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

traditions rather than, men; the shadow of a
mighty past .?
Because it ever was what it is now,
and cannot resist the flatterers that tell it of glory
and dominion, whether right or wrong. We can tell
it what to Write over the next chapter in its his-
tory—" Quod alio feceria, 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 ?eland 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 as 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 will 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-
ation.

Post--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 arths. There is but little which
we learn from official sources of the recent move-
ments of the army of the Potomac, but that little
is most unfavourable tti 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 SovernMent at Washington
have lciig 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
ere from time to time made with all the sanction of
official authority. It is not often that an opportue
fifty is afforded to the Federal Secretary for 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 suoh 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 his 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, 19th, and 20th there was soma slight skirmish-
ing, in which the pickets and their supports were
alone engaged; 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, was to the effect that the Federal Com-
mander-in. Chief had held a council of war on board
the flagship 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 night 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
theca with heavy loss of both men and artillery.
The following day, inspirited by this success, Gen.
Hill again resumed 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 no 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 New York
that a " retrograde" movemeht on the part of the
army of the Potomac has actually commenced, and
that Grsnt 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 th© Federal

Government prove correct, and should it turn on

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•
Lion. 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
cutting 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
assanred 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 tobelieva 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 he 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 mili-
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 each a drain will cease to be effective. When be
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 hie army, and with losses
which in the aggregate may probably be set down
at thirty thousand men. If losses at all correspond•
ing to those had been inflicted upon his oppouents,
he might not despair of success. But such lids not
been the ca e. 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,
went of the campaign in Spottsylvania. Each suc-
ceeding repulse to the Federal troops diminishes