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

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(Fro 4; the rill OS' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, DEC. 9.

Ina 'shot t speech to the people from the balcony
of the White House, Mr Lincoln happily summa-
rieod, in his own peculiar manner, the facts of the
military actuation. " I know," he said, "where Sher-
on went in, but I don't know where he will come
our. Tne.public, both of the North and the South,
and possibly Gen. Sherman himself, are in the same
state of ignorance. From Grant's army there come
aymptems of a new movement against Petersburg
and R'caniond, and from Tennessee something more
than rumour to seggest, if not to prove, that Gen.
lieud's operations are assuming large and unex-
pected imp srtance. The public, however, has been
so wholly engrossed during the last three days with
the President's Message and the repot ts of the Secre-
t Aries of the Treasury, the Navy, and the Post-
flice, as to have had but little time to bestow upon
any other topic of public interest. Mr Seward',
.4 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 Well-street with dismal forebodings. Is-
creaeed 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 Govern-
ment to bring it down, the price was maintained,
and to day the teadency is still upwards.
Mr Lincoln, in his Message, fails to realise the
expectations excited by the recent conciliatory
speech of General Ilutler. 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 oonvenient.
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 neighbour when
he was one of themselves in the little town of
Springfield, Illinois, was his honesty, the President
has 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 es good to him as gold." It is pos-
sibta 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 suhject of commercial honour
and the binding obligations of a debt. In view of the
increasing necessities of the State for means to carry
on the war, which he wiil do nothing to stop, he
publicly recommends that the public debt should
bo 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 seizare for debt, under
such restrictions and limitations as may be necessary
to guard against abuse of so important a privilege."
Mr Fessenden, instructed by his chief, supports, bat
in more guarded language, the President's idea.
!. If," says the Secretary, "our public debt must
necessarily be large and require a long course of
years 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 pabiic burdens, and security of possession.
What limit should be fixed in either of these par•
ticulars it is for the practical wisdom of Congress to
ascertain and determine." The fiscal as well es
tnoral objections to Mc Lincoln's and Mr Fessen-
sten'eproposel are obvious and palpable. Ttie scheme,
if ever carried into effect, would in the first place be
over costly in offering a higher than 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 smaller 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
corn 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 therd needs no exhaustive know-
ledge of human nature, or of that quality so
admired in America under the name of "smart.
tress," 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 et. 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 store upon common honesty. If
debtor% can repudiate their personal liabilities by
the wimple act of lending their surplus 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 incene
Ten lent.:'
Mr Vesseudeu does not take by any means so
cheerful a niew of the state of public affairs as Mr
Lincoln. Ho is doubtful whether he can extract
much more out of the pockets of the people than is
warranted, but not always obtained, under the pre-
sent Internal Revenue Act, and the existing tariff,
and sees no mode of making both ends meet but
loans and the issue of inconvertible paper and ate.
padiation, 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, will
not be worth their Cost, and hints that if the Ame-
rtean people had really known what was before them
when they took up arms to coerce their Southern
brethren,tand compel a voluntary political partner-
ship—for such is their illogical, if not impossible
purpose—they would have done what Gan, Scott
recommended, and bfAid to the seceding States)
" Way ward sisters, depart in peace T" Hvirg, as he

ought to have, very serious misgivings that therapid
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
othsr 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 paint 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, arid
points the path which the Republic will follow—it
peace be much longer postponed, and it Mr Lin-
coln do hot speedily gain some more brilliant success
than any which have yet rewarded either his gene.
rals, his ad mire's, 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 out.
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 published 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
the morsels to be picked out of the ponderous
volume. To be able to insult England and Eng-
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 raise
statement, and crows, like chanticleer, a long clear
note of defiance to the slumbering British lion.
Lord Wharncliffe, 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 X 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
profits which its contributors may be justly sup-
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.'
Phis 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 D,mocrats that
Mr G. Thompson, late M.P. for the Tower Ham-
.ete, and other British subjects, were employed by
Exeter Hall and the British aristocracy to lecture,
on negro em incipation in America, and thus to sow
the seeds of disunion, and break up the great Ame-
rican Republic. It is known to Mr. Seward, as
eeell 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 and the most eloquent and
persevering of all disunionists. It is, therefore, a
singular lack of memory or of principle in the Secre-
tary of State 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 hie dis-
honest statement, tacit 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 .(1)1
" in being saved by their (sic) considerate and loya►
Government (and Mr Seward) from the grave insult
which Lord Wharncliffe and his associates, in their
zeal for the overthrow of the United States, have
prepared for the victims of this unhatural and hope-
less rebellion." Tnis 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
for wit and argument.

ST. ANDREW'S LIFEBOAT.—The quarterly trial
of the lifeboat took place on Saturday afternoon.
As the 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 wns by them
launched, and away_ they went, facing the foaming
breakers and a stiff breeze which was blowing from
the eastwatd, 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 capsizal; 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, Heriot-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.—
Scatsman.

A RAILWAY MYSTERY.—A curious case, for
which a solution has not been found, puzzled the
railway officials at Malton 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 inqu'ry into the case.
_ [ADVERTISEMENT.I—HoIIoway's ointment and pills
haven__t
cover and over again proved the best friend to persons
andln! e 9, with ulcerations, bad legs, sores, abscesses, fistulas,
other painful and complicated complaints, Prin'ed
*inuaginvieryainptlhaeinbldoinrecicitnioa for the a lication of the ointment
are wrapped round eachpot. IdoPlFoway's alterative pills
should a taken throughout
pre-
vent the health of
by the local ailment. Bad legs
are thus readily cured without- '
generousbe d , or
support withdrawing
icg diseases attack advaimed
premature decrepitude, tt the progress of the cure, to
as state of perfect purity, and to the whole body being jeopardised
old age's. great grievance,
fromel confining.
.the patient to
years the nutritious diet and
imperatively demanded when we.akn-
or constitutions evincing

Naval and Military Intelligence.

His Royal Highness the Feld Marshal Command-
ing-in... Chief will hold a levee at 1 o'clock on the 4.q1
January.

It appears that the depot battalion in the camp at
Colchester occupy the following position in the re-
turns of the Inspector General of Musketr3
Battalion, 55 in order of merit (qs compared with 91
in 1862 3); 9:h Battalion, 102 in order of merit (as
compared with 102 in 1862-3) ; 4th depot battalion,
111 (as compared w;th 93 in 1862 3). The figure
or merit of the 10.4 depot battalion this year is,
42.93; its strong h, exclusive of recruits, was 666,
and it had 33 first class shots, and 13 second class,
while there were 88 in the first class in judging dis-
tances. The three best judges of distances among
the officers of the battalion were Capt. Evans, of the
33th, Major R idcliffe, of the 88. h, and Capt. Ray-
mond, of the 44,h. The figure of merit of the 9th
depot battalion is 39 95; its strength, exclusive of
recruits, was 572; it had 39 first class shots, and 13
second class shots, while there were 84 in the first
class in judging distances. The three best judges of
distances among the officers of the battalion were
Capt. Conran, of the 58th, Lieut. Bowers, of the 6ih,
and Ensign Walmsley, of the 56th. The figure of
merit of the 4th depot battalion is 39.28 ; its strength,
exclusive of recruits, was 431 ; it had 29 first class
shots, and 9 second class shots, while there were 73
in the first class in judging distances. The three
best judges of distances among the officers were
Capt. Brandt, of the 103 d, Capt. Skinner, of the 82d,
and Capt. Milligan, of the 73d.
In eccordance with the annual custom the non-
commissioned officers and men of the Royal Marine
Light Infantry now doing duty at head-quarters,
Chatham, who may be desirous of spending the
Christmas holidays with their friends, will be
granted several days' leave of absence for that pur-
pose. This privilege is only accorded to men of good
character, who have shown themselves worthy of
the indulgence. The men to whom leave of absence
is granted will leave headquarters to-day and to-
morrow.

The Duke of Simerset, K.G., First Lord of the
Admiralty, and Vlce-Admiral the Hon. Sir Fredee
rick Wm. (hey, K.C.8., the first Sea Lord, arrived
yesterday afternoon from Stover-house, by South
Devon Railway, at Plymouth, where they were re-
ceived by Port Admiral Sir Charles H. Fremantle,
K.C.8., and suite. The visit is supposed to be in
connection with the completion of the iron-cased
ship Caledonia for the reception of an Admiral's
flag, tlee alterations now in progress on board the
Prince Consort, and those on board other ships at
Devonport.
'the Helicon, paddlewheel despatch screw gun
vessel, ot 835 tons, and 250 horse power engines, is
ordered to be launched from No. 1 building slip at
Portsmouth on Tuesday, the 31st of January, 1865.
Tne Helicon was originally laid down on the slip-
way on which she is now approaching completiot
from the same drawings from which the Psyche
and Enchantress were built, the former now doing
duty as a despatch vessel in the Mediterranean,
and the latter as yacht to the Lords of the Admi-
ralty. In their proportionate power of engines to
tonnage, however, neither the Psyche nor the En-
chantress realised the rate of speed under steam
which had been expected of them, a great portion ot
the power of their engines being apparently spent
in overcoming the resistance made to their rapid pro-
gress through the water by the wave raised in trout
of their bows by their hollow lines forward and their
diapositive to press their cutwaters downwards into
the sea when feeling the fall power of their engines.
Mr Reed, the present chief contractor of the navy.
soon after his appointment, undertook to remedy
these serious defects in the lines of construction of
the Helicon, which had already been proved to have
such a pernicious influence upon the speed and sea-
worthiness of her two sister vessels, and certainly
he appears to have effected great and important
improvements in her construction. When he first
undertook the task the Helicon was getting well on
with her outer planking, and possessed the same
hollow lines forward as her predecessors. Mr Reed
had her taken down from for ward to abaft her mid-
ship section, and built her up afresh according to
his own designs. In her previous form the Helicon
would have been fitted with the old fashioned style
of head-knee, figureehead, rail, and other overhang-
ing gear beyond the water-borne line of the vessel's
hull. In the new form given her by Mr Reed she
is without these useless projections, while her stem
head falls inboard considerably, giving her stem the
swan breast shape ; the U form of her section amid-
ships is carried well forward by the improvement of
her looks below the water line, hollow bows are
superseded, and she gives promise of greatly in-
creased seaworthiness and speed over her sister ves-
sels. The Helicon is but a small vessel, bat there
is every possibility of her future career increasing
Mr Reed's reputation as a naval architect.

In consequence of some leaks having been dis-
covered in the ironclad frigate Achilles, 20, 1,250
horse power, Capt. Vansittart, one of the officials
from Chatham dockyard, under whose superintend-
ence she was built, is ordered to proceed to Ports-
mouth for the purpose of discovering and making
good the defect.
The examination by the Civil Service Commis.
sioners of the candidates from Pembroke Dock for
admission as apprentices at Chatham has just been
completed. Only eight candidates presented them-
selves, which is the smallest number on record, and
all were successful.

The following appointments have teen made at
the Admiralty :—Lieut. C. Jenkins, to the A,ia ;
Lieut. William St. Ives, *.o the Cumberland—Lieut.
Henry Berkeley, to the Blenheim—Cornelius Fox,
master, to the Indus, for the Zaatous—Robert W.
Foster, midshipman, to the Bieck Peince—and
Alexander M Giveme, midshipman, to the Aurora
—Commander W. Joiliffa to the Devastation, vice
Commander Pike, invalided—Sub-Lieut. o.4wald
P. Tudor, Sub-Lieut. Cecil M. Turner, Sub-Lieut.
Rebell C. Jolliffe, Sub-Lieut. David M. Smith,
Sub-Lieut. Charles A. Tucker, and Sub-Lieut.
Frederick N. C. Halt, to the Euryalus —Sub-Lieut.
W. G. 1f...c0q to the Victoria—Sub-Lieut. Charles
F. Cox to the DalencL —Sub-Lieut. James B. Haye
to the Rt:search—Hcory C. Tremayne and W. H.
Wyllys, masters' assistants, to the Cadmus—T.
Pilwell, master's assistant, to the Dee—John E.
Petley and Cecil B. Franks, masters' assistants, to
the Highflyer—E. Armstrong, I. S. Ramsay, J.
Maclaurin, and Henry A. T. Cummins, assist, clerks
(additional), to the Fitgard—F. C. Good, assist.
clerk, to the Irresistible—G. F. garter, assist, clerk,
to the Frederick William—Arthur A. Pearson,
assist. clerk, to the Pembroke—and W. H. IV by.
ham, assist. clerk, to the Excellent.
The undermentioned gentlemen have been nomi•
nated to naval cadetships :—James Gairdner, Robt.
M. Johnstone, Alfred A. Ashington, William T.
Bourke, CArington Fraser Crawshay, and Percy
Hockin.

GOVERNMENT EMIGRATION.—The Government
emigrant ship Adamant, 815 tons, Capt. Lodwick,
belonging to Messrs Lachlan, Macleod, and Co., London,
which sailed from Plymouth on the 16th July last, arrived
ai Adelaide, South Australia, on the 19th October, with 368
emigrants, comprising 82 married people, 121 single men, 99
single women, 29 boys and 26 girls between one and twelve
years of age, and 11 infants, under the care of Mr W.
Gordon Gun, surgeon-superintendent, assisted by Miss
Mary Hooper, matron, and Mr John Cruett, schoolmaster.
Two births took place on the voyage. No deaths took
place. The Emigration Commissioners chartered yester-
day the Tr bolgan, 1,171 tons, Mr George Borlack, master,
belonging to Mr George H. Wakefield, Liverpool, to convey
emigrants to Sydney, New South Wales, at £l2 18s 9d per
statute adult. The ship is to sail from Birkenhead about
the 17th of February.

LOST AMONG THE Illus.—A correspondent
writing from Cergart Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, sends us
the following particulars of the remarkable preservation
from death of a woman Ozer three days' and three nights'
wandering among the, snow Isabella Burton or Camp-
bell, a vagrant, 73 years of age, a native of Manchester,
left the farmhouse of Inchmore about 2 o'clock on Wednes-
day afternoon, the 14th instant, to proceed to Laggnould,
three miles distant. It appears that she had sat down by the
way and fallen asleep, and it being dark when she awoke
she lost her track and wandered among the hills (on which
was a considerable depth of snow) for 72 hours, when she
was found lying at the side of the river Don, half a mile
from its source, greatly exhausted. She was carried back
to Inchmore by the persons who had turned out in search
of her, and eery at.antion was paid to her, She is rapidly
recovering,"—tcrismao,