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

The experience of over three yearsof war has demon-
strated that the chances of suecess 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 a❑ average of
the amount of liberty suitable equally to white
Ameriaan 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 in 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'hôte, now
forms the staple of discussion—fur 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 attentio❑ in our
Southern correspondence. It is not for us to pros
nounea on 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 9allic 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 are forced to choose betwee❑ Europe and
America, they might very well choose their own
hemisphere, provided the first word of every treaty
of a.liance 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. Bath 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 physic Illy
and morally stronger than ever was or could have
bee❑ the undivided Union, with its materialistic
tendencies, and its external strength neutralised by
an internal national balance of power.