourselves, to suppose that we
must then have recourse to fresh enactments, in
order to bolster up the strong, is to conceive
the people of England not only dead to all sense
of self-respect, but eager to commit acts of
unparalleled baseness ; it is to reverse our past
history and legislation. We do not, therefore,
wonder at Mr. Smith's leaving this tangible ground
somewhat abruptly, and at his preferring to employ'
some vague and unsatisfactory language upon in-
ternational law, or, as he would more justly style
it, the law of nations. 'We are quite ready to con-
cede to Mr. Smith—indeed, we would go further
than he does—that the words " international law,'
as implying a kind of compact between different
countries, have been grossly abused, and that the
true law of nations must be looked for in high
moral considerations. Granting that his data are
right, we cannot help thinking that the inference
which a scholar so distinguished as Mr. Goldwia
Smith is draws from them is singularly illogical
and superficial. By implication he would have u&
infer that the practice of burning ships, even when
adopted from sheer necessity, is so horrible that it
at once violates every known system of ethics. But
are questions of morals thus one-sided, or do the
profess to embrace the whole of the subject-matter ?
Is it, or is it not, a moral consideration that one
nation may be intent upon gaining its indepen-
dence; that another may be waging a war of ruth-
less ambition and exterminatiox ; that an invader
may bring into the field hosts of emigrant mercee
naries while the children of the soil are arrayed
against them upon behalf of their own hearths ;
that these very ships, upon whose conflagraticn
piteous a lament is raised, may be engaged in car'
rying supplies to the invader ? Again, do morale'
teach us, that if a ship is built in England, end'
equipped in France we are to assert that it uses our
ports "as the base of its naval operations;" but
that we are to shut our eyes to the fact that fro'
those same ports issue emigrants, ammunition, and
all the other implements of war; that near our
coasts lie Federal ships in wait for the infant Coe"
federate navy ; that the law of nations condenah6
the weak, who act through necessity, who obey
the precepts of self-defence, but finds no fault la
the strong and overbearing, whose passion is the
sole guide to action ? For ourselves we have no
inclination thus to play with morals ; we can
hardly think that Professor Smith would do so la
matters upon which he does not entertain a strong
bias, contrary alike to reason and fair dealing.

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ln which a Gentleman may Sup—EVANS', COVENT-
GARDEN, my de •r fellow!

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