The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES•—WO are all speaking our minds one to
another with the most charming candour. The
blame is so great that everybody must take a
share. It's downright shabby to refuse. Mr.
Horsman perhaps excsls us all in the art of distri•
bating this commodity in such a way that neither
party shall feel itself praised by implication. "A
plague on both your houses," he says to both sides.
Government has not done its duty; it has made
splendid advances, and executed rapid movements
to the rear. It has taken up a treaty which
it ought to have reconsidered and recommended
for revision ; it has appiied the torch to the
magazine of German ambition; it has encouraged
the Danes ; by its interference about Poland it
has animated the Poles, vexed Russia, Ow:elated
France, and, finally, exposed the latter to a
grievous humiliation. On the other hand, the Op-
position has neglected its duty, not of demanding
the production of al► the documents, or supplying
a policy, but of proceeding upon what all the world
knew, of sounding the alarm, and of compelling her
Majesty's Ministers to be explicit and decided. As
it is, Parliament, says Mr Herman, has fully
shared all the blame, by tacitly adopting the
policy of Government. When one independent
member did happen to give notice of a Motion
which would have brought matters to a point,
Mr Disraeli shut him up by the announcement
that he intended to move the previous question,
and that on the very ground that it was ❑ot expedient
either to take the responsibility of war or to endorse
the Ministerial efforts for Meade. As for Austria
and Prussia, they are robbers and murderers ; and
Mr Horsman is anxious that the palm of villainy
should not be awarded to Prussia with undue preci-
pitation. Austria he thinks the more designing,
doub!efaced, and hypocritical of the twos France
and Russia ought het tb have allocated any other
consideration to interfere with the simple and
straightforward fulfilment of a treatk. Mr. flora-
ms.:; tiOeig Piai,?.o the D ines for their determination
and their gallantry; but he praises them very
much as he would a bulldog which fought after it
had lost bslf its teeth and its legs had been broken:
But it canuour be made easy, the absolute truth is
made difficult by the fart that the whole ground is
haunted, as it were, by considerations uppermost in
the memory but forbidden to the tongue. We know
not why there should be this degree of reserve on
the circumstance that the highest personage in the
realm is bound by eVi?ry natural tie, eieept Oat, to
the esuse of the Geruns, By birth, by her own
marriage, by new alliances she is linked to the
German Stairs end to that Prussia which has put
itself at the trout of this offending. Mr. Horsman
delic ttely alludes to this as a source of weakness
to Government in its dealings both with Parlia-
ment and with the Continental Powers concerned
in the quarrel. On the other band, the intimate
alliance of the heir apparent with the principal
victim of this unhappy war, while it has made us
more sensitive to injury and insult, 'has certainly
ciutributed no strength either to us or the Dane. In
both these cases the leaning is natural, inevitable,
and hardly a matter of praise or blame; and all we
can say is, that so long as we have a Sovereign
and Princes, and so long as they are men and
women, such personal feelings will occur among
the incidents of a public question. Again, while all
ate freely discussing the various events which have
affected the Powers committed to the Treaty, it
seems almost to escape recollection that between
them there has been, since the signature of the
Treaty, a war most costly in blood and treasure to
Russia, France, and England--most damaging to
the designs of the first, and without much glory to
the last ; whfle Austria, perhaps, suffers more than
her share of Russian resentment for her passive
part iu that affair. But the circumstances which
more than all has not a place in the controversy
corresponding to its real importance in the story is
the fact that England has not only connived, bat
rejoiced at the triumph of nationality, and the rend-
ing of an old Treaty bearing its own signature, in
the foundation of the new Italian monarchy at the
cost of Germany and the gain of France. If these
shadows of the past must have bung over the Con-
ference, confounding in one dull hue the rights and
wrongs of the present question, another spectre
obtrudes itself, not for the past, but for the unknown
future. Should Prussia obtain ail Denmark, who
then is to grieve over the extinction of that
Monarchy or the extinction of our own ? Might not
France take the price of acquiescence, and may not
France avdPrussia already feel a common interest at
the cost of weaker Powers ? The possession of Den-
mark is worth to Prussia the cession of the Rhen-
ish provinces to France, and that would not throw
Europe entirely out of gear_ The more one reviews
all the considerations likely to effect the parties to
the treaty of 1852, the more one marvels how it ever
came to be signed at all, unless, irdeed, it were to
suppose that they who signed it were paying an
empty homage to peace, and know the Treaty would
never be worth more than the parchment it was
written on. But when Mr. Horseman has gone the
whole round, and arrived at the conclusion that, ill
as her Majesty's ministers have managed the affair,
the Opposition would have managed it worse, and
only show their candour, though not their sense of
political obligation, by confessing that they would
not go to war if admitted to power, does he not
bring us to the threshold of a higher and more sen-
sible conclusion—that we could not have done better
and are really powerless in the matter? It is best
to admit that we cannot da everything, and we
certainly do not hold the balance of European
power. All the force that we could ever put on the
Continent would be a mere handful compared with
the millions now under arms on the Continent, and
ready to cooperate for almost any other cause in
preference to the sustentation of a decayed old
Monarchy. Mr. Horsman has little hope of all that
justice, wisdom, and courage can do, when the
prey is weak and the pack strong. He looks for
no political remedy and points to no present
avenger. On the contrary, in the helplessness of
his just indignatio❑ he appeals to the course of
Providence, or to the mysterious laws of the moral
creation that make crnoe the seed of a fatal harvest
which the sower shall reap in due time. He sees
the robber band scouring the plains of Jutland ;
he hears the German hoof violating the soil to
which for all ages its very seclusion and the sim-
plicity of the race gave a sort of sanctity ; there
ring in his ear the felon shots that destroyed women
and children in an unarmed town; he writhes like
an Englishman under the ignominy of having to
accept statements and excuses seat cely pretending
sincerity and truth, and, by a natural instinct, he
sees the shadows in the clouds of the wider and
more terrible catastrophes of which these are but
forerunners. All the oracles are in his favour. His
words are echoed from a thousand battlefields, a
thousand ruined cities, a thousand hardly contested
hills, a thousand monumental mounds, Never yet
did nation suffer, however unj astly, till it had com-
promised its own interest in the great moral law
and set the precedent of crime. Why is Germany
still dreary, still full of names rather than places,

traditions rather than men, the Pbadow of a
mighty past ? Because it ever was what it is now,
and cannot resist the flatterers that tell it of glory
and dominion, whet het tight of wrong. We can tell
it what to write over the next chapter in its his-
tory—" Quod alio feceris, ab altero expectes." But
England will have no hand in that matter. We
confess ourselves powerless in this affair. We can
only hope we have resigned our mediation with all
the dignity possible to the beaten. We believe that
part has been done as well by her Majesty's Mini-
sters as it would have been by the chiefs of the
Conservative party; and that is the sum and sub-
stance of the question now before Parliament.

HERALD.—Some time elapsed since such melan-
choly news reached this country as was telegraphed
to us yesterday from Alexandria. Accustomed to
extraordinary vicissitudes in the Maori war, and to
a skill and aptitude for bush warfare which make
the native, perhaps, more than a match for the in.
fantry soldier, we have yet rarely, if ever, experienced
so great a disaster in New Z.,,aland as that which
has befallen our arms at Tauranga. We must, of
course, defer any judgment on the prudent conduct
of the action which has terminated so ingloriously,
General Cameron is a skilful sa well as a dashing
officer; he has hitherto carried on the very difficult
operations of the war with caution and success, and
we must not allow a temporary reverse to deprive
him of the confidence which has been up to the pre-
sent time freely accorded to him. Still, the loss of
10 officers and 21 killed and 4 officers and 77 men
wounded in an unsuccessful assault, seems to show
that the enterprise was a kind of forlorn hope, in
which, as usual, the desperate gallantry of our coun-
trymen was to triumph over every possible obstacle.
It is to be hoped that these sacrifices skill not be
thrown away. We are at war, and whatever may have
been its origin, the question of Maori or English
supremacy must be settled once for all. We have suf-
fered too much and lost too many valuable lives to
admit of a compromise that will leave the relations of
the natives and the Colonial Government exactly as
they were. We should be insulting the memory of
the brave men who have fallen in this miserable
contest if we did not at this moment sustain the
colonists with all our available strength, and take
steps to prevent the repetition of conflicts which
can under no circumstances bring credit to our arms,
and which frequently expose us to great humili-
Aion.

Pon. —The mail which arrived yesterday from
America brings those vague rumours which expe-
rience has taught us not unfrequently herald the
blunt notification that some great disaster has be-
fallen the Federal arms. There is but little which
we learn from official eources of the recent move-
ments of the army of the Potomac, but that littl
is most unfavourable to those who are constrained
to supply it. There is much, however, that is " con-
spicuous by its absence," and which is left to our
fancy to supply. The Government at Washington
have long and persistently followed the practice of
doling out to the public such scraps of information
from the seat of war as it may suit their conve.
nience or their interest to supply, and it would be
astonishing if, in the present stage of the war, the
public had not learned to put a tolerably just in-
terpretation upon the meagre announcements which
are from time to time made with all the sanction of
official authority. It is not often that an opportu.
nity is afforded to the Federal Secretary ;or War
of publishing a despatch from a victorious general,
but when such an opportunity does present itself
he certainly is not slow to turn it to account.
An intimation that an army is engaged in some
important operations, the nature of which it is in-
expedient to make public, is little else than an ill.
disguised attempt to conceal the full extent of a
reverse whose true nature cannot for many days
remain unknown, and as such is universally ac-
cepted. We could understand, though we could
not justify, the singular policy which in this re-
spect the Federal Government thought proper to
pursue at the commencement of hostilities ; but
what possible end it can now serve it is difficult, if
not impossible, to conjecture. Mr. Stanton can no
longer deceive, since he is no longer trusted;
and his reticence, when it is known that he has
much to communicate, excites infinitely more
depression than a candid admission that the
national army has sustained a damaging reverse.
However, the practice of dissimulation is one
which, when long indulged in, it is most difficult
to discontinue ; and it is not improbable that the
department at Washington, over which Mr Stanton
presides, will pursue the same disingenuous course
until the great civil war comes to an end. After
the unsuccessful attempts to force the Confederate
position, which were made both on the morning
and on the evening of the 17th of June, Grant ap-
pears for some days to have done little or nothing.
With hie right flank resting on the Appomatox
River, and his left on the plank-road connecting
Petersburg with Graysville, he seems to have pushed
forward his outposts as near as he conceived pru-
dent to the Confederate entrenchments. On the
18th, 19 t h, and 20th there was some slight skirmish-
ing 4 in which the pickets and their supports were
alone engaged I and it was not until the night of
the 21st that Grant resumed active operations. One
of the latest items of information brought by the
American mail, preceding that which arrived yes-
terday, wail to the effect that the Federal Corn-
mender-in- Chief had held a council of war on board
the ft ,gship of the Admiral in the James River, and
the result of these deliberations was most probably
the movement whose failure we are now called upon
to record. Intending apparently to seek a weaker
point in the Confederate lines than that against
which the assault of the 17th was directed, the two
corps which formed the right of the Federal army
were moved on the eight of the 21st across the front
of the Federal left, in the direction of the Peters-
burg and Norfolk Railway. The ostensible motive
was to cover this line of railway and more completely
invest the city of Petersburg, but the ultimate ob-
ject was to enable the Federal army to attack the
Confederate position at a point almost due south of
the town of Petersburg. For this manoeuvre, how-
ever, the Confederates were fully prepared. A
strong force under Hill intercepted the advancing
columns of the Federal right wing, and repulsed
them with heavy loss of both men and artillery.
The following day, inspirited by this 8118COSS, Gen.
Hill again resune-d the offensive, and having man.
aged to separate the Second from the Sixth Army
Corps, attacked the former in the rear and
drove it in confusion eo its entrenchments, with an
estimated loss of 3,000 men. On Thursday, the 23d,
Grant drew up his entire army in order of battle,
and on that day a general engagement was expected.
Heavy firing in the direction of the position of the
rival armies was heard at City Point on that day,
but the results of the battle are not known, or not
published. It is, indeed, rumoured in Ne iv York
that a " retrograde" movement on the part of the
army of the Potomac has actually commenced, and
that Grant has made his last attempt to force his
way at the point of the bayonet into the Confederate
capital. Should the inferences which we are com-
pelled to draw from the scanty facts permitted to
reach us, and the ominous silence of the Federal
Government prove correct, and should it turn out
that Grant has been obliged to withdraw his army
in the transports, prudently placed at his disposal
in the James River, this year's campaign in Virginia
may be considered at an end. The demonstrations
made by Hunter and Sheridan in the central dis-
tricts of that State were purely subsidiary to that
great design which Grant set himself to accomplish.
But the same ill-luck which pursued the chief has
equally followed in the footsteps of the lieutenants.
The defeat sustained by Hunter to the north of
Lynchburg, which, according to their usual custom,
the authorities of Washington affected to treat with
indifference, appears from the Southern accounts to
have been of so damaging a nature as to have finally
and completely frustrated the object of the expedi-
tion. The failure of Hunter necessarily brought in
its train that of Sheridan, for it was only through
the co-operation of the two that Grant relied upon
mating off the communications of Richmond with
the interior of the Confederacy. The results of these
expeditions will, however, be unimportant if the
Commander-in-Chief is obliged to abandon his posi-
tion on the south of the James River. We may be
asssured that he will not adopt this step until all hope
of entering Richmond is lost; but, judging from the
recent course of events, itseems difficult tobelieve that
even a general as sanguine as he undoubtedly is, and
as prodigal of human life as he has shown himself
to be, can any longer venture to persist in the enter-
prise which be has undertaken. From the time
when he crossed the Rapidan until the date of his
last reverse the Federal Commander-in-Chief has
never ceased to regard his troops as so much mill.
tary stores which might be judiciously expended
in order to attain a given object. But even though
human life may come to be regarded from this
purely prosaic point of view it may happen that
lives, like powder and shot, may be expended in
vain. Not a week passes that the grand army of
the North is not thinned to the extent of some ten
thousand men without any counterbalancing advan-
tage, and it is a mere question of figures to deter-
mine in what space of time a given army submitted
to such a drain will cease to be effective. When he
reached the Chickahominy Grant's losses during the
preceding month were estimated at one hundred
thousand men, and since then he has on three dif-
ferent occasions assaulted the Confederate lines with
the entire strength of his army, and with losses
which in the aggregate may probably be set down
a t thirty thousand men. If losses at all correspond.
ing to these had been inflicted upon his opponents,
he might not despair of success. But such hss not
been the case. General Lee's army is, in point of
numbers and efficiency, in a better position to cope
with that of Grant than it was at the commence.
men! of the campaign in Spottsylvania. Each sue-
coediug repulse to the Foderal troops diminishes

their chances of ultimate success, and brings them
nearer to the time when they must confess that
their task is a hopeless one. It may be that that
time has now come, and that the Army of the
Potamic is once more in full retreat ; but if not
actually come we are justified ia believing that it
is not far distant.

LAW INTELLIGENCE,---July 6.

COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH.

(Sittings at Nisi Prius, at Guildhall, before Lord' C•bieg
Justice Cockburn and a Special Jury.)

COOPER V. JOBLING AND OTHERS-THE TYNE REGATTA

OF 1863.

This case was tried by the Lord Chief Justice and a
common jury.

The plaintiff was Cooper, the celebrated rower, and he
sued the committee of the Tyne Regatta of 1863 to recover
the cup and purse of money contended for, upon the ground
that he was the winner of the race. One of the defendants,
Mr Harrison, suffered judgment, and the others pleaded ei
great number of pleas, the principal one being that the com-
mittee had the power to decide certain questions, and that
they had decided that fhe plaintiff did not win the race.
Mr Brett, Q.C., and Mr Cohen appeared for the plaintiff;
Mr M.'Leod for Mr Jobling; and Mr Denman, Q.C., and
Mr Prentice for the other defendants.
Mr Brett, in opening the case, said that it had not in-
aptly fallen into the hands of his learned friend Mr Denman,
and himself, as in earlier days they were borh well used to
the management of boating ; they had both started from
Westminster-bridge, had endured the horrors of the
" middle passage," and had felt disappointment or exulta-
tion, as the case might be, in passing through Putney•
bridge.

The Lord Chief Justice—l hope that you always sub-
mitted to the decision of the umpire instead of corning into
court. (A laugh.)
Mr Brett—We always did. In 1863 the committee of
the Tyne Regatta advertised a cup worth £5O and £3O in
money, and the plaintiff rowed in the races, having as his
competitors in the la.t heat Chambers and Kelly. Mr
Oldham was the umpire. In the course of the last heat a
foul occurred between Kelly and the plaintiff, and the um•
pire decided that the foul was Kelly's fault, though he did
not do it wilfully, and he also decided that the plaintiff
was the winner. Some of the committee who were pre-
sent agreed in this decision, but afterwards the majo-
rity of the body expressed their opinion that the race
should be rowed over again. The plaintiff, however,
declined to accede to this proposal, and the race was
rowed between the other two, one of whom was declared
the winner.

One of th3rules of the regatta was that " the established
rules of boating shall be strictly adhered to," and according
to one of the rules of the Thames " the decision of the um.
Aire shall in all cases be final."
Mr Denman, however, contended that the Thames rules
did not apply to this case, but to the rules which existed in
the north of England, where it was the universal practice
for a point such as arose in this race to be decided by the
committee, and not by the umpire.
After some discussion it was agreed that it was for
the interests of the parties to have the case decided by
some one acquainted with boating rather than by a jury,
and especially so as probably some questions of law might
arise.

It was ultimately arranged to refer the matter in dis-
pute to Mr Thomas Hughes, of the Chancery bar, known
in sporting circles as the author of "loin Brown's School
Days."