The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-27 00:00:00

to be passionate, and loses in this respect some of
the power which he might otherwise wield over
a miscellaneous multitude, he makes amends for
the defect, if it be one, by a wealth of illustration

and a cogency of argument• that show the full mind
and the trained intellect, and compel admiration if

they do not conviction. He has, ©s is well
known, been among the most rabid of the supporters
of the war, though ho has never been much of a

friend to the Government by whose agencies it has
been conducted. In the days when the Democrats
governed the country, and when the idea of a dis-
ruption of the Union was scouted alike by the

Northern and the Southern leaders of that long

dominant party, he did not hesitate to proclaim
that separation was preferable to the continuance of
slavery. Long after the outbreak of the war he
confessed that for 19 years he had been a dis.
Unionist and a Secessionist. His sole governing
idea has been the scandal, the wrong, the horror,

the iniquity of slavery, for the destruction of which
be would cheerfully have sacrificed the integrity of
the Republic, and consented to split the country
into a heptarchy. Yet as soon as his party came
into power he—so cool, so steadfast, and so liberal
—was carried away by the madness of his country.
men, clamoured for the restoration of the Union,

which ha nad denounced and despised as rotten and

unnatural, and spoke and acted as if the preserva-
tion of the freedom of the North were not worth a

thought. Events, however, have wrought a change
in hie mind. The preacher of war has suddenly be-
come the apostle of peace. The philanthropy in
which he was nurtured has reasserted its power to

govern his conscience. He has gone back to his first
loves ; he has remembered, it will not do to say he
has discovered, that the liberty of the white man is
worth something, not only to the white man him-
self, but to the cause of civilisation. He has re-
nounced his errors, and has become as nearly
a statesman as Festus was a Christian. In a

speech delivered on Tuesday last at the Church of
the Puritans, on occasion of the 31st anniversary of
the American Anti-Slavery Society, he avowed opi-
nions which place him in the same rank with Mr.
Vallandigham, Mr. Fernando Wood, Mr. Benjamin
Wood, Mr. Long, and Mr. Harris, and every other

man in the country who believes that the war can
neither restore the Union nor preserve liberty, and
in full sympathy with the impartial public opinion
of England and France, and of all Europe, which
saw from the first what he only sees in this day of
awful conflict. He mournfully confessed that the
youngest American would not live to see a resto-
ration of the republic of his forefathers ; that if
peace came, of which he saw no prospect, whatever
Grant might do, 800,000 men would be thrown upon
the community unfitted for the ordinary occupations
of life, and therefore a standing menace and danger
to the public liberty ; that for halt a century no one
but a soldier would have a chance of the Presidency ;
that the right arm of every man in the country, and
of every male child that was hereafter to be born
into it, was and would be mortgaged to pay the in-
terest on the debt. Ho admitted that no such des-
potism as must exist in America, if the war shoule
continue, existed on this side the Wall of China;
that it he were a negro and a slave he would pray
that the war might last for 20 years—for the war
would benefit the black race, and would ultimately
raise it to the social and political level of the white;
but that as an American white citizen he deprecated
even a month's continuance of war, because he saw
in it the seeds of debt, midtary ambition, and des
potism, ag Ainst the progress of which God demanded
a virtue and intelligence iu the mseses Whin did not
exist in America,and which never existed any where
else if history were true. " You can never," he said,
in the peroration of a speech abounding in similar
confessions," restore the Union by force. This war has
built up a unanimous Confedere.e sentiment. . •
If the rebellion reel in Virginia, it wit:: by no means
be broken if it qui-s the 0 d Dominion. • • '
The sections have learnt to respect each other. '
. We know the South now, its willingness
to die for its ideas, its readiness for every seed:ice,
and its indomitab.e pride." But Mr. Phillips did
not admit that the North was ready to made'similar
sacrifices for its idets; on the contrary, he con-
fessed his shame and humiliation at the thought
that 20,000,000 of white people in the North had
gone down on their knees and implored the assist-
and of black men and slaves for the work of con-
quering half the number of white men in the South.
It might be thought that Mr. Phillips, entertaining
such sentiments as these, is ready to do now what
Messrs. Lincoln, Seward, Greeley, Everett, and
others were ready to do in 1860,—let the South de-
part without further hindrance, recognise its inde-
pendence, and advise its countrymen to do the same.
But no word to that effect is to be found in his re-
markable speech. He compared North end South
to an eagle and a fish chained to each other. The
eagle could not live in the water, nor the fish in the
air ; and one of the two had to die, in order that the
other might live. But why, it might be asked,
should either die ? Cannot each return to its own
element by the severance of the chain that connects
them ? Mr. Phillips meant as much, but seems to
have lacked the courage to say so. But having
gone 83 far, he will some day or other be
obliged to go further. It is well that he should
feel shame and humiliation. It will be better
that he feel repentance. He, the inciter of men's
passions he, the trumpeter of discord ; he, the
preacher of a philanthropy of which the means
are blood and misery and a carnage of horror to
which history offers few parallels, though the end,
fir off, may once have seemed to his mind to justify
them all, owes it not only to his own conscience,
but to the multitudes of men whom his teachings
have goaded into war, to declare his error, and to
lend his fluent tongue end his clear brain to that
blessed cause of Peace whieii in this evil hour
needs every voice to pray for it; and, most of all,
the voices of those to whom Gad has given the
power to sway the convictions of others. Mr
Phillips may affect to think even now that L. were
better that the whole Southern people should be
exterminated than that slavery should not be de-
stroyed or the Union not re-established; but such
merciless logic cannot really govern his conduct, if
sanity be left to him. His speech was for peace, as
far as it went ; and, coming from a man of his
character, it was a sign of the times. Reason has
long been silent in the councils of the North.
It is of good augury that its voice beg;us to be
beard above the din even of this awful week, and
that the men of thought are learning to take coun-
sel of their consciences instead of their passions,
and daring once again to tell the people unpalatable
ruths.

MAY 14.

Postcript.—Again there is a cry of " victory,"
louder and more persistent than ever. The battle
of Thursday—brought on by the brilliant action of
General Hancock—lasted the whole of the day,
and was accompanied by as frightful a slaughter
as that of Tuesday. The result appears to be that
General Lee abandoned his strong position at
Spottsylvania, crossed the Po, and retired on Friday
morning towards a still stronger position on the
North Anna, with Grant relentlessly following in
his rear. Some of the papers which ought to know
better, speak of this as " a magnificent and decisive
victory ;" say that " the rebel army has been tho-
roughly vanquished ;" that " as en effective force it
has practically ceased to exist," and that " the love
of the nation to General Grant for this splendid
" achievement will be fervent and unmeasured."
Bat General Grant and the Secretary of War are
more moderate in their estimate, end Grant merely
says, in recounting the gains of his eighth day of
battle, that the " enemy is obstinate" and " seems
to have found his last ditch." This was before Lee's
withdrawal to the North Anna, and by this time
his opinion of the " obstinacy" may be confirmed,
and that of the " location" of the "last ditch" con-
siderably modified. All these " victories" grow
smeller when the details are published. Even
General Grant's assertion that he captured 30 pieces
of tannery, in addition to two general officers and
between 3,000 and 4,000 men, appears to have been
founded on a misconception. A despatch frum the
field dated a day later than his official report to the
Secretary of 'War, says, "Last night our men again
attempted to bring in the captured guns. Ihe
enemy resisted dreadfully, and a fight. enseed,
which resulted in some of the guns retnaming on
,e.• ground." Thus it sppAre that a p.ortion.ct teat
haws 13.4v(J not, been captured, whllo ii l& P°s6lule