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 arready 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, ust 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 whicli duo chf:btiAment would be
inflicted for the meanness and duplicity evinced by
Europe throughout every phasic of the American
struggle. Were such a war declared at once there
would be no further occasion fora draught ; for to
whip the Western Powers of Europe from Ude con-
tinent the country would always supply more Volun-
teers than would be required."
This may be set down as the mere vapouring 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
Washingtm, 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 hest 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
' • ure? Does he not name the Federals 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, evenyesterday, 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
American 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
Es 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
how 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 Caesar 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-
hausted 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
be 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 taxes, conscriptions and all the other evils
Which, like some pestilential diseases, were thought
ACutuatnicot survive a lug navigation across the
doubt, is glad to see America brought
dowrtelle'larl:r
generous, bta
it
twn level. The feeling may be un-
smar‘is irresistible. America, however,
.3 tinder, the consciousness of this jealous
European IneEtut
of her Present peel!' and, could she find an issue out
icame
be, as the Neaoccr
ne her first thought might
be revenged jeure ate
enexprees it, a wish to
those who,she conceives gloat on
her calamities, even f
they do i
vats them. No no cons pre to aggra-
Peat weight should be given to
the vain threats of theswill have for many years,
tainly. America has, aned Republican papers,
her hands hands too full to be swill
to
combined might of prance
and a contest with the
12, under present eir-
she flatter herself that she m England; nor can
cnmstances, enlist one of those-
rests against the other.
its
—or, on i°4B
in
her inte-
the civil war so near its close the other hand, is
" those
Republicans anticipate, and the South vine
_
more easily overrun than subdued. ay be
Indeed, if
there is any well-settled notion in America, it
that the great complications for the North will —
only
commence when the South shall have definitively
succumbed in the field. But were even everythingve
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,
in ially
w, esec in these
for most of the men I fall
• belowith, top that moderate
New England districts,
Conservative set, whose " heart is not changed,
although fortune led them cr their fathers or •
to
fore-
fathers to change sky and clun2 ." 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