The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOITRNALS.

TIMES,—It would seem that in the interval
which has elapsed between the battle of Fredericks-
'burg and the commencement of the new year the
advocates of more conciliatory and more violent
counsels have fairly fought their battle out, and that
-victory has declared in favour of the latter. Mr.
Lincoln has finally adhered to the policy from which
he showed at one moment some inclination to draw
back. He has kept his promise to the very letter;
he has declared the negroes in the States now at

open war with the North free, except within cer-
tain districts occupied by the Federal forces, and
has pledged the Government of the United States

to recognise and support the freedom so granted by

their naval and military force. From this Procla-

oration Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mary.

land are exempt; so that it would seem to be the

policy of the President to interpose an isthmus of

slavery between the two masses of free States

which are to estend to the North and South of it.

Pronounced under other circumstances, by another

person, and at another time, such a Proclamation

might well excite once more the enthusiasm which
penetrated the whole mind of England in the days
of Wilberforce and Clarkson. We should most

unfeignedly rejoice were the words to which the
President has given utterance capable of carrying

with them their own fulfilment. To slavery we
have ever entertained the most rooted aversion. Not
all the valour, not all the success of the South, has
ever blinded us to this black spot on their fair
escocheon. But even tainted as they are with this
foul stain they have commanded our admiration
and our sympathy from the gallantry with which
they maintained their cause, and from the obvious
truth that the struggle was for separation on the
one part and compulsory retention on the other,
the emancipation or continued slavery of the negro
being only used as means to forward the ends
of the North. While it was supposed that the
South could be brought back by giving every
security for the continuance of slavery, the North
never dreamt of emancipation. When it was found
'that no such conciliation was possible, the North,
as a weapon of war, and not as a concession to prin-

ciple, has finally decided on emancipation. That
this measure is no homage to principle,or conviction,
but merely a means of raising up a domestic enemy
against the Southerners in the midstof the Southern
States, is abundantly proved from the fact that
slavery, so odious in Alabama, is tolerated in Ken-
tucky. Its abolition is a punishment to rebels : its
retention is a reward to patriots; it is not the ac-
cursed thing to be rooted out at all hazards. Its
abolition is the punishment of rebellion ; its reten-
tion is the reward of adherence to the Union.
Still, though there is little homage to principle
in the President's Proclamation, any attempt on
the part of the American Government, however,
tardily, reluctantly, and partially made, to emanci-
pate any portion of the negro race, must have an
effect on the opinion of mankind, and tend to what
we have never doubted would in some way or other
be the final result of this war, the abolition of
slavery. But our exultation is by no means with-
out misgivings. The President has proclaimed free-
dom, but he is without power to enforce his Pro-
clamation. Except in the neighbourhood of New
Orleans, where General Butler has already done all
that is possible to create a servile war, the President
of the United States has no power whatever to en-
force his Proclamation. If the blacks are to obtain
the freedom he promises them, it must be by their
own hands. They must rise upon a more numerous,
more intelligent, better armed, and braver com-
munity of whites, and exterminate them, their wives
and children, by fire, and sword. The President of
the United States may summon them to. this act, but

he is powerless to assist them in its execution. Nay,
this is the very reason why they are summoned.
The armies of the South have gained a clear supe-
riority over the armies of the North, and it is to re-
dress this balance that the negro, burning, ravish-
ing, massacring, and destroying, is summoned to the
conflict. If these things are not done at all, there
will be for the present at least, no emancipation ;
if they are done, they will provoke retaliatory
action, which is but too likely to end in the ex-
termination of their perpetrators. In neither
case has the friend of humanity any cause
to rejoice. It must also be remembered that
this act of the President, if it is proposed to
strike off the fetters of one race, is a flagrant attack
on the liberties of another. The attempt to free the
blacks is a flagrant attack on the liberties of the
whites. Nothing can be more unconstitutional,
more illegal, more entirely subversive of the com-
pact on which the American Confederacy rests,
than the claim set up by the President to interfere
with the laws of individual States by his Proclama-
tion, unless, indeed, it be the attempt of Congress
to dismember the ancient State of Virginia, and
create a new State upon its ruins. It is prepos-
terous to say that war gives these powers ; they are
the purest usurpation, and, though now used against
the enemies of the Union, are full of evil presage
for the liberties of the States that still adhere to it.
It is true that the President advises the negroes to
abstain from all violence except in self-defence, and
to labour for reasonable wages. But the President
well knows that not a slaveholder in the South will
obey his Proclamation, that it can only be enforced
by violence, and that if the negroes obtain freedom
it will be by the utter destruction of their masters,
In such a state of society to speak of wages—that
is, of a contract between master and servant—is a
cruel mockery. In the South the negro can only
exist apart from his master by a return to the sa-
vage state—a state in which, amid blood and anarchy
and desolation, he may frequently regret the fet-
ters he has broken, and even the master he has de-
stroyed. He cannot hope for a better situation than
that of his race in the North—a situation of degra-
dation, humiliation, and destitution which leaves
the slave very little to envy. Mr. °n
Line l bases his
act on military necessity, and invokes the conside-
rate judgment of mankind and the judgment of
Almighty God. He has characterised his own
mankind will be slow to believe that an act avaocavt .
edly the result of military considerations has been
dictated by a sincere desire for the benefit of those
who, under the semblance of emancipation, are thus
marked out for destruction, and He who made man
in His own image can scarcely, we may presume to
think, look with approbation on a measure which,
under the pretence of emancipation, intends to re-
duce the South to the frightful condition of St.

Domingo.
HERALD—What with Elliots and Russells, Euro-
pean diplomacy has had a busy time of_ it during
the last month or two. It was always known that
Iltri Russell—the head of the family we suppos_.
e
we
may call him—had an adventurous turn of mind.
In fact Sydney
of course Smith has immortalised his Courage;
previously to the Vienna escapade; but
the most ardent admirers of his lordship's bold im-
promptu spirit of action could hardly have realised
the man as he now stands contest before us. Cavour
conspirait toujours ; Louis Napoleon has a great
reputation for the talent of secret intrigue. But
what have their panegyrists to show that will corn- I
pare with the energetic recklessness of our "Whig
Foreign Secretary. " There are only three men in
Europe," Napoleon is reported to have said, in an
interesting conversation with Cavour, "You and I,
and Palmerston, said the Post—Mazzini, the
Daily News. Now the secret is out, it was not
the firebrand Palmerston, nor the terrible Mazzini.
It must have been the great Earl Russell, the hero
of Reform battles, the author of the Durham letter
and of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. We thought
the counts of the indictment against this eminent
diplomatist were all made out. There is the Danish
question, the Eastern question, the American ques-
tion. On each of these I d Russell is to be tried
before the highest tribunals r of the land. But this
is not enough for his ambitious mind. Foiled in
Schleswig and betook(' by the Greeks, he has had
the courage to challenge the Pope and beard Napo-
leon. His last effort is to supplant the French
Emperor at the Vatican, and substitute for the pro-
tection of his Catholic Majesty Napoleon 111. the
aid of Protestant England. The story seems too
monstrous to be believed. But it is sober fnct.
Lord Russell seriously conceived this idea, and Mr.
Ode Russell as seriously set about currying it
into execution. On the 20th December M. Drouyn
de Lhuys states that the proposal hau been already

made, and that Mgr. Chigi had been apprised of
the hope that in the event of the Pope being com-
pelled to leave Italy his Holiness would retire to
France in preference to England—a not unnatural
hope under the circumstances. But Mr. Odo Rus-
sell was not to be daunted by one failure. During
the Christmas fetes, auspicious time, he repeated
the proposal, expressed his regret that the offer of
England had not been accepted, and added that he
had reason to believe that his Holiness would very
very shortly find himself necessitated to profit by
it. Surely this is the most astounding blunder or
the gravest impertinence. A French garrison oc-
cupies Rome and protects the Pope. The French
Emperor, it is well known, is solemnly bound to
defend the rights of the Papacy. The honour of
French arms is pledged to the inviolability of Pius
IX. ; and in contempt of those facts Mr. Odo
Russell is empowered to declare virtuallyd thatthat the
s
Pope can place no reliance on
.Francr,
despatch
oatthnhe
onlys
ncfh
Earlance of
n ussasfeeltl y.
armis
sThte Efililisnwgerhtiomastehnlef
of Prince La Tour d'AuverFne
is
this
t But, knowine,
We await it with some curiosi yr.
strange and
.insulting suggestion is not published.
and England is no longer alluded
to in the Emperor speech. What is all this miser-
able intrigue to end in ? How many more friends is
walliliaatn7eeodf do now,
Lord Russell to alienate, how many more wounds
to reopen, how many fresh difficulties to create, be-
fore he has run his diplomatic career ? Parliament
does not meet one day toa early for the honour
and safety of the country. It is almost impos-
sible to eatimate the injury Lord Russell's
meddling vanity is doing us, or to point to a
possible solution of the numerous complications in
which he has involved us. But of all his blunders
the last is the greatest. It is not only an error in
judgment, but it shows a want of good taste and
gentlemanly feeling that we are ashamed of in an
English nobleman. It is a climax to that politrque
ignoble which Montalembert, with too much truth,
has charged against this country. The present Go-
vernment has taken much credit for its boasted
efforts to cement the alliance with France ; but
what can it expect but contempt and distrust from
the French Emperor and the French nation, when
it stands convicted before Europe of playing this
double part, of avowedly inciting the Emperor to
abandon the Pope, and secretly encouraging the
latter to break with the one Sovereign who is able
to protect him ? And what wilt be said of Eng-
land, but that her policy is now, as ever, calculat-
ing and selfish, ignoring every other interest and
sacrificing every other end to the advancement of
her own aims, and the predominant assertion of her
own influence. .