The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 11, 1864.

blockade. If the moral reprobation of mankind and
a pirate's doom which awaits the captured have not
deterred speculators in Boston and New York from
engaging in the slave trade, it will be imagined that
the threat of imprisonment will not hinder English-
men from venturing upon a commerce not less lucra-
tive, and sanctioned by the sympathy of three-
fourths of their countrymen.
The heart of Richmond has been deeply stirred
by the recent arrival here of General Morgan, fresh
from the indignation of the Ohio Penitentiary and a
felon's punishment. It will be believed that the
sight of his shorn locks and the narrative of his
escape have provoked indignation and triumph such
as has not been elicited by any previous incident
of the war. It is for obvious reasons hardly pro-
bable that the details of his escape, as given in
the Richmond journals, embrace the whole truth.
The subsequent arrival here of Captain Hines,
the partner of his imprisonment and the principal
agent in their joint escape, has been scarcely less ac-
ceptable to the people of Richmond. General Morgan
is one of the few Americans who have a horror of
speechmaking, and he has contented himself with
acknowledging the compliments of the Virginia
Legislature, and other similar corporate bodies, in
the briefest utterances. Whatever may be General
Morgan's hidden sentiments about the treatment
he has received (and they are said to be very bitter),
he has had the wisdom not to give them public ex-
pression. But the indignation of his staff and his
private friends knows no bounds, and it is said that
his future regiments (which will be numerous) are
already busied in electing to a novel office an occu-
pant who will be worthy of his opportunities. The
friseur et coffieur a Sa Majeste, who followed the
courtly campaigns of Louis XIV., will be revived
on this Republican soil, and the " Barber to the
11th Tennessee" and other similar cavalry regiments
will exercise his skill on many a Yankee poll which
the fortune of war may bring within General Mor-
gan's grasp. There will be plenty of work in the
West, not only for General Wheeler, who is General
Johnston's principal cavalry officer, but also for the
detached commands of Generals Forrest, S. D. Lee,
and Morgan, and those of Colonels Ferguson and
Dibrell. But both East and West, and especially
where the influence of Generals Lee and Long-
street is felt, there is less and less disposition to
engage in the ostentatious cavalry raids by which
in the earlier part of the war the reputation of Gene-
ral J. E. B. Stuart was established. It is known
that the Federal policy is to encourage these raids ;
that they inflict upon the enemy who sustains them
less danger than upon the troops which perpetrate
them ; that they convert the wild Confederates en-
gaged in them into undisciplined thieving marauders
and cost vastly more in horseflesh (which is precious)
than they gain in the destruction of property. It is to
hoped that we have seen the last of such Quixotic
enterprises as that which carried General Morgan
into Indiana and Ohio, and subjected him to the
atrocities which, for the first time in the history of
nations, the Federal Government has sanctioned to-
wards a prisoner of war. The sight this day in the
streets of Richmond of General Hood's tall and
stately form, seen for the first time on horseback
since he lost his leg at Chicamanga, has occasioned
general gratification. There are few officers dearer
to the people of Secession than General Hood.
Modest as a child, fearless as his intimate friend,
General Longstreet, unselfish and unsullied as a
Bayard, he has already given his right leg and four
inches of the bone of his left arm to the cause which
is so dear to his heart, and again In a few weeks he
will be found foremost among the foremost, offering
up perhaps another limb, perhaps life itself, on that
altar for which no sacrifice is too costly. A singular
commentary upon the old text that " necessity is the
mother of invention" may be observed in the artificial
leg which supplies the place of General Hood's lost
limb. When this war commenced there was through-
out the length and breadth of the South no artificer
cunning in the construction of artificial limbs; but
such was the demand occasioned by the fierce battles
of the bloodiest war of the century that Richmond
is now teeming with every variety of wooden leg
and crutch, and there has arisen in Charlottsville (a
little town in the interior of Virginia) an artist who
has attained no inconsiderable skill in patching up
and supplementing lost arms and legs, and enabling
the maimed again to take the field. Is this a peo-
ple to be subjugated by the sweepings of Germany
and Ireland—a people whose sons are not satisfied
with giving an arm or a leg to their country, but
insist again and again on carrying their mutilated
forms into the deadliest hail of the battle front, and
whose appetite for danger and suffering does but
increase with the urgency of their country's need ?
A great many stories have been current about
" the generosity towards General Lee" of the muni-
cipality of Richmond, which is represented as having
offered to the General a sum of money, amounting,
if report speaks truth, to 50,000 doll. or 60,000 dole.,
with a view to his purchase of a house. It is known
that General Lee's wife and daughters, shorn of the
comforts of their former homes on Arlington
Heights and at the White House on the Pamunkey
River (the latter of which was burnt to the ground
by General M'Clellan's soldiers), are living in an
obscure little house in Richmond, and, upon the
principle of "Date obolunz Belisario," it is felt that
Richmond, which owes to General Lee so infinite a
debt, can scarcely retain its own self-respect while
it contemplates such a spectacle. Dila hardly neces-
sary to state that from the acceptance of any such
gift General Lee's proud simplicity has recoiled.
It is stated that his answer, when the offer was made
to him, was to the effect that if Richmond had so
much money to give away, he begged to call atten-
tion to the destitute wives and widows of many of
his noble soldiers, and to divert into this channel
the bounty misapplied to himself.
General Longstreet, who has shown his wonted
tenacity in holding on to Eest Tennessee while the
bridges in his rear over the Holston and Watanga
Rivers were being rebuilt, and his communications
with Virginia re-opened, is still clinging to his old
position between the Holston and Clinch Rivers,
and has been engaged in supplying shoes and
clothes to his men, of which after the hardships
of their march from Chattanooga to Knoxville
they stood greatly in need. It is probable that
before long we shall hear of some movement
which will flatter the Yankee garrisons in Knox-
ville and Cumberland Gap. General Buckner, be-
tween whom and General Longstreet very friendly
relations exist, is about to join the latter. What-
ever may be the comparative merits of General
Joseph E. Johnston as contrasted with Gen. Bragg,
there will undoubtedly be hereafter a harmony
among the Generals of the Western army which
was looked for in vain when Gen. Bragg was at its
head. Gen. Johnston, bound to Gen. Lengstreet by
the recollections of the battle of Williamsburg
fought when Gen. M'Clellan was advancing upon
Richmond by the peninsula), is understood to enter-
tain warm regard and admiration for Longstreet,
and therefore full concert of action may be looked
for between the two Generals in the momentous
campaign on the eve of which we are standing. It
is not dissembled either at Washington or Rich-
mond that to the Western campaign the principal
interest of the war will attach, It seems to me that
if disaster ever assumed the shape of a blessing in
disguise, the defeat sustained by Gen. Bragg's army
on the 25th November should be ranked in the cate-
gory, If, with Gen. Bragg still in command, the
Western Confederate army had dragged through en
inactive and spiritless winter, with mimic deterio-
rating day after day, decimated by desertion, and
radically disaffected, it would hove taken no pro-
phet to predict that the first collision next spring
between Grant and Bragg could have had no other
result than the defeat, if not the annihilation, of the
latter. How different is at this moment the prospect!
are straining
With great energy
inspirit, and Hardeean d
recruit the wreck handed over to them
reorganise,
by General
Bragg. At their back are all the resources of the
roused and excited State of Georgia, prepared now
to dispute every inch of the 138 difficult miles which
separate Chatanooga from Atlanta, and which, it
may be predicted, will be found at least as hard to
surmount as the 60 miles which are interposed be-
tween Fredericksburg and Richmond. It is pro-
bable that the lesson taught to Gen. Grant by Gen.
Cleburne during the retreat of the Confederate army
from Missionary Ridge (a lesson of which the North-
suppress all the details) will be
ern journals eagerly

repeated dozens and dozens of times before Atlanta
is approached.

It is a matter of surprise to all Englishmen in the
Confederate States that the Foreign-office (guided
as I have again and again been tauntingly told, by
Mr. Adams), takes no more heed of British subjects
in Secessia than it does of the codfish in the
Atlantic. My own impression has always been
that British subjects in the South ere not
materially worse off without Consuls than they
were before the " decapitation" of Mr. Moore
and his collagues. I have seen dozens of instances
in which a hearty desire to act justly between con-
scripts claiming to be foreigners and the enrolling
officers has been exhibited at Richmond. The efforts
of Mr. Gustavus A. Myers, gratuitously and with
much self-sacrifice extended to British subjects, have
been unremitting; and they have been cordially se•
conded by the Assistant Secretary of War, Judge
Campbell, who brings to the duties of his present
post the same mild legal sagacity and uprightness of
character which distinguished him while seated on
the bench of the Supreme Court at Washington.
Exceptional cases of hardship, such as that of Mr.
Belshaw, have occasionally occurred, but they have
been made the most of in England by the rabid par-
tisans of the North, who are never tired of claiming
for the Federal Government the very largest mea-
sure of indulgence for high-handedness in the" hour
of their agony," but who refuse to the Confederate
Government and nation the smallest charity under
circumstances of vastly superior trial. But I confess
it does appear to me strange that the Foreign-office
should not endeavour to retain within the Confede-
rate States one trusted consular agent in a capacity
which he might hold without offence to the Confe-
derate Government. Mr. Cridland, who was Mr.
Moores locum tenens at Richrrond during the first
two years of the war, and who is now residing as
a private person at Mobile, is, if I am not mis-
taken, the last of the quondam British Consuls left
upon the soil of Secessia. It is well known that the
archives of the British Consulates are left to take
their chancein the various towns where the Foreign
office was once represented. If these archives are
of as much consequence as is vulgarly imagined,
and if the Foreign-office still desires to retain one
correspondent within the insurgent States, why not
appoint Mr. Cridland custodian of the archives of
the British Consulates in the South (or what the
French call Chancellier), and give him authority to
proceed at intervals from town to town, and see
that those archives are in safe keeping ? In no
other way can the Foreign-office obtain such trust-
worthy private information from an agent in whom
they will consent to repose confidence. Perhaps
Lord Russell, guided by Mr. Adams, and Lord
Lyons, hoodwinked by Mr. Seward, think that yet
a few weeks and British Consuls will resume their
functions at Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and
Mobile under the shelter of the stars and stripes.
There are places and circumstances in which oppor-
tunity of observation is of more moment than saga-
city of induction, and entitles ordinary men who
possess it to instruct philosophers who generalise at
a distance. I will venture, therefore, in conclusion,
to assure Lord Russell that the gigantic task which
President Lincoln has taken in hand is not hitherto
half way towards its accomplishment ; that before
its completion rivers of blood will flow where rivu-
lets have flowed before ; that, if necessary, where
one slave is found fighting for Mrs. Stowe, and
Mr. Sumner, ten slaves will be found fighting for
their masters and for slavery; that the fourth year
of the war finds the two sections under circum-
stances of far greater equality as regards men and
material of war than its predecessors; that the
North is, perhaps unconsciously, bolstering up its
faith and stiffening its backbone by a diet of inge-
nious mendacity ; and that if ever it should suc-
ceed in driving its enemy from the field, it will
find itself face to face with a problem the difficulties
of which it has not begun to gauge, but which are
such as have bafiL,Al solution by any other nation
since the creation of man, and which will baffle and
exhaust even the irrepressible Yankee.

FIRES AT THEATRES.

The Lord Chamberlain has received a letter from the
Coroner of Middlesex, conveying the recommendation of
the jury at the inquest held on Miss Thorne, so unfortu-
nately burnt to death at the Pavilion Theatre, to the follow-
ing effect:—
" That in future the dresses of ballet dancers should be
rendered uninflammable, and that all ground lights should
be protected,"

In this recommendation the coroner concurs.
At the meeting of managers held this (Feb. 5) day, their
opinion was so strongly expressed as to the difficulties which
would attend an order for the compulsory use of uninflam-
mable muslin, &c., that the Lord Chamberlain cannot at
present undertake to give a general order for its adoption.
He would wish, however, that managers should employ it
whenever possible, and should generally impress upon the
ladies engaged by them the dangers to which they expose
themselves by refusing to avail themselves of this simple
precaution.
The Lord Chamberlain is glad to find that in most of the
theatres under his control guards to the ground and other
fixed lights have already been adopted. He has thought it
necessary to issue a general order on this important point.
The Lord Chamberlain begs to impress upon the mana-
gers that the public is becoming more and more disposed to
hold them responsible for accidents by fire occurring in the
houses under their control, and would suggest that speedy
and certain punishment should be inflicted by them upon
all persons in their service guilty of carelessness in this re-
specr,
The Lord Chamberlain would also urge upon the mana-
gers the importance of facilitating by every means in their
power the egress of all classes of their audiences from their
theatres. He acknowledges with pleasure, that much has
of late years been effected; but much room for improve-
ment still exists, and he hopes to find that his caution in
this respect has been attended to when the next annual in-
spection takes place.
The Lord Chamberlain encloses herewith a copy of regu-

!ations to be posted in a conspicuous position in the theatres,
To these regulations, which in substance have already been
conveyed to the managers, ho desires again to call their
special attention, and begs that the receipt of them may be
acknowledged. SYDNEY, Lord Chamberlain.
Lord Chamberlain's-office, Feb, 5.

REGULATIONS FOR THE BETTER PROTECTION AGAINST
ACCIDENTS BY FIRE AT THEATRES LICENSED BY TIIE

LORD CHAMBERLAIN.

1. All fixed and ordinary gas burners to be furnished with
efficient guards. Movable and occasional lights to be, when
possible, protected in the same manner, or put under charge
of persons responsible for lighting, watching, and extin-
guishing them.
2. The floats to be protected by a wire guard. The first
ground-line to be always without gas, and unconnected with
gas, whether at the wings or elsewhere, Sufficient space
to be left between each ground-line, so as to lessen risk
from accident to all persons standing or moving among
such lines.

3. The rows or lines of gas• burners at wings to commence
four feet at least from the level of the stage.

4. Wet blankets or rugs, with buckets or water-pots, to
be always kept in the wings ; and attention to be directed
to them by placards legibly printed or painted, and fixed
immediately above them. As in rule 1, some person to be
responsible for keeping the blankets, buckets, &c., ready for
immediate use. _ _

-
5. These regulations to be always posted in some conspi-
cuous place, so that all persons belonging to the theatre
may be acquainted with their contents ; every breach or
neglect of them, or any act of carelessness as regards fire, to
be punished by fines or dismissal by the managers.
SYDNEY, Lord Chamberlain.
Lord Chamberlain's office, St. James's Palace, Feb. 5,

States sufficient justification for maintaining, for
at least some time to come, the struggle on which
they have now entered. We tender no advice, we
hold out no hope, we simply wish to state the
reasons which most probably actuate the Danish
people in prolonging a resistance which some affect
to think must be unavailing. We have hitherto

refused to give Denmark any material assistance,
and we have no right to assume the office of men-
tors when we are not asked for our advice. Unless

we put ourselves in the position of the Danes, we
cannot possibly appreciate their sentiments ; but,
placed in their position, we venture to say that
thoughts of submission would be the last which
would occur to the national mind.
TIDIES.—A very important series of despatches
on the subject of the Alabama and her consorts has
just been presented to Parliament. It contains a
collection of documents, such as protests, affidavits,
and consular reports, relative to the depredations of
these cruisers, as well as the communications which
have passed between the Foreign-office and Mr.
Adams, or his Government, upon the claims pre-
ferred on behalf of American citizens. These last
do not include any arising out of the Alexandra
case, or those which have been exchanged with re-
ference to the ironclads, on both of which topics
Lord Russell and Mr. Layard claimed the privilege
of reticence on Tuesday night, on the ground that
they involve questions still pending. For a different
reason the remarkable letter of Mr. Seward, dated
July 11, which appeared in our columns on Monday,
has no place among these papers, although it has
been laid before Congress. It now appears, from
the statements made in both Houses, that this
letter, though authentic, was never delivered by
Mr. Adams to Lord Russell. No one who has
perused it will find fault with the discretion exer-
cised by the United States Minister, to whose
pacific efforts Lord Russell himself bears emphatic
testimony. A remonstrance which, though it con-
cludes with a compliment to the dignity of Great
Britain, warns us that, unless we lay an embargo
on Confederate privateers, they shall be pursued
" into the ports which thus, in violation of the
law of nations and the obligations of neutra-
lity, become harbours for the pirates," was scarcely
likely to promote the object which Mr. Adams
had at heart. It was probably judicious to treat
this missive as an isolated ebullition, written in an
interval of very natural but not very statesmanlike
vexation. At all events, it is out of harmony with
the moderate and argumentative tone which cha-
racterises the representations actually made to our
Government. The first despatch in this correspon-
dence which requires our attention is that of Lord
Russell to Mr. Adams, dated March 9, with respect
to a demand from the New York Mutual Insurance

Company. This demand may be taken as a type o:
those which follow in rapid succession throughout
these pages. The claimants urge that since the
Alabama was built, fitted out, and despatched from
A British port, chiefly manned by British sailors,
taken out of British jurisdiction by a trick, pro-
tected by the use of the British flag, and admitted
to British ports in the colonies as a man-of war, she
was, " to all intents and purposes, a British vessel."
In some of these memorials, several of which are
framed on a uniform model, or " common form," as
lawyers would call it, two further arguments are
used. The one is that she was allowed to leave our
waters after due notice of her character and desti-
nation had been furnished to our Government ; the
other, that since, if she had been seized by the Tus-
caroraor any other Federal man-of-war after leaving
our territory, she would infallibly have claimed the
priviieges of British ownership, she must be a Bri-
tish "piratical craft." We have not space to discuss
points founded on the supposition of what the Ala-
bama would have done under circumstances which,
thanks to the inactivity of the Federal navy, never
occurred. We have to deal only with Lord Russell's
answers, which have always embodied an entire and
explicit disclaimer of responsibility. On July 13 he
adheres to what he had said on March 9, and on
September 14 he protests against such pretensions
on account of captures made by vessels " originally
built" here, but " fitted out" as warlike cruisers in
foreign ports, as "entirely at variance with the
principles of international law, and with the de-
cisions of American Courts of the highest au-
thority." He adds that he hopes Mr. Adams
may not again be instructed to put forward
claims which her Majesty's Government can-
not admit to be founded on any grounds of
law or justice." It was after this that 11Ir.
Adams applied to Washington for instructions es
to the course which he should thenceforth pursue,
and the result is announced in the important de-
spatch of October 23. As this despatch and Lord
Russell's reply to it represent with great accuracy
the two conflicting views, and complete the plead-
ings, so to speak, on either side, it may be worth
while to give a summary of their contents. Mr.
Adams starts by pointing out that Great Britain
and the United States are at peace, and mutually
bound by treaty to restrain their respective subjects
from making war upon each other. He next dwells
on the ravages of the Alabama, roving over the seas
without lawful authority" that can be recognised
by international law, and " in open defiance of all
judicial tribunals" that can take cognisance of piracy.
Then comes the gravamen of the charge. She was
" built with the intent to make war against the
United States by British subjects, in a British port,
and prepared there to be armed and equipped with
a specific armament adapted to her construction for
the very purpose" of preying on American com-
merce. That armament and equipment were
"simultaneously prepared by British subjects, in a
British port, with the intent to complete her pre-
paration for her career," and the transfer of the ar-
mament to the hull was clandestinely arranged and
carried out " with the connivance of her British
holders." From these circumstances, taken together,
Mr. Adams infers " one single criminal intent run •
ning equally through all the portions of this pre-
paration," and, inasmuch as our Government,
though "bound by treaty obligations and the law
of nations to prevent the execution of it," did not
act with "promptness and energy enough" to frus-
trate the enterprise, he continues to insist that we
ought to indemnify American shipowners for the
losses which they have sustained. On the other
hand, he assures Lord Russell that " the United
States desire to maintain amity as well as peace,"
that they fully appreciate our difficulties, and that
they are willing to defer the settlement of their
claims for the present, or even to submit them to
arbitration. Lord Russell's response, dated Oct.
26, is more succinct and less controversial. He avails
himself of the admission that the present moment
is not the most favourable for the calm and candid
examination of the facts and principles in dispute.
At the same time he seizes the opportunity to show
the material distinction between such proceedings
as Washington's Government prohibited, when the
French attempted to make American ports their
basis of operations against this country, and those
which are the subject of these complaints. "The
British Government must decline to be responsible
for the acts of parties who fit out a seeming mer-
'nt,, ship, send her to a port or to waters far from
'" diction of a British Court, and there come the June, .
and man her as a vessel of war."
mission, equil;,,,
is in his rejoinder, dated Oct.
Mr. Adams meets Le
Alabama and other vessels
31, by denying that the the semblance of mer-
of the same class " ever boreofficers who re-
chant ships, even to her Majesty 0
ported upon them." This is virtualij the close of
the correspondence, for we can hardly treat the
allegation that the Alabama adopted at pleasure the
British or any other flag that might suit her pur-
pose as a substantive grievance. We have no inten-
tion of reopening the controvery which is thus sus-
pended, especially as we have so recently examined
the theory on which Mr. Adams' reasoning is based.
There are one or two considerations, however, which
will bear repetition, and cannot be excluded from
any review of this question. The first of these is that
the case of the Alabama, Florida, and Oreto is alto •
gether new, and cannot be directly brought under
any definite rule of international law. The fact is,
that it is only since steam power has revolutionised
navel warfare that the construction of one or two
such vessels in neutral building yards has been
capable of inflicting such annoyance on an enemy
and it is the peculiar fact that the harbours of the
Southern Confederacy are blockaded that makes the
power of procuring a navy elsewhere so invaluable
to them. If we refer to the text-writers, we find
that the violations of neutral territory chiefly contem-
plated by them are different in kind, as, for instance,
the capture of a belligerent vessel within three
miles of a neutral coast. When, therefore, we are
told that the duties of neutrality are prior to all
municipal laws and must be enforced, whether or
not there be any municipal statute sufficient for the
purpose, we
are entitled to ask for a clear definition
of these duties, as well as proof that a neutral Go-
vernmentis answerable for all breaches of such
duties by its subjects. Rights are not always cor-
relative to duties,
or even remedies to rights, and it
by no means follows that because we ought, out of
self-respect or for reasons of domestic policy, to pro-
hibit or punish certain acts, a foreign Government
has a right to call us to account where we fail to do
so, because its own interests may be affected. There
is such a thing as damnum absque znfurid, and this
ay• be an example of it. Nor can we help endors-
ing Lord Russell's pertinent remark that no efficient
measures seem to have been taken by the United
States Government to capture the Alabama. In the
despatch which we have already quoted Mr. Seward
informed us that a naval force was being prepared
for this object with the utmost vigour, but we
have heard nothing more of it as Fut. The default
of the plaintiff himself' is often a good defence on an
action for negligence, and we are far from certain
that it might not be pleaded here. Still the fact
remains that in the opinion of the highest legal
authorities our laws have been shamelessly infringed,