The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIDIES.--If ever the history of the present
American Civil War is fairly and fully written, the
world will have reason to wonder at the annoy-
ances with which it vexed British subjects, and the
good temper with which the British Government
submitted to them. There are, probably, at this
moment scores of English families who can testify
to the vexations and cruelties suffered by their re-
lations during a temporary residence in the United
States—to the deception and fraud, the violence
and menace, by which they have been coaxed or
bullied into involuntary service, and made to fight
for a cause with which they had neither personal
nor national concern. There are scores of families,
too, who have tales to tell of violent and unconsti-
tutional arrests—of equally unconstitutional im-
prisonment under vague charges or more vague
suspicion of disaffection to a Government to which
the unoffending victims owed no allegiance. But,
although the martyrs to this tyranny may be
counted by hundreds, their persecutions are gene-
rally unknown beyond the limits of the domestic
circle. Some of them, through ignorance of letters,
are unable to write a statement of their grievances ;
others, through ignorance of the world, are at a
loss to whom they should write with a chance of
obtaining redress; and no inconsiderable number of
them discover that appeal and remonstrance are
futile, unless they possess the means to corrupt the
satellites of power, and make the tools of tyranny
the instruments of its evasion. It is probable that
not many more than half of the sufferers succeed in
transmitting their complaints to the English Con-
sulate at New York and the other Consulates in the
United States. It is also probable that not more
than half of those whose complaints do reach this
destination obtain a place in the diplomatic corres-
pondenceof the country. We may, therefore, assume
that such cases of oppressive or vexatious treatment
as figure in Parliamentary papers represent the
character rather than the amount of the injury sus-
tained by British subjects in America during the
Civil War. A typical case of this kind is presented
in the papers laid before Parliament respecting
the imprisonment of Mr. James M‘Hugh. It is a
typical case, inasmuch as it illustrates the despotic
licence enjoyed by the military authorities of the
United States, and the difficulties in the way of
redress successfully interposed by the insubordi-
nate obstinacy of venal inferiors. Mr M'Hugh
seems to have been arrested and imprisoned in Fort
Lafayette for some unproved disaffection to the
Federal Government. Of this charge he seems to
have been pronounced innocent by a Military Com-
mission so far back as last February. Yet he con-
tinued a prisoner. About the 26th of June Mr
Seward answered a remonstrance which Lord
Lyons had addressed to him on the case by calling
in person at the Embassy and promising that Mr
M'Hugh should be released immediately, On the
Ist of July Mr M'Hugh was still a prisoner in Fort
Lafayette, On the 2d of July the English Acting
Consul at New York ascertained that he remained
a prisoner. On the 4th of July he was released,
eight days after the Secretary of State had pro-
mised that his liberation should be immediate. But
the mode of his liberation was characterised by cir-
cumstances which showed the laxity that pervades
American administration, and the tendency of the
American authorities to conflict with one another in
favour of harshness towards the helpless. The Secre-
tary of State had ordered the instant and uncouth•
tional release of Mellugh ; but Mr Stanton; it
seems, thought Mr Seward's order too liberal, for
on the 3d of July Major-General Dix thus writes
to the Commandant of Fort Lafayette:—" By order
of the Secretary of War, you will immediately re-
lease James M'Hugh upon his taking the oath and
giving his parole of honour to immediately leave
the United States." Properly enough, M'Hugh re-
pudiated the conditions which, by Mr Stantou's
orders, General Dix attempted to affix to his libe-
ration. He refused to accept his liberty on terms
which were inconsistent with his status as an Eng.
lisp subject, and with his admitted innocence of the
charge originally preferred against him. Owing,
however, we suspect, to the urgency of Lord
Lyons's intercession, M'Hugh was the next
day liberated from his confinement of seven
months without any condition at all. We have
called this a typical case. We suspect there
are many others which bear a family likeness
to it, but are more aggravated in the harshness of
their features. Here we have an English subject
imprisoned under military law for a period of at
least seven months on a charge of which a military
commission had pronounced him innocent. We have
the Home Secretary of the United States Govern-
meat, after seven months, promising the English
ambassador that he should be released forthwith.
We have the Secretary of War, the General com-
manding the New York district, and the Com-
mandant of Fort Lafoyctto,all combining to nullify
the distinct orders of tho Home Secretary, by im-
pesing terms at once illegal and unmerited. Finally,
the prisoner is released. But, we should like to
know, how many cases are there resembling this
caws of APHugh's ? How many English subjects
are there at this moment lingering in Fort
Lafayette and other prisons of the Federal Govern.
unlit, who are likely to linger on till death, per-
haps, unknown, unheard of, and nnpitied M'Hugh
appears to have had some pecuniary means. lie
uses the telegraph. He writes to the Acting Con-
sul at New York. His telegrams and his letters
reach the hands of those for whom they are in-
tended. Now, the notorious venality of the func-
tionaries who clutch the wages of this American
Imperialism renders it very improbable that the
hands through which his letters and messages
passed were not lubricated by currency notes. But
now many poor wretches may there be who, for an
incautious word, on a groundless suspicion, for a
refusal to enlist in a foreign army, or for any pre,.
text whatever, pine on in a dismal gaol, without
the faintest prospect of being able to communicate
with the external world ? Worse than this, how
many men aro there who, having been dragged
into enlistment, and having scratched a few lines
to the nearest English Consul, have, on the faith of
official intervention, ventured to escape from the
hated service, and only found out that their poor
petition had miscarried when they heard the sen-
tence of death pronounced for their desertion ?
We do not wish to throw unmixed blame on the
Government of the United States fur these things.
Like other Governments, it has bed servants, and
its bad servants are in equal degrees cruel and
corrupt. No one would accuse Mr. Seward or the
President of a deliberate wish to annoy, oppress,
deceive, trepan, and enlist unoffending English sub-
jects residing in the United States. In this very
instance of which we are speaking, Mr. Seward
appears to have met Lord Lyons' application with
friendly promptitude. Mr. Stanton's interpolation,
too, may perhaps be attributable rather to spite
against his CAM colleague than to malignity against
English or the English Minister. And we must
admit, too, that the institutions of the United States
do not favour an over-courteous demeanour towards
foreign Governments ; while the intensity of the
passions excited by the present desperate strife in.
fuses a venomous malignity into the zeal of the
lowest class of partisans. But while we wish to
make every reasonable excuse for the precipitation
of patriotic passion, for the imperfection of institu-
tions framed rather to suit a theory than to work
practically, and while we admit readily exceptional
instances of considerateness and good feeling, we
cannot forget that, during this unhappy war, there
has accumulated a series of grievances on the part
of English subjects, of which our Government will
hereafter be bound to remind the Government of
the United States,

POST.—Stretched on the rack, Denmark has
yielded. She has succumbed to a force she had no
means of withstanding. She has surrendered when
further resistance was impossible. She submitted
to a pressure she could not resist. She has laid
down her arms, and given up a good half of her
kingdom, to save her life. She has accepted the
terms of peace that have been dictated to her, and
has subscribed the preliminaries under constraint.
We will not speculate on the legality of an engage-
ment signed, as it were, with her own blood, but
that the signature completes the protest she had
already recorded is indisputable. When, however,
we are asked to see in all this a satisfactory result—
when we are requested to rejoice at the termination
of hostilities on such conditions—we must say that,
so far from being matter for congratulation the
conclusion is .one calculated to produce, not only
sorrow and shame, but apprehension and dismay.
It has invalidated the title-deeds of Europe;
it has set aside moral right; and it has propounded
a principle which the conscience of the civilised
world condemns. Those who look with a cynical
eye on human feeling, and those who cannot, or
will not, perceive that these miserable expedients,
and this hand-to-mouth policy, do but postpone for
a little time the catastrophe they tend eventually
to aggravate, may make light of the sufferings of a
defeated nation; that is their own affair; but it is
not within their province to profess to explain the
sentiments which are entertained by the
people of
this country. Nor is there, as has been pharisai-
cally pretended, the slightest ground for supposing
that Prussia and Austria have been prevented from
grasping at more than they have actually laid their
hands upon by
of Europe. If these Powers have been advised to
what is called the " moral Influence"
moderate their demands, the advice has been con-
veyed in language which clearly intimated a decided
intention to enforce compliance,
and it has emanated
from a Government wnich is known to keep its
word. The Austrian Minister may have been in-
vited to consider certain eventualities, and Count
Bismarck, though he assumed the sir of a dictator
at Vienna, was not in a position to. guarantee the
poseasiou of Venotifl. But if the rack was, to quote