The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The last news from the seat of war in
Virginia prepares us for the complete failure of
Grant's expedition. The telegraphic intelligence
which we published yesterday announced that the
Federal General was again advancing on the night
of Tuesday, the 17th of May. That which we pub-
fish this morning records the signal repulse of the
attack which he made on the morning of Wednes-
day, the 18th. This time the assault was directed
against Lee's centre and left. " After a desperate
conflict, !Ewing throughout the forenoon, the Fede-
rate were forced to retreat, with the loss of 1,200 in
killed and wounded." After the wholesale slaughter
of the previous fortnight these numbers may appear
almost trifling, but to an invading force a defeat is,
in one sense, more damaging when the loss is small.
It stems to show that the position of the enemy
was found too impregnable to be carried by "piling
up men" and marching over their bodies, and that
a timely retreat was dictated by that which is the
better part of valour. This inference is confirmed
by the sentence which follows. A counter-attack is
:ttated to have been afterwards made by Lee upon
Grant's front, though without titaness. When we
remember that, according to a New York contema
porary, a full week before this action, " the army
or General Lee, beffl ad. and beaten lit every point,
was in full retreat towards Richmond, pursued by
the uncut querable old Army of the Potomac," tba
tact of. his becoming the aggressor is sugges-
; lye of many reflections. Tne same authority
endorsed as " absolutely true" the information
that Lieutenant-General Grant " was achieving e
victory which will be crowned with the destruc-
tion or dispersion of the main army of Jeff.
Davis, the occupation of his capital, and his flight
as an outlaw from his exploded Confederacy."
Pending the accomplishment of these decisive
events, we hear that Lee continues to occupy his old
position, about halt way between Washington and
Richmond, while Grant is not only unable to dis-
lodge him, but has sometimes to act on the defen-
sive. But this is not all. "On Thursday (the 19th)
Ewell gained Grant's rear, and attempted the cap-
ture of the Federal supply trains. The result is
unknown ; but after an hour's fighting, in which
the Federals lost upwards of 1,000 men, the Con-
federates returned to their entrenchments." It
would be premature to speak of this as the finale of
Grant's invasion of Virginia, but our readers will
probably agree with us, that a conqueror, supposed
to be driving before him a "defeated, exhausted, and
demoralised" enemy, was never placed in a more
awkward predicament. it is true that Mr. Stanton
had undertaken to reinforce him with "25,000 vete-
ran troops 1,, but we are not told from what quarter
these veterans are to be procured, nor is it quite
certain that they will arrive in time to avert a
crushing disaster. The most prudent of the milie
tary critics at New York took care to qualify their
triumphant vaticinstions by making them condi-
tional upon Beauregard having taken part in the
late engagement. If Grant had proved himself more
than a match for the joint strength of Lee and
Beauregard, then the retreat of the Confederates to
Richmond was, they t bought, inevitable. They could
not afford, it was argued, to leave Butler in the rear
of their capital without Beauregard to watch him,
and must forthwith fall back to defend it. Another
paragraph in the telegraph news of today shows
how utterly these anticipations have been Lunfounded.
There is still some mystery about Beauregard's
movements, but we know, at all events, that after
he was beieved to have joined Lee, General Ran-
som, one of his subordinates, surprised General
Butler in one direction, while a second detachment
of the same force surprised General Buldy Smith
in another direction. Mr. Stanton himaelt ad-
mitted that the lam!' was at first driven back
" with some conftle.ion," but asserted that the
attack on Butler was ".handsomely repulsed."
That General, however, by Mr. Stanton's own
showing," retired"—though "leisurely"--" within
his own lines." The exact nature of this strategic
movement is explained by our latest accounts :
" The Confederates captured General Hickman with
nearly his whole brigade and right or ten cannon,
and drove the whole Federal force to their in trench•
meats at Bermuda. The Federal loss it killed and
wounded is admitted to be 2,500." Meanwhile
Beiuregerd, so far from having despatched all his
available troops to the assistance of L-e, was ac,uatly
in farce, on the 21st of May, in ( a. Butler's imme-
diaie holt, ant' was preparing to as.sanit his en-
trenchments. Should he have been successful, all
cause for anxiety about the safety of Richmond will
have been removed, and Lee will no doubt have
been heavily reinforced from Beauregard's army. It
is now time to glance briefly at the operations of
General Sherman, whose expedition, however in-
ferior in magnitude to that of Grant, opened more
hopefully, and excited great expectations in the
North. On the 14th of May Mr. Stanton reported
that Sherman had forced his antagonist, Johnston,
to evacuate D Alton in the Chattanooga Mountains,
though not without a lose to himself of 3,000 in
killed and wounded. On the 16th he was advanc-
ing into Georgia by rapid marches. On the 17th
he was still "in vigorous pursuit," his supplies
abundant, and his animals fatening on the pastures
and grain fields. By the 20th he had arrived at
Kingston and occupied Rome ; ay the 21st he had
reached Cassville, and a great battle at Atlanta was
considered imminent. For the sequel we must
wait till the next mail, but a very cursory inspec-
tion of the map will show the advantages under
which it will be fought by the Confederates.
Atlanta stands at the junction of three great lines
of railway, communicating with Savannah, Charles-
ton, and the Mississippi. If it should fall into
the hands of the Federals, it will no doubt be
a valuable position, but in the contrary event
it may turn out that the retreat of Johnston was
a preconcerted plan to draw Sherman away from
his basis of operations, and the "pursuit" of the
latter a suicidal hastening into the trap laid for him.
It is not, however, on the fate of Sherman's, but
on that of Grant's, enterprise that the fortune of the
war now appears to be suspended. There is no
limit, indeed, to the elasticity of Northern self-
reliance, and there are persons who would not cease
to proclaim the approaching extinction of the re-
bellion though the Army of the Potomac were
annihilated and Washington taken. We speak of
no impossible contingencies. If Beauregard were
to dispose of Butler and gain Lee's camp before
Grant's reinforcements could reach him, nothing,
we imagine, coutd save the latter from an over-
whelming defeat. Such a defeat is ruin to an army
which has staked everything on victory, and has
no defences to fall back upon. Unless Grant can
maintain a superiority in the field, it becomes a
question whether he will be able to recroas the
PotomNc with more than a remnant of his force.
We know too little of the resole ces at the commeed
of the Confederatei, and have bad too many
examples of their comparative weakness for aggres-
sive purposes, to venture on any prediction at this
conjuncture. All that we desire to point out is the
importance of political issues depending on it.
Supposing Grant's prodigious sacrifice of men to be
fruitless, and his military reputation to be wrecked,
what will be the probable effect on public opinion
in the North ? The war party will doubtless be
more furious than ever, but will the war party be
dominant any longer ? Will the policy forced on
President Lincoln by a section of the Republicans
survive the financial and moral collapse that must
follow such a catastrophe? Or will the pacific
sentiments of the great masses, who have "no
interest. in wrong," make themselves heard for once
above the din of boisterous passions, demanding
either a change of policy or a change of President ?
We cannot tell, but we may at least hope, for the
sake of humanity, that the wild and ruthless cry,
"On to Richmond," has now been raised for the
last time.

POST.—The County Courts Bill of the Lord
Chancellor, which is to be discussed to-night in the
House of Lords, has, in one particular, encountered
en amount of adverse oriiicism which may have in-
duced the public to overlook in other respects its
great and manifold merits. We, of course, refer to
that section of the measure which proposes to enact
that, after the Ist day of March, 1865, no action or
suit should be brought for the recovery of any debt
or money demand not exceeding £2O, "unless
within one year after such debt or money demand,

or some part thereof, became due and payable."
The object of the Lord Chancellor, as stated by
himself, was to protect the artisan and the agricule
tural labourer from the evils of that system of long-
credit which generally ended in consigning the
debtor to the county prison and his unfoetunate wife
and family to the parish workhouse. Gsedit, both
in great and small commercial transactiSseei is a
matter too important and too dependent upoti
established habits and customs to be safely
dealt
with on mere grounds of favour or benevolence to
a particular class. If the artisan and the agrieul.
tural labourer have a right to ask Parliament to
diminish the statutory period of limitation from slvs
years to one year, surely the small tradesman,
whose interest is quite as great, has a right to be
head on the other side, and to show, if he can, that
the preps,sed enactment wou'd in reality confer no
benefit upon file labouring classes, whilst it would.
drive those situaieti as himself to immediate bank-
ruptcy. But the argatriSna may
be put even higher.
The small tradesman is dependent upon the whole-
sale dealer, and the latter upon the importer, for
all articles, such as tea, sugar, and tobacco, which,
though the produce of foreign countries, et'
reckoned necessaries of life among all classes of our
population. It credit be disturbed at the basis or
our social system, where the insignificance of
each transaction is more than compensated by
an enormous aggregate of dealings, the shock will
reach the very highest class of merchants, and az)
injury will be inflicted upon the trade of this coun-
try the consequences of which would not fail to tell
upon the very persons for whose special behalf the.
law had been changed. But in considering a ques-
tion of this kind we prefer facts to mere arguments,
and we therefore proceed to show the probable bear.
ing of the section upon the London shopkeepers
who needs not necessarily be a small tradesman,
and whose customers need not belong to the labour-
ing classes. We know the case of a tradesman at
the West-end who has every year on his books four
thousand accounts, each for a sum under £2O. His
rule is to send out his hills at the end of the year,
and he states that if he were compelled to collect
them within a twelvemonttt he might as well shut
up shop and retire from business altogether, or wait
for an inevitable resort to her Majesty's Court of
manufacturer of
Bankruptcy. In another case the
an article of
i generalret
a consumption,ilshopkeepers,
sotes that if
who supplies
several thoneen:
such a law was obi:jatory upon him he e.ould not
continue to carry on hie business; that he endea-
vours as far as possible to iStnit credit, but that the
constant litigation and oppression which wout:l
ensue from the proposed limitation to one year
would deprive him of his customers. But the ques-
tion may be viawed in another aspect. Is it kind
or humane to require the working man at all times%
and under all circumstances to pay that which itr
reality amounts to ready money P When w, rk is
plentiful and wages are high the labourer ought,
no doubt, to abstain from running into debt ; but
when circumstances are changed, and employment
cannot be obtained, to deny him all means of credit
would be either to send bim to the parish or to inducts
him to take part in one of those strikes which often
end in scenes of outrage and violence. We therefore'
say, on behalf of the working man, the small shop-
keeper, and the wholesale dealer, that the proposed'
period of limitation is too short, a:though we have
every confidence that the Lord Chancellor, in re■
commending it, was solely actuated by a desire to
protect and benefit a large and deserving class of
his fellow subjects. But it one year be too short, is
the old state ory period of six years too long ?
believe that all controversy in this respect will be'
settled by the noble and learned lord accepting two'
years as the period during which a debt or money
demand under £2O can be recovered. If this moth'
fication be adopted in conjunction with those pro-
visions which abolish imprisonment except for cer-
tain defined (deuces, fraud, reckless extravagance lea
living, &c., the law of debtor and creditor in respect
of small transactions will. no doubt, be placed on e-
much morejust and satisfactory footing, and render
the measure worthy of the reputation of its dis-
tinguished author. It is needless to discuss the
" tally-man" grievance, because we perceive that
Lord St. Leopards has given notice of a clause
which will provide an efficient remedy. He pro-
poses that no debt of this kind shoaid be recover-
able unless the order had received the sanction of
the husband or father. Those portions of the bill
which propose to confer a small equitable jurisdic-
tion upon the county courts are likely to produce
considerable benefit to the public, but the clauses
themselves are so general that little opinion can be
formed of their utility until we see the code of
orders which is to prescribe the procedure. We in-
tend, however, to return to this subject of equitable
jurisdiction and to the short system of bankruptcy
in small debt cases which, we believe, constitute
two of the most valuable and important features of
the Lord Chancellor's measure. The latter We
especially commend to the attention of the com-
mittee now sitting to investigate the operation of
the Bankruptcy Act, 1861.