The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 22, 1864.

The Prospect of Peace,

(bow t 1 hulex.)

Oar readers will acquit us of having ever been
unduly sanguine in our appreciations of the events
of the American war. While we have never for an
instant doubted the ultimate triumph of Confederate
independence, and while we have seldom been de-
ceived, even transiently, by the boastful impostures
of Federal newspapers and diplomatic documents,
we may modestly claim the credit of having been
substantially correct in the few predictions we have
ventured, and of never having encouraged false
hopes of peace based upon either the exhaustion of
the North, its financial collapse, its return to reason,
or even the successes of the Southern arms. We
have consistently held to the conviction that the
war, left to its own course, whatever might be its
vicissitudes, must be a long one; that no influence
from within, at least during the time of Mr. Lin-
coln's administration, would be potent enough to
end it; and that the only hope of shortening this
fated period lay in the wisdom and justice of Euro-
pean Powers, if, by recognising an incontestible
political fact they had exchanged a false for a true
neutrality. Within the last two years and a half
this only hope seemed several times on the point of
realisation. To-day none but a visionary will deny
that the idea of recognition is practically less pre-
sent to men's minds than it was twelve months ago.
Whether this arises from the frequent disappoint-
ment of well-founded expectations, or from a
strengthening conviction that the South now stands
in less need than formerly of even such moral aid
from abroad, we need not here inquire. Certain it
is that the South itself has long ceased to expect,
scarcely to desire, recognition ; and in inverse pro-
portion has grown the proud confidence in its own
Heaven-aided ability to accomplish the great work
of national salvation. Yet at this very moment,
when we once more acknowledge the fallacy of
the only hope upon which we had heretofore
dwelt seriously, we are able to say with all
calmness and soberness, that the prospects of
speedy peace were never so promising—so almost
absolutely certain. It is our sincere be-
lief that, unless some great disaster befalls the Con-
federate arms before the 29th of this month, the
Democratit party then assembling in Chicago will
nominate a peace candidate for the presidency, and
within three months after there will bean armistice.

It is not because the military situation presents
unprecdented features that we stake our judgment
upon so bold a pre:dition. Another Confederate in-
vasion might possibly end in another Sliarpsburg or
Gettysburg. Another period of reciprocal inactivity
might ensue, affording time for recruiting another
army in Ireland and Germany. Nor is it because
the financial condition so unmistakably indicates
that the bottom of the nation's pocket has been
reached. Federal finances have so often defied
rational calculations, so many grave crises have been
passed—not safel, but still passed—so buoyant and
sanguine is the American temperament, that we
would hesitate to deny the possibility of another
miracle, and, given a drawn battle or two, or some
illusory success, we are not sure but even this last
crisis might be tided over, and the inevitable ruin
carefully concealed by " shoddy" flowers from pub-
lic view, might be staved off for another season.
These embarrassments have become periodical
ever since the battle of Bull Run, aggravating with
each year. To a cool observer at a distance they
seemed fatal in 1861 ; they were worse in
1862; still worse in 1863. It is not because they
are worst in 1864 that we look fir peace, but be-
cause in 1864 they correspond with embarrassments
of quite another kind—with a quadrennial civil
revolution which, even in ordinary times, puzzled
and perplexed the rawest understanding of Euro-
pean statesmanship. The curious feature of the
Amhrican federative system is its affectation of
mathematical mechanism. The Federal Govern.
ment is wound up, warranted to run four years.
It may run as wildly fast or as tamely slow as the
materials of its clock-work will admit, bat at the
striking of a certain hour ite motive power is ex-
hausted. At one second after twelve o'clock on
March 4 the four years' king is dead—four years'
life to the now king. Alas! however, for human
ingenuity, there is an interval between the winding
up again and the running down, and this interval
is an interregnum, The new king is elected in
November, the old one dies in March. In the four
months intervening, unless he happens to be his
own successor for another " term," the courtiers
desert the setting sun to worship the rising one.
The Federal Government has only a nominal head.
At noon of Mach 4 of next year Mr. Lincoln,
unless re-elected, loses the last semblance of power;
four months and four days earlier, on the first
Enesday of November next, the entire substance.
In the meanwhile the semblance and the substance
remain irremediably disunited, and therefore dor-
mant.

How slim are Mr. Lincoln's chances of
re-election may be seen by the indecent alacrity
with which the rats are scampering away
from his ship. Already ho is opposed by
h candidate of his own party, one who is not oni:s—
tho first lose of that party—its candidate when
Lincoln was not yet known outside his own village
—but one who represents that very section of the
party which by its rabid radicalism leavened the
rest, and in the heat of the fermentation flung Mr
Lincoln into power. Even the convention which
lately nominated Mr Lincoln, composed as it was of
his own office-holders, deemed it necessary to save
the appearance of self-respect by insulting him in
his Mexican policy. The most important corn•
mittee of his own Congress has denounced him for
the attempted usurpation of arbitrary power for
the purpose of manufacturing fictitious votes from
the "rebellious" States; and the two Houses
of Congress, as one body, have given practical
effect to this denunciation by a legislative enact-
ment that the votes of the "rebellious" States
shall not count in the ensuing election. In
open feud with his Congress, at variance
with his party, deserted by his mercenary friends,
ridiculed by the press, despised by the public, his
favourite generals defeated in the field, his pet
schemes ending in disaster, Mr. Lincoln is not a
very formidable competitor for the presidency. Add
to this that the Democratic opposition, keenly alive
to the possible turns of fortuue in their favour, have
adjourned the neraination of their candidate to the
decision of the issue of the summer's campaign,
fixing it at a date barely eight week© prior to the
November election. At that election the success.-
fat candidate requires, since the votes of one-third
of the States are counted out, a numerical majority
of the actual votes cast, such as no president
since
Washington has ever obtained.
The personal triumph or humiliation of Mr,
Abraham Lincoln is, however, merely an incident—
and in no sense an element—in our calculations for
peace. If the war against the South is to be
prosecuted, we prefer him as President of the
United States to any one of the four millions of
adult males in the population of Federal America.
Our prognostication assts upon the fact that a new
idea has entered the Northern mind, and that this
idea is the only practicable bridge from war to
peace. This idea scores of newspapers, which before
were eagerly clamouring, for a more vigorous pro-
secution of the war, have within the last few weeks
taken up with utterance more or less distinct. It
is in the minds and mouths of men of all parties,
defended or denounced, but familiar to all. It is
reflected in the public correspondence of the Euros
pean press from America; it is sharply mapped out
in nine-tenths of the private letters which fill the
American mail-bags. It is like the confused sound
of many voices; unless a providential event hushes
it, it will have swollen, arc our printed pages
reach the other side of the Atlantic, into the
deafening chorus of millions of men. It is an idea
all the more powerful because it flatters American
vanity wi!hout being altogether chimerical and
:mpreclie,:ble. It is an idea which impli: s
solution, and not defeat. It is an idea which grati-
fies vague popular longings for revenge, and which
yet prorniscs wild material advantages.
This idea, in, which we recognise the mustard.
seed of a lasting and prosperous peace, may, when
stripped of its surplusage of words and extravagan.
Cl2B 0f drapery, be succinctly described so inewhat
as foiiows. The North says to itself--" In the event
of succrss (and no true Northerner perm'As himself
to doubt cf eTeritual svccess), whet ehall we gain ?

The experience of over three years of war has demon-
strated that the chances of success upon which we
most counted either never did or certainly do not
now exist. Thanks to an Administration as imbecile
as it has been ferocious, there is neither latent
Union feeling' nor ' negro-rising,' and there will be
none. lf, therefore, we succeed, after incalculable
further expenditure of blood and treasure, in con-
quering the South, we shall find ourselves chained
to a corpse. We are persuading ourselves that
we are fighting for the Union—that is to say,
for commercial prosperity at home and power and
prestige abroad. If, after years of war, we subdue
the South, our prosperity at home will consist in
having the productive portion of our national terri-
tory laid waste, and the industrial portion of it
burdened by a debt which is equally ruinous to re-
pudiate or to pay. Our prestige abroad will consist
in having the flower of two-thirds of our manhood
employed in keeping under subjection the mutinous
remaining third. The price in our own liberties
which we have already paid for the mere attempt,
gives the standard of what success will cost us; and
if we shall be further called to strike an average of
the amount of liberty suitable equally to white
American freemen and emancipated black :slaves,
the future is sickening to contemplate. Viewing
all this, three years of war have greatly changed
circumstances. If we were right then, we are
not now. It is the part of wisdom to make
the most of circumstances as they are.
The nations of Europe, by their own shortsighted-
ness and cowardice, have let a golden opportunity
pass. It present itself to us now ; let us be wiser
than Europe. The South is neither conqueror nor
conquered ; let us have the credit of doing gene-
rously what some we may have to do by compulsion.
North and South, since the formation of the Union,
have ever been recognised entities. We nominally
classed both under a varying number of States, and
we lived prosperously when these States numbered
34. Why should we not live prosperously if the
Union meant two States instead of 34 ? In or out
of the Union, as contiguous empires who have tested
each other's strength, we must live together upon
some sort of terms. The South has war debts as
well as we. There will, therefore, with a little
concession on both sides, be no insuperable ob-
stacle to an identical commercial policy,
much as Southerners talk about ' free trade.'
The South owes no favour to Europe, neither do
we. There is no abstacle, therefore, to a permanently
identical foreign policy. Why should not the Union
become a marriage between two great States, a
marriage without possible divorce, admitting a dis-
tinct individuality and independent rights i❑ both,
but representing a unit to the outside world ?
Such is the substance of the argument which, at
the family fireside, in the club, at the domestic
breakfast table, or at the public table d'hOte, now
forms the staple of discussion—for and against—
throughout the Northern States, We have tran-
scribed it almost textually from the mass of Northern
correspondence, unconnected and even antagonistic
in its sources, which has reached us directly, or been
submitted to us. We have awakened to its import-
ance, through the coincidence in many essential
points which forced itself on our attention in our
Southern correspondence. It is not for us to pro•
notion o❑ the merits of the arguments. The North,
being the aggressor, must initiate the terms of peace.
But this much we are free to say. In the heart of
the population of the Confederate States, wearied of
war, though undaunted in the confidence of its issue,
proposals of this sort must touch a responsive chord.
The men of authority may see the inconveniences
of so close an alliance with the North, but the people
will see that they must choose their allies from be-
tween the Western European nations or their nearest
neighbours, and neither England nor France, nor
even 'Janie Mexico, has done aught to interfere
with the natural claims of that formidable nearest
neighbour. In spite of their habitual self-restraint,
Southerners are disgusted at the imbecility of the
English Government of the day, and at the incon-
sistency, not to say treachery, of that of France.
If they aro forced to choose between Europe and
America, they might very well choose their own
hemisphere, provided the first word of every treaty
of alliance was always unchallenged Confederate
independence.
There is only one logical conclusion to these re-
flections it is, that if any selfish hope of exhausting
both American belligerents has animated the policy
will have its just reward. Neither have lost the
restorative energies of youth. Both have only just
learned their own strength. Debt-burdened and
bled as they may be, the day that they make an
honourable peace, with amity and identical foreign
policy, the twin confederations will be physically
and morally stronger than ever was or could have
been the undivided Union, with its materialistic
tendencies, and its external strength neutralised by
an internal national balance of power.

Mayor was intended as a mark of respect, and I
not of insult, and the affair of the gas lamp was
grossly exaggerated. Regarding himself, he denied
the assault, and he was prepared to clear him-
self, but paid the L 5 rather than come before the
public, or trust his reputation in the hands of
the Lord Mayor, who would have tried the cqse.
The allegation with regard to the hissing of the
police he stigmatised as entirely false ; and with
regard to the other complaints he relied upon the
memorial sent to the Commander-in-Chief. We
learn from a letter dated Colchester, Aug. 15, and
addressed to the Recorder of York, that the com-
plaints have been decided in favour of the regi-
ment, and the gallant colonel, in its name, thanked
the citizens of York for the kind manner in which
they, one and all, "aided us in protecting our re-
putation from the aspersions of one who appears to
have been actuated by a spirit of animosity towards
the regiment difficult to be accounted for." He
could not " refrain from expressing the deep feeling
of indignation and disgust experienced by the whole
regiment at the bold assertion of the Lord Mayor
that we were on unfriendly terms with the citizens
of York and with the Rifle Volunteers, when we
were all fully award that such an idea could only
have originated in the fertile imagination of the
chief magistrates." The greatest satisfaction is felt
in York at the decision of the Commander-in• Chief.
—Manchester Courier.