The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-24 00:00:00

rEtE SUN, LONDOIII,7,THURSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 24, 1864.'

fellow-citizens of Auburn was received with enthu-
siastic approval. The spectacle of a great nation,.
torn and dismembered by civil war is of itself
enough to fire the coldest speaker, and the sound
of the war trumpet ringing from the distance lends
a spirit and a pathos to every military appeal. The
audience, too, were composed for the most part of
old friends and neighbours of the Secretary, and
their enthusiasm was heightened by the fact of his
addressing them on the eve of the Presidential elece
tiun. But we, on the other side of the Atlantic,
missing those exciting adjuncts of time and piece,
and having leisure to look a little more closely into
the orator's arguments, find it ddfieult to forget
some awkward recollections. When we find Mr.
SEWARD reminding his hearers that every
great nation has had to pass through a time
of civil war, we are amezed to find him
confessing that the model Republic thus shares the
vices of the ancient despotisms. It is in their pas-
sage from civil slavery to freedom that the Euro,.
peen nations have suffered these convulsions, but
the Republic of Washington professed to be free
already; it claimed to have achieved its freedom in
throwing off its allegiance to Great Britain. That
was verily a civil war, or at least it occupied the
same place in American history as the great con-
stitutional struggle in this country did in our own
records. And yet before a century has passed,
before the Presidential elections have reached a
score, we find one of the foremost men in the State
descanting about faction and rebellion, proclaiming
his resolve to live and die with his country, and to
maintain her rights to the uttermost. The language
which Mr SEWARD uses, the impassioned appeal
which he makes to the patriotism of the people
would become an Englishman in face of a foreign
invader. Truly no monatchiat has ever penned to
cutting a satire of Democracy ! But Mr SEWARD
is more eager in denouncing the domestic traitor
than the open enemy, and, perhaps owing to the
momentous crisis so closely at hand when he spoke,
a great part of his address is occupied with such
denunciations. When he speaks in strong terms
of the " discontented opposition and resistance'?
excited by the exercise of necessary force on the
part of the Government, and declares "faction in
civil war to be unmitigated treason," it is impose,
3ible for an impartial observer to avoid remember-
ing what sort of a Government it is which has
provoked this discontent and resistance. When
we go further and find Mr SEWARD talk-
ing of unfair conduct at the election, and
1 tuding the clemency of the LINCOLN Cabi-
net, our dissent passes into positive indigna-
tion. When we hear him saying that the people
have heard with surprise the discovery of meditated
frauds on the ballot-box, " frauds more fraudulent
in conception, more wicked in design" than any
previously encountered, we in this country do not
fail to remember on which side those frauds lie.
Fraud and treachery, says Mr SEWARD, are inci-
dent to civil war, and though he says it of his
enemies it may bear reference to his friends. The
application of the test oath, the supremacy of
BUTLER, the soldiers' votes, the various means of
pressure and suppression brought to bear, have ren-
dered it easy to foresee the immense majority for
LINCOLN from the first. It was scarcely necessary
to get up the transparent fiction of the anticipated
raids from Canada to account for the active part
taken by the military in this purely civil transac-
tion. " You are thunderstruck," says Mr SEWARD
to the denizens of Auburn, " with the revelation
cf concert between Chicago, London, and Rich-
mond," and he afterwards speaks of the " plot"
conceived against them at Chicago. Canada, too'
figures largely in his strictures, and he speaks an if
:he Canadian shores were lined with watchful ad-
verseries. Yet he plumes himself on the modera-
tion and humanity shown by his Government to,
wards refractory suhjocts, and unblushingly asserts
hat " not one head has fallen on the judic:al
block," quietly suppressing the record of how
many citizens are dragging out their days in the
dungeons of the Federal prisons. The accounts
which from time to time have been published in
this country, and which are suffered to pass uncon-
tradicted, do not certainly vouch much for the
humanity or the moderation of the Lincoln Cabi-
net, It was but the other day we heard of
a gentleman connected with the press being con-
fined for months in a cell, dragging a chain with a
ball attached to it, for some political cffince of
which he was actually ignorant. A half-intoxicated
German was another of the captives, but his crime
was patent—he had cursed LINCOLN in the public
streets, but such trifles Mr SEWARD would probably
set down as merely " incidental to civil war." We
hear no more though of the 90 days' contest ;
indeed, the tone of the North is evidently altered.
It was the cue of the Lincoln party to appeal (ver-
bally at least) to the patriotism and enthusiasm of
the people, urging the necessity of maintaining
their war policy. Still the absence of confidence in
Mr SEWARD'S speech is very noticeable. " Our
Republic," he says, " is now confessedly stiuggliug
for life. This therefore may be our last Presidential
election." Again he says " The war will not last
for ever, but it must continue until we give up the
conflict or the enemy gives up the conflict." This
was not the tone of four years ago, but the North
has proved the Southern metal too often since then
to affect to hold it so lightly. Every disparage.
ment of Southern skill or courage or resolution
reacts upon the North; for surely can they not
subdue an inferior foe ? It is true that the War
Secretary professes to feel confident that the
"rebels" will abandon the struggle from hopeless-
ness and exhaustion, but he admits the evidences
of such feelings are not now perceptible. They
will be more so, he thinks, on the re-election of
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. The difficulty is that they
are exhausted, but not conscious of their exhaustion
--an ignorance which may be forgiven them when
they have just succeeded in making up LEE'S forces
to equal GRANT'S for the first time. This
does not look like exhaustion, neither do
the advances in Tennessee and Missouri, the
compelling of SHERMAN to evacuate Atlanta, the
triumphant retention of Charleston. The news
of LINCOLN'S re-election, far from paralysing the
energies of the South, will stimulate them to fresh
exertion. When Mr. SF.WARD said "1 am not going
to surrender, now or ever," he was speaking for
JEFFERSON DAVIS rather than for himself. The
question of surrender does not lie with the North.
It only rests with them to relinquish their extra-
vagant pretentious, to cease
,representing it the
model Republic of the nineteenth century, the effete
and shortsighted policy of GEORGE 111. in the
eighteenth. The South has to decide on the great
question of national existence or annihilation, the
only risk which the North runs of such a catas-
trophe is from its reckless and headlong pursuance
of a policy which can lead to nothing but bank-
ruptcy and disaster. It is time the policy of free
America were changed, when the only one of the
European rulers whom Mr. SEWARD can speak of
with cordiality is the oppressor of the Poke.
Our steadfast friend the Emperor of RUSSIA,"
says Mr. LINCOLN'S Secretary-at-War, and well
may he style him so, for their policy is sympa-
thetic. When the Hungarian patriot committed
the liberty of the world to the keeping of England
and America it was not thus that he thought the
great Republic would fulfil the trust . I.t was not