The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-08 00:00:00

AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

(From the Time;' Correspondent.)
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, July 24.

The Americans are hardly out of the old war
when they are already anxious to be in with the
new. The Republican press is blowing its thousand
trumpets, and if the gauntlet were taken up as
readily as it is recklessly flung out we should have
the Old and New World by the ears before the win-
ter set in. " The war in the South," these fire-
breathing organs declare, "is substantially over.
They have 800,000 of the best troops in the world,
for whom they must provide congenial employ-
ment ; they have Generals for whose ambition they
must afford a legitimate field; they have internal
difficulties not easily to be settled by peaceful trans-
actions. To cut the knot of these domestic com-
plications, to weld the North with the South into a
unit, a foreign war is necessary, and none can be
more just and opportune than a war with England
and France, by which the former of these Powers
is to be driven out of Canada and the latter out of
Mexico ; and by which due chastisement would be
inflicted:for the meanness and duplicity evinced by
E urope throughout every phasic of the American
struggle. Were such a war declared at once there
would be no further occasion for a draught ; for to
whip the Western Powers of Earope from this con-
tinent the country would always supply more Volun-
teers than would be required."
This may be set down as the mere vap3uring of
crackbrained newspaper writers. A war with Eng-
land and France at the same time may seem too
hazardous a game even for the present rulers at
Washington, and their New York dogs would not
bark so loud if there were the least serious inten-
tion to bite. No man could believe, however, how
deeply the best of Americans consider themselves
aggrieved by the attitude taken by Europe, and
especially by England, with respect to their
unhappy civil quarrel. Not to be with them is
something worse than to be against them, and one
can hardly resist the conviction that active inter-
ference would have been treated with greater re-
spect than the strictest neutrality. The first words
that are invariably addressed to any stranger fresh
from the other side of the Atlantic are questions as
to the real views and intentions of England. Of
what a variety of offences is not John Bull guilty !
Has he not recognised the South de facto, even
while he affected to withhold his recognition de
jure? Does he not name the Federal's and the Con-
federates in the same breath, as if he were on the
same terms with both ? Does he not consider the
reconstitution of the Union an impracticable under-
taking, and was he not, even yesterday, speculating
on the possible results of Lee's invasion of Penn-
sylvania, and revolving in his mind how he should
deal with the rebels the moment they chanced to get
possession of the Capitol ? It was the wish that
was parent to the thought; Europe would not be
dreaming of defeat and disgrace to America if she
did not in her heart long for humiliation, and if
she were not bent on hastening and compassing her
ruin on the first opportunity,
There is no use of probing this sore wound of

Am. rican pride. The Union is to them—even to
the immense majority of the most moderate among
them--dearer than to the Frenchman his "legiti-
mate influence" over Europe, dearer than to the
Briton the long-insured inviolability of his soil. It
is their native element, out of which they die. Union
is with them nationality. 'They do not see that
their country stretches over no less than a quarter
of the globe; that their people are soon to outgrow
all European proportions, They do not consider
bow much there is of menace and peril to the peace
of mankind in the famous motto—
"No pent-up Utica confines our powers,
For the whole boundless continent is ours."

This aspiration to universal empire is no new pheno-
menon in the world's history. It was the dream of
many a brain, from Cm3ar to Charlemagne, from the
Othos to the Napoleons. The novelty consists in
seeing a whole people, a people aspiring to the boast
of a free people, possessedby such a chimerical am-
bition. The strangeness lies in the attempt to
ground the submission of all the human families on
the principle of universal suffrage—in bowing the
world, not to one man, but to a sovereign race.
Rome strove after the same result, it is true, but
she had lost her own freedom long before she con-
spired against that of mankind.
No doubt America has had, as yet, fair play. She
has been annexing States and invading territories,
she has built up a vast edifice, constructed a Fort of
Leviathan ship, which was to outspeed everything
afloat, safe against all maritime disasters, proof even
against those ills seafaring flesh is heir to. Yet half
a century's peace, and her millions would have
swelled to a hundred ; the New World would have
outgrown, outnumbered the old. With an unex-
hanged soil, untold wealth, boundless resources,
safe from foreign outrage, free from taxation, ex-
empt from military duty, without an army, a police
or a Government—what people would have been
like you, 0 Americans ? What Power could have
stood against yours; what limits could have been
set to your aspirations ; or what could have made
you abate one jot of your pretensions ? Had you
not laid your plans for the conquest of Cuba ; was
not Mexico within your clutches; and did you not
cast wistful glances on Port Mahon ?
Most assuredly America had fair play allowed to
her. With all her exploded notions of a timid, jea-
lous diplomacy, with all her grovelling, plodding
maxims about the balance of power, what could old
Europe attempt against America ? Why, she looked
at the gourd-like growth of this Transatlantic pro-
digy, awed and uneasy, yet silent and respectful.
America might be the object of much envy and ill-
will; but who dared to touch her?
But now this mighty American bubble has burst;
the dream of universal empire is dissolved; the
edifice is crumbling; the Colossus is proved to have
rested on a foot of clay. Can the Americans won-
der at the unspeakable relief of Europe ? Can they
b. e displeased at her sympathy, not with the rebels,
but with the rebellion, which has removed her
worst apprehensions—which, even if it do not end
in
the permanent dissolution of the Union, will
Cripple it for a time, and usher into it, at any rate,
those scourges of standing armies martial law,
heavy
tales) conscriptions, and all the'
other evils
ta -
which, like „„
could not ml e pestilential diseases, were thought
rvive along navigation across the
Atlantic ?

Europe, no doubt, is glad to see America brought
down to her own level. The feeling may be un-
generous, but it is irresistible. America, however,
smarts under the
consciousness of this jealous
European meanness, and, could she find an issue out
of her present predicament,
t, her first thought might
be, as the New York
be revenged on those journalswhop express it, a wish to
conceives gloat on
her calamities, even if they dac:
conspireno
be togi
v en aggra-
vateto them. No great weight should
the vain threats of these Republican
papers, cer-
tainly. America has, and will have forg many years,
her hands too full to be equal to contest
ontea with the
combined might of France and
England t ;
nor can
cir-
she flatter herself that she may, under present
cnmstances, enlist one of those nations
in her
inte-
rests against the other. Nor, on the other hand, is
the civil war so near its close as those sanguine
Republicans anticipate, and the south ina
more easily overrun than subdued. Indeed, be
if
there is any well-settled notion in America, it is
that the great complications for the North will only
commence when the South shall have definitively
succumbed in the field. But were even everything
to turn out agreeably to their hopes and wishes, it
seems hard to imagine that the men at present in
power could exercise so great an ascendancy as to
drag after them in so mad a scheme as a European
war the sane portion of the community.
That there is a sane part of the American commu-
nity no man has less reason to doubt than myself,
for most of the men I fall in with, especially in these
New England districts, belong to that moderate
Conservative set, whose " heart is not changed,
although fortune led them or their fathers or fore-
fathers to change sky and climate." With the best
class of Americans no anti-English feeling can at
any time strike very deep root. The tone of Euro-
pean opinion against their institutions and Govern-
ment greatly wounds them—wounds them all the
more deeply as most of those strictures are not
easily refuted. The affair of the Trent and the
warning off of American men-of-war from the ports

of the United Kingdom upon a 48 hours' notice have
roused considerable ill-feeling. The Americans find
it unnatural that John Bull should grudge :the
growth and prosperity of his Transatlantic brother;
but they would not pick a quarrel with the fine old
gentleman, nevertheless. I must say, for truth's
sake, I do not find seriously hostile fee ings against
England among any of the people I see and hear.
Only this class of well-thinking, respectable Ame-
ricans, strong and influential as they might be by
their position, are so far from having the upper-
hand at this crisis. The " politicians" and the
" shoddy" gentlemen are swaying the community.
America no longer obeys the " sense and worth"
of the country. Had the best men kept their
places they would never have been dragged into
this miserable civil war. Before the outbreak,
where bad the Southerners stancher friends, or
more ardent admirers, than among the worthiest
classes of New Englanders? The partiality of the
Well-to-do Yankee for those tall Mississippians or
strapping Carolinians amounted almost to idolatry.
Among the students of Havard University, at the
military or naval schools, the youngster from
Charleston or Savannah, as I can testify, was
looked upon as a superior being. Although rather..
an unclean animal, addicted to smoking,
and swearing, and given to the worst dissipation,
he was held up as a pattern of chivalry and gen-
tility, and his descent from the cavaliersoriwgians
favourably contrasted with the plebeian
of the grandsons of the sturdy
Puritans. Here
at Newport, at Nahant, at Saratoga,
in all the
busiest cities,
resorts of idleness, as in
Southern families moved inthethbeest circles, feted
and made much of, the very spoiled children
war
norf
American society. If there ways an impossible
in the world one would have said it was a civil war
between the Northern and Southern States. We
had heard the threat of it a hundred times ; and as
many times the fear of it a hundred times ; and as
many times the fear of it had been laid aside as
chimerical. Indeed, it may be safely said no such
war would ever have broken outso long as the &arse
and worth of the nation had a chance of being heard
in the council. But sense and worth shrink from
the turmoil of American politics. The best men
fall back, and make room for the worst. Under the
sway of such men the war with the South has be-
come a possibility, and, under favourable circum-
stances, a war with England and France might also
become a probable, however remote, contingency.
JULY 25.
I found Newport in sang and dance as I arrived
here the other day. The big hotel, Ocean-house,
was swarming with fair ladies dressed in the pink
of fashion, with all the colours of the wing of a
gaudy butterfly. Wealth and luxury reign su-
preme among those people. Yet the season is a
very dull one, up to this time of the year. The first
year after the outbreak of the war, in 1861, was
also marked by the same want of social enjoyment.
The Americans were at that time stunned by the
first blow of their calamity, and the affair of Bull
Run had laid the country in sackcloth and ashes.
They rallied in the following year, and Newport
last summer was more crowded and noisier than
eausl. The company was none or the best, how-
evt r. A set of new men came ap, contractors, smug-
glers, and other political blacklegs, men to whom
the ill wind of war has blown all sorts of good, and
who fattened on the common sufferings, like those
Monatti of the Milan pestilence described by Man-
zoni, who had the care of the dead, and en richedthem-
selves with the spoils of the dying. This year these
ghouls have not made there appearance, and the best
class ofcitizens, who have found for them the new ap-
pellation of " shoddy" gents, are delighted at their
riddance of such company. Lee's invasion of
Pennsylvania, and the riots at New York, are, na-
turally enough, keeping a great many of the holi
day folk from their darling haunts. For my own
part I should be glad to hear that the Americans
are in no humour for amusement, but people assure
me that I only come too early, and that Newport
will be quite full in August and September. There
is good reason, indeed, why such places should be
sad and desolate. Throughout New England you
scarcely enter a door without being aware that you
are in the house of mourning. Whatever Fart the
Irish, German, and other hirelings may have borne
in this war, I must bear witness that the best classes
of Americans have bravely come forth for their
country. I know of scarcely a family more than
one member of which has not been or is not in the
ranks of the army. The youths maimed and crip-
pled I meet on the high road certainly do not for
the most part belong to the immigrant rabble of
which the Northern regiments are said to consist ;
and even the present conscription is now in many
splendid instances most promptly and cheerfully
complied with by the wealth people, who could
easily purchase exemption, but who prefer to set a
good example by the sacrifice of themselves. This
justice, I think, I owe to the Americans.