The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

POST.—In the diplomatic intercourse between
nations there exist certain unwritten rules of cour-
tesy which are tacitly conformed to, and the obser-
vance of which is held to be as binding as though
they were regularly incorporated as a part of the
acknowledged law of nations. It is in conformity
with one of these rules that Governments consider
with respectful attention all communications
couched in proper language which may be pre-
sented by the accredited representatives of ether
friendly Powers; and although they are not lite-
rally bound to believe all the representations which
may be made, yet diplomatic courtesy demands that
no doubt s
uld be expressed in regard to the sin-
r?
-sake them. When, therefore,
Mallory, the Secretary
verity of those who -
the pretended report of Mr..
of the Confederate States Navy, vve: brought to the
attention of the British Foreign-office
...hv the
Government of the United States, as furnishing
complete confirmation of the complicity of the
Confederate Government in the alleged violation of
the Foreign Enlistment Act in the matter of the
steam rams which were in process of construction
by the Messrs. Laird, Earl Russell could not have
done otherwise than give to the subject all the con-
sideration to which it would have been entitled
even if the facts alleged had been in reality true.
If this spurious document, which is now admitted
by Mr. Seward to have been "entirely a forgery,"
had been the result of a premeditated plot, it could
not have been propagated at a time more auspicious
for the consummation of its intended purpose than
the period at which it was first launched before the
British public. The pomp and circumstance which
surrounded its advent were well calculated to im-
pose upon the willingly credulous or the unwary.
The pretended report was first brought to the
attention of Lord Lyons by Mr. Seward, and under
such an aspect that, in forwarding the document to
the Foreign-office, Lord Lyons expressed no doubt
in regard to its authenticity. Mr. Adams trans-
mitted the pretended report to Earl Russell, ac-
companied by the somewhat cautious observation
that, " although the paper had been received only
in the form presented, there was little doubt
that in substance it might be relied upon as
authentic." In the meantime the paper obtained a
wide circulation by means of its distribution in
pamphlet form throughout England, and notwith-
standing the prompt denial of its authenticity by
Confederate naval officials and others in Europe, it
cannot be denied that the general influence upon
the public mind was precisely what its projectors
desired and expected. Although it may be a matter
of regret that our Foreign-office should have lent
too ready an ear to the apparent confirmation of its
own suspicions, and adopted too trustingly testi-
mony which appeared to be an entire vindication
of the extreme measures which had been taken in
the matter of the seizure of the steam rams, yet the
tardy admission of the United States Government
that a document thus earnestly pressed upon the
attention of Earl Russell as genuine was, in fact, a
fraud and a forgery, must produce upon the British
Government and people a most painful impression.
If our Government is bound in courtesy to credit
the statements made to that by the United States,
the latter is under a much stronger obligation to
exercise not only good faith, but extreme caution,
in the representations it may make. The circum-
stances which surround the present case are of a
character which, in the aspect under which they
now present themselves, cannot but gravely com-
promise the Government which employed such ille-
gitimate means for the attainment of its ends.
There is no doubt that through their official repre-
sentatives they did impose upon the British Go-
vernment and people,by the dissemination of a docu-
ment which not only turns out to have been a
forgery, but which, it now appears, bore upon its
face the most undoubted proof that it could not
hare emanated from the source to which it was
ascribed. If we adopt the charitable conclusion
that the officials of the United States had no
agency in conceiving the fraud, we cannot acquit
them of having zealously propagated the
very worst species of false testimony, not only
without any corroborating evidence of its reliability,
but against all probabilities. In arriving at a con-
clusion concerning the complicity of the United
States Government in this discreditable affair, it
cannot be forgotten that no other interests than
those of the United States could have been promoted
by the success of the fraud, while the period chosen
for its dissemination was at the identical moment
when testimony was most required in support of
those interests. This, however, is not the only
instance in which this species of false testimony is
alleged to have been resorted to. In the more re-
cent affair of the Chesapeake we have precisely the
same story of an intercepted despatch of a Confede-
rate agent, and precisely the same appeal to British
officials to set promptly upon the testimony thus
providentially, as it were, thrown in their way. In
this case the complicity of the Federal Government
is absolutely certain, and if the despatch is in reality
a forgery, it could not have been this act of any
other than an accredited agent of the United States,
acting under the special authority of the President.
A complete history of this intercepted despatch is
to be found in the Parliamentary paper recently
published concerning the seizure of the Chesapeake.
It will be remembered that this vessel had been
taken by the Confederates, and afterwards recap-
tured by a United States cruiser in British waters,
whence she was turned over to the Colonial autho-
rities of Nova Scotia, to await the judicial investi-
gation of the questions involved in her various cap-
tures. Mr. Seward was evidently eager to get im-
mediate possession of the vessel, and it was with a
view to the attainment of this and other important
ends that the intercepted despatch in this, as in the
former case, was first brought to the attention of
her Majesty's representative at Washington. In
a despatch (No. 4) to Earl Russell, Lord Lyons
says :—" Mr. Seward then gave me a paper, a copy
of which forms enclosure No. 3in this despatch.
It was, he said, the denipher of a letter from a Con-
federate agent at New York to Mr. Benjamin, the
Secretary of State at Richmond. Some of the
proper names were, he observed, undecipherable,
but most of the letter had been made out, and it
showed that there were plots to seize two other
steamers besides the Chesapeake, and to make use
of the neighbouring British territory to further the
nefarious designs of the enemy. Mr. Seward went
on to say that the statement in the letter that a
large number of rifled muskets had been sent to
Halifax, and other facts which had come to his
knowledge, had made him apprehensive that the
ei
--nesapeake might not be safe. He begged me to
warn the
authorities, and to ask whether the vessel
would. be ma, e over at once to her former owners,
if the
appliea' for her with the sanction of the
y
In consequence of
United States GoversZnent-"
and disclosures, and of
these opportune discoverier;
ward closed his com-
the request with which Mr. Se..
the Letter forthwith
munication to Lord Lyons,
despatched a telegram to Major-
Gei„-ral Doyle.
The authorities of Halifax being forewarn.:'d of the
" nefarious designs" of the Confederates, took
prompt precautions against the apprehended seizai',9
of the Chesapeake, but declined to give her up for
safe keeping to the Federal Government. Alto-
gether it would require a wonderful degree of
credulity to credit the story of this intercepted
despatch, even if we had reefer before been de-
ceived by the pretended discovery of similar Con-
federate secrets. How is it that the Federal
officials have such a wonderful facility in trans-
lating intercepted letters written in cipher ?
What bunglers the Confederate agents must be to
write in cipher that which, with the exception of
the proper names, may be readily deciphered by
the first United States postmaster into whose halide
it may chance to fall. However, the name of
one individual, Mr. Slidell, the Confederate Com-
missioner at Paris, who, it would appear, played the
impof taut pert of " receipting bills," was made out,
and throng
him the public may possibly be en-
lightened in rega:!l
to this mysterious affair. In the
meantime it is underst :
ed that the reputed inter-
cepted despatch has been uronounced upon the
.
highest possible authority to be, like the pretended
report of Mr. Mallory, " entirely a orgery." For
the second time this species of fraud ha: been suc-
cessfully practised upon English officials, tho effect
of which, both upon the Government and peopi:' of
Great Britain, must be to cast a grave shadow of
doubt over communications of a similar character
which may be hereafter made by the United States
Government. International courtesy may require
that statements made with so much gravity should
be respectfully considered, but the too frequent use
of such means as were employed in the two cases
referred to, to stimulate the British Government to
act upon evidence furnished by forged papers, is
well calculated to create a distrust and a reserve
which cannot fail in the ead to produce unpleasant,
if not more serious, consequences.

DAILY NEWS.—Really our Tory friends must be
hard to please if the Premier's neat little speech on
Mr. Locke King's little Bill, yesterday, does not
reassure and rally them to the standard of the safest
of leaders. There is only one thing more surprising,
perhaps, than the continued existence of a Conser-
vative opposition to Lord Palmerston, and that
is the appearance of a Tory candidate on the
hustings as a rival to the " Liberal," or the ap-
pearance of a Liberal candidate of the Palmerston
persuasion as a rival of the Tory. Yes; there is
something even more surprising; and that is, when
a Liberal constituency deems it worth time or
trouble to set up a Liberal candidate, who believes
in Lord Palmerston, against a Conservative can-
didate, who is content with Lord Palmerston.
What on earth, we humbly ask, can it signify to
that large portion of the Liberal party which does
not include expectant placemen, whether the sun-
ative supporter of
cootiful candidate be a CoonrY

Lord Derby, in favour of all well-considered re:
form, bat opposed to the spirit of innovation and
to organic changes, or a Liberal supporter of Lord
Palmerston, who deems that " there does not now'
exist the same anxiety for organic change which
was observable some time ago," and that " sli
such changes as were desirable have long since been
effected." Let any dispassionate Liberal, who hse
no personal predilections in favour of this or that
Minister, ask himself whether Lord Palmerston a
remarks on a Bill for extending the County Fran-
chise would not be admirably well
placed in the
mouth of a leader of the Conservative party. For
our own part, we think it would be difficult for s
Conservative of any shade to express the reason for
the faith that is in him—the faith in existing
arrangements, the "balance which we must all be
most anxious to preserve"—in a more comprehensive
and compendious form of words than that which
drew cheers and approving laughter from the OW'
sition when Lord Palmerston was speaking yester- '
^. We cannot but recommend it as a formula of
the in..-,est and simplest Conservatism drawn by 0
master hang
. Young Tory candidates are some'
times a little ~
embarrassed in the presence of
crowd of non elec:"e,
dangerous advances. inspired
Lord Palmerston,
and liable to blunder into
by more than half a centi: ry's experience of part):
warfare and of office, offers :hem the simplest
easiest of arguments for stantLitlg
the noble sentiment " Rest and I;,`' thankful'' iebt
prose. He assures them that the ob;ect we °lig
still. He put:
all to have in view with regard to the elee'
gr.eat
chise is to make it fairly represent "all tile
interests" of the country. There is no such i.t.ll°
as political rights cf citizenship, except, perbW.'
the right of restricting such rights to a sixth of the
!oral frail-
adult, unconvicted, an sane male population of the,
United Kingdom. Our Whig Premier speaks of
Parliament as a 44 legislative machine" for repre-
senting " all the great interests" of the country„
while he carefully limits " all the great intereste;,
to two—the commercial and the agricultural. Al`
the rest is—a blank. The one thing needful is noir
to disturb the balance, as he calls it, by infusing to°
much of the commercial element into the agricul:
tural constituencies. Can the purest Tory preach
sounder doctrine than this ? Opposition cheers VT
as plainly as inarticulate language can, " We thanx
thee for that word." There is not, it seems, t„be
same desire for " organic changes," that is, Pare•
mentary reform, that existed some time ago, ce•
cause the present House of Commons—which hex
not abolished Church rates, but has enacted a grid'
gent game law—has effected all " desirable
changes ;" and because " there are also considers'
tions connected with external affairs tending t°
abate our anxiety for organic changes." Ire
what external affairs this mysterious sentence
alludes the Premier doth not vouchsafe to tell ; 1:11!
we dare say our readers have occasionally met with
these views—we believe " views" is the word--.„0!
leading journals more or less verbally inspired. •"'
would be interesting and instructive to ascertain
from Lord Palmerston, on some appropriate We'
sion, whether it is the civil war between the BMe
states and the free of the American Union wbiee'
should abate the desire of English working men 113;
be admitted within the pale of the constitution e'•
the country, or whether it is the working of a de.
mocratic suffrage under a military Government ifl
a neighbouring country—of a suffrage organised:
directed, and controlled by half-a-million
bbe
functionaries, without a free press, without rir
meetings, without any elementary guarantee °{
independence. Lord Palmerston will some de?"
or other explain the analogy which exists in h';
own mind between the British Constitution and
the Second Empire in France, and between perils.:
mentary reform in these islands and a civl
war for the extension and perpetuation 0,
1
,1
abolition of negro slavery in North America. It i 0
not to be supposed that a veteran statesman should
treat the House of Commons, on so plain and pile-
tical a subject as the reform of the representatioct
to empty generalities, which may be the pap of Tod
babes, but not, we would fain hope, the strong Ineil
of Whig old women. Let us, however, be just and
fair. There is one considerable difference still bee
tween oar Liberal Premier and the leaders of the
Opposition whose encouraging applause he never
deserved better than yesterday. We are not refer"
ring—it may be inconvenient to do so—to a recent
hint from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to 6
deputation of working men, that he might heve
something to say shortly on the subject of the es:
tension of the franchise; nor do we dwell upon Pss'
pledges and promises of any Liberal Minister ; c°t
do we pretend to treat Mr. Locke King's little
annual bill as a subject for enthusiasm or invective'
But, in fairness to a statesman whe has done s°
much for his party, we would observe that the
reason why Lord Palmerston cannot vote against
Mr. Locke King's bill is not because he supports it,
but because he is unwilling to affirm that be doe°,
not. It cannot but be satisfactory to the Liberal
party to confide their destinies to a Minister who ig
unwilling to oppose the second reading of a count,'
franchise extension bill—a Premier so considerate,
as to give his vote for the second reading of a bit of
a reform bill, which he will be prepared to consider,
but not to support, in committee, and which ig
thrown out within ten minutes after he sits doWv.