The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-23 00:00:00

COLONIAL.

TEA..—A moderate amount of business has been done,
and prices have remained steady;
SUGAR,—The demand has been animated, and late prices
have been well sustained for West India descriptions, In
the refined market also prices are a shade firmer.
COFFEE.—The operations have been to a moderate extent,
at about previous quotations for colonial quilitier.
RlCE.—There has been a fair demand for Madras, which.
has sold freely at full rates.
TALLOW.—Business has continued rather dull. P.Y.C.
on the spot is marked 41s, and March delivery 42s per cwt.

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

From tke Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Dee. 9.

ought to have, very serious misgivings that the rapid
decay of Foreign trade will soon deprive the Custom
House orthe supplies of gold which are necessary
to meet the interest on the Five-twenty Bonds and
other securities, he cautiously prepares the public
mind to entertain the idea that it will or may be-
come necessary to pay such interest in greenbacks.
Not that he advocates such a course of prooeeding.
On the contrary, he thinks that the pledge to
pay in gold ought not to be violated. He argues,
however, that when the pledge was given
no one anticipated a possible continuance of the war
for such a length of time as would involve the in-
crease of the public debt to the pint it has already
attained, or the possible payment of interest in coin
to an amount beyond the ability of duties or imposts
to supply. "If a departure from the pledge could
be vindicated at all," he says, " it could only be
by one of those State necessities which justify a
nation in temporarily postponing its obligations in
order to preserve the power to discharge them at a
future day." This is mildly and euphemistically
Repudiation, under the plea of State necessity, and
points the path which the Republic will follow—if
peace be much longer postponed, and if Mr Lin-
coln do not speedily gain some more brilliant success
than any which have yet rewarded either his gene•
rals, his admirals, or his diplomatists. Upon the whole
Mr Fessenden's report gives no satisfaction to any-
body, nor is it easy to see how it could. His facts
must be as unwelcome to himself as his exposition
of them must be to the public, and it would be about
as reasonable to call upon Mrs Partington to express
satisfaction with the waves of the Atlantic, which
she was vainly mopping out of her cottage, as to ex-
pect Mr Fessenden to look with cheerfulness on the
rising deluge of indebtedness, which not all the
mops in America can mop cut.
Mr Seward is a happier man than his colleagues.
The last contribution to his volume of 3,000 pages
of close print bears date so lately as the sth inst.,
and is pabiished in all the principal journals of this
morning, so that the public, frustrated—but only for
a time—of the full treat that is in store for them,
might enjoy at the earliest possible moment, and
while it was fresh and hot, the choicest of all
eta. =oracle to be picked our of the ponderous
volume. To be able to insult England and Egg.
lishmen, to snub a lord, to make political capi-
tal for himself, to flatter the anti-British preju-
dices of his countrymen, and to talk of the South in
a patronising manner in one and the same dome
ment was too glorious an opportunity for the Secre-
tary of State to let slip. His delight appears to be
extreme. He positively revels in vituperative mis-
statement, and crows, like chanticleer, a long clear
note of defiance to the slumbering British lion.
Lord Wharnchffe, it appears, put himself in commu-
nication with Mr Adams to ask permission from the
Federal Government to send through the hands of
an accredited agent the sum of £17,000, which had
been raised at the Liverpool Bazaar for the benefit
of Southern prisoners of war confined in the prisons
and bastiles of the North. Mr Adams replied in a
cautious but courteous note, and referred the whole
matter to Mr Seward. Mr Seward's official reply
to Mr Adams is neither cautious nor courteous,
but bold, insolent, and, in one important respect,
false. He disallows Lord Wharncliffe's demand
to distribute " British gold " in America, and
directs Mr Adams to close the correspondence.
He then goes on to assert that the sum thus insidi-
ously and ostentatiously offered in the name of hu-
manity constitutes no very large portion of the
prefits which its contributors may be justly sups
posed to have made by blockade running, and that
no portion of the American people will be disposed
to regard the £17,000 in question as a " too gener-
ous equivalent for the devastation and dissolution
which a civil war promoted and protracted by Brie
tish subjects has spread throughout the States,
which before were eminently prosperous and happy.'
this sentence is not so much Buncombe as it is Sea-
ward. What British subjects, and of what quality
they were, who promoted the civil war, it would
puzzle even Mr Seward to name or designate. It has
often been reiterated by pro-slavery Democrats that
Mr G. Thompson, late M.P. for the Tower Ham-
lets, and other British subjects, ware employed by
Exeter Hall and the British aristocracy to lecture
on negro emancipation in America, and thus to sow
the seeds of disunion, and break up the great Ame-
ricsn Republic. It is known to Mr. Seward, as
well as to Mr. Horace Greeley, Mr. Garrison, Mr.
Wendell Phillips, Mr. Joshua Giddings, Mr. Charles
Sumner, and other leading orators and lights of the
Republican party, that some of them tacitly, and
others overtly, held the Union to be a " league with
death and a covenant with hell." and that the Abo-
litionists were the first sad the most eloquent and
persevering of all disunionists. It is, therefore, a
singular lack of memory or of p►inciple in the Secre-
tary of S►ate to repeat the cry of his pro-slavery
opponents and attribute,either directly or indirectly,
the disruption of the Union to British influence or
fomentation. Mr. Seward, however, knows better.
He is speaking to and for " Buncombe;" and if fact
and Buncombe are on the opposite sides of his dis-
honest statement, rant pis pour le fait, and so much
the better for "Buncombe." But, perhaps, the
crowning impertinence of the letter is where Mr
Seward declares his opinion that the Southern
people have not yet become debased, although they
have sadly wandered from the paths of loyalty and
patriotism; and that, therefore, they will rejoice in
common with their Northern fellow-countrymen (I)
R in being saved by their (sic) considerate and loyal
Government (and Mr Seward) from the grave insult
which Lord Wnarnciiffe and his associates, in their
z -al for the overthrow of the United States, have
prepared for the victims of this unhatural and hope-
less rebellion." Tails is as cool as it is delicious,
and is probably as favourable a specimen as the
3,000 pages of his forthcoming volumes will afford
of the opaque jocularity which Mr Seward passes
'or wit and argument.

In a short speech to the people from the balcony
Of the White House, Mr Lincoln happily summa-
rised, in la'.a own peculiar manner, the facts of the
military situation. "I know," he said, " where Sher-
men went in, but I don't know where he will come
out." The public, both of the North and the South,
and possibly Geen. Sherman himself, are in the same
state of ignorance. From Grant's army there come
symptoms of a new movement against Petersburg
and 13:chni end, and from Tennessee something more
than rumour to suggest, if not to prove, that Gen.
Hood's operations are assuming large and unex-
pected importance. The public, however, has been
so wholly engrossed during the last three days with
the President's Message and the reports of the Secre-
taries of the Treasury, the Navy, and the Post-
office, as to have had but little time to bestow upon
any other topic of public interest. Mr Seward'3
big thing," as the President might call it, has not
yet been issued, and Mr Stanton has been too seri-
ously Indisposed to complete his report; but there
needed neither of these to add to the already arduous
labour of all whose business or duty, or even whose
curiosity, compels them to peruse the State papers
of the day. Mr Fessenden's report is the one that is
naturally studied with the greatest anxiety, and its
figures, taken in connection with Mr Lincoln's as•
severation that he will and must continue the war
until the South lays down its arms and resumes its
allegiance, have cast a gloom over the public mind
and filled Wall-street with dismal forebodings. In■
creaaed taxation, a 20 per cent income tax, the de-
cline of foreign trade, fresh loans at exorbitant rates
of interest, new:and immense issues of paper money,
the expansion of prices, and gold at 300 per cent.
premium—such, in whole or part, appear to be the
melancholy prospects of the country if the obsti-
nate South will but persist for another 12 months
in setting the North at defiance. The imme-
diate effect of the publication of these docu-
ments was to advance the premium on gold 6
per cent, on Wednesday. On Thursday, in spite of
all the efforts of the financial agent of the °ovum.
ment to bring it down, the price was maintained,
and to day the tetedency is still upwards.
Mr Lincoln, in his Message, fails to realise the
expectations excited by the recent conciliatory
speech of General litutler. He has nothing to pro-
pose to the South but unconditional submission ;
and, so far from smoothing the way for the return
of the prodigal son or the repentant sinner, he
takes pains to impress upon the people and leaders
of the Confederacy that measures far more strin-
gent than any he has yet suggested may be em-
ployed to coerce and to punish, if not to extermi-
nate them. He draws a somewhat agreeable picture
of the monetary condition of the North, but, know-
ing from the information placed before him by his
Secretary of the Treasury that the tax bearing capa-
city of his people is much more limited than his
necessities, he sees that popular loans, immense in
their magnitude, would be exceedingly convenient.
Without any expectation of procuring such loans
from foreign capitalists, he depends for assistance--
and none will blame him—upon his own people ex-
clusively. He does not seem, however, to rely much
upon their unaided and impulsive patriotism, but

suggests a scheme by which he thinks their cupidity

and selfishness may be turned to better account in
replenishing the public purse. For a man whose
peculiar virtue in the eyes of his neighlLur when
he was one of themselves in the little town of
Springfield,lino:s, was his honesty, the President
bas odd, not to say loose, notions as regards money.
"He boasts jocularly," says a writer on finance
who daily enlightens the public of this city on the
misunderstood or perverted truths of political eco.
nomy, "that he never in his life knew any more

about what money was than that it was something
that somebody else would take from him in payment
of a debt, and that a counterfeit, if it would pass,
would be just as good to him as gold." It is pos-
eibts that Mr Lincoln never said anything of the
kind, yet after the extraordinary suggestion con-
tained in his Message it is difficult to exonerate him
entirely from the charge of a little—perhaps a very
little—blindness on the subj ect of commercial honour
and the binding obligations of a debt. In view of the
increasing nccEssities of the State for means to carry
on the war, which he will do nothing to stop, he
publicly recommends that the public debt should
be distributed over the greatest possible number of
people; and to further this highly desirable end
suggests " whether it might not be both expedient
and competent for Congress to provide that a limited
amount of some future issue of public securities
might be held by any bona fide purchaser exempt

from taxation and from seizure for debt, under
such restrictions and limitations as may be necessary
to guard against abuse of so important a privilege."
Mr Feesenden, instructed by his chief, supports, bnt
in more guarded language, the President's idea.

" If," aays the Secretary, "our public debt must
necessarily be large and require a long course of
yearn for its liquidation, its wide diffusion is most
desirable. Such advantages should be offered as
will induce all who have anything to spare beyond
the amount required for their own support or use
to invest the surplus, or a portion of it, in the na-
tional securities. These advantages can only be
found in an increased rate of interest, an exemption
from public burdens, and security of possession.
What limit should be fixed in either of these pare
healers it is for the practical wisdom of Congress to
ascertain and determine." The fiscal as well as
moral objections to Mc Lincoln'a and Mr Fess en-
den's proposal are obvious and palpable. Tne scheme,
if ever carried into effect, would in the first place be
over costly in offeriog a higher tha❑ the current rate
of interest ; in the second, it would in proportion
to its success diminish the area of taxation, which it
is the true policy of the Government to extend ;
and, in the third, it would offer on the part of the
State a direct incentive to and premium upon dis-
honesty. " Invest a hundred thousand dollars or
any smeller sum," the Government might say to
any man whose money it coveted, "in the public
funds, and if hereafter you fail in business and are
compelled to compound with your creditors, that
auto at least shall belong to you and your family,
and no law or judgment of law shall be able to
touch it." It is true that both Mr Lincoln and Mr
Fessenden foresee that such a privilege," as the
former calls it, might be abused, and that they pro-
pose to surround its exercise with difficulties and
limitations ; but there needs no exhaustive know-
ledge of human nature, or of that quality so
admired in America under the name of "smart.
ness," to be able to foretell that the ingenuity
or cunning of the man who desired to lay by
such a nest-egg for future use would be more
than a match for any obstructions which an Act
of Congress might interpose. The project has as
yet found no one to defend it. At the same time
it has found few to condemn, or scarcely to criticise
it. Perhaps, however, the conscience of the mer-
cantile community will yet revolt at a proposition
so immoral. Perhaps, also, men without conscience,
who may happen to have money to invest will
hesitate before they lend it to a Government which
seems to set so little stare upon common honesty. It
debtors can repudiate their personal liabilities by
the simple act of lending their stirpari to the Go-
vernment, may not the Government repudiate them
and their debt hereafter as soon as diminishing re•
ceipts from taxation shall make repayment incon•
veyient ?

ST. ANDREW'S LIFEBOAT.—The quarterly trial
of the lifeboat took place on Saturday afternoon.
As th's was the first trial since the wreck of the Napoleon
and appointment of the new committee, much interest was
exhibited in the result, and more especially as the com-
mittee had chosen a day when an unusually heavy swell
was on the sea. Consequently a very large crowd of people
assembled to witness the trial. The committee were on the
spot at the hour appointed, and the coxswain, but most of
the crew did not appear till some time after, when they,
under the merest pretences, refused to go out in the boat
that day. A volunteer crew from among those on the spot
was called for and procured ; and the boat was by them
launched, and away they went, facing the foaming
breakers and a stiff breeze which was blowing from
the eastward, and they passed several tremendous
waves, and were a good way beyond the pier-head.
When abreast of a very heavy roller, several of the
oars were broken, and others were swept away, so that the
boat was nearly capsized ; and the crew were obliged to put
into the East Sands, where they got a supply of oars, and
again set off and brought round the boat all safe into the
harbour, amidst the plaudits of the assembled crowds. We
cannot too highly applaud the bravery of the volunteer
crew; and we would:mention that much credit is due to Mr
Robert Campbell, advocate, lleriot-row, Edinburgh, who
happened to be present with his brother, Professor Camp-
bell, of St Andrews University, and who with others went
out as a volunteer. The experience of Saturday will, we
understand, be the means of some method being adopted
for procuring a lifeboat crew which can, under all circum •
stances, be relied upon. Notwithstanding the disadvan-
tages under which the trial was made on Saturday, Captains
Wright and Scott, and other nautical men, expressed it as
having been a most important and satisfactory trial.—
Scakman.

Mr Fcsgenden does not take by any_
Ili
means so
cheerful a view Of the stateohfphuebr he
liCbtf.ttra as I
Lincoln. Ha is doubtful 'Whether
can extractthn 18
much more out of the pee-eta of the people
warranted, but not always obtained. 'unr thelpre
Sent Internal Itavenue Act, and the eziarin
tariff,-
gbu
and sees no mode of making both ends meet
loans and the issue of inconvertible paper and a re-
pudiation, if necessity compel, of the obligation to
pay interest in gold. He also seems to believe that
the objects of the war, even if they be attained, win
not be ,:vorth their cost, and hints that if the Arse_
rrcan people had really known what was before them
when they took up arms to coerce their Southern
brethren,;and compel a voluntary political partner-
ship—for such is their illogical, if not impossible
purpose—they would have done what Gee. Scott
recommended, and said to the seceding States,
" Wayward sisters, depart in peace Having, as he

A RAILWAY MYSTERY.—A curious ease, for
which a solution has not been found, puzzled the
railway officials at Halton on Tuesday. It seems that on
the previous night some one had entered one of the water-
closets, and had there divested himself of every particle of
clothing, even to the stockings, all of which were found in
the closet. Nothing is known of the owner, but it is certain
that he must have left the place in another suit or have ap-
peared in a state of nature. In the first case, he is pre-
sumed to have been some one with the best of reasons for a
change of dress . and in the latter, and less likely case, some
suicide who has watched an opportunity to get into the river.
The police are making inquiry into the case.
[ADVERTISEMENT.3—HoIIoway's ointment and pills
have over and over again proved the best friend to persons
afflicted with ulcerations, bad legs, sores, abscesses, fistulas,
and other painful and complicated complaints. Printed
and very plain directions for the application of the ointment
are wrapped round each pot. Holloway's alterative pills
inriaitia:)etaken throughout the progress of the cure, to
then thee blticilod in a state of perfect purity, and to pre-
vent,
ailment.
the whole
oldbody
e,beeignr
by the loeajeopardised
grievance,
are thusgeat
readily cured withoutg age's
bed, or withdrawing from him
ctoilifining the patient to
generous support so imperativelmy
demandede nutritiouswhen
weaken-
ingand diseases attack adva
aced years or constitutions evincing
premature decrspitada.

tHE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 23,11864.