The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-05 00:00:00

a considerable time. There are no more reports
about " forward movements " by the army of the
Potomac. Faithfal to the principle which it repre-
sents, and true to its traditions, that mighty hose
will for the present rest from its labours, satisfied
for some months to come with the laurels which it
ga-ned by its recent exploits. It certainly would
seem, though a fortnight had scarcsly elapsed since
the return of General Hooker to the north side of
the Rappahannock, that the circumstances attend-
ant on his recent disaster ha entirely passed from
the pubdc mind. The Grand Army of the North
is at present safe, and the public are content. There
was, indeed, sons e speculation on a possible change
of generals, but either Mr. Lincoln has got tired of
experimentalising in a vain search for a skilful or
successful general, or else he has exhausted the list
of his conimanding officers. It has been said that
although Hooker nominally conducted the late
operations in Virginia, they were in reality devised
by General Halleck, who is the acting Minister of
War at Washington. If this be so, it wouSd seem
that the Federal Government have not yet opened
their eyes to the folly of attempting to conduct a
campaign by means of an Aulic Council.
General Burnside failed, six months since, at
Frede-
ricksburg, it was said, and with some appearance
of truth, that he acted in compliance with the
pressure put upon him by his superiors, and con-
trary to his own convictions. However that may
have been, he was, immediately after his disastrous
defeat at Fredericksburg, displaced, and since then
has had no more arduous duties to fulfil than these
of trying civilians by courts-martial for expressing
their distrust in the policy of the most paternal of
Governments. It was rumoured that the " Young
Napoleon" was once more to be placed at the head
of the " Grand Army of the NOrth." It is not pro-
bable, however, that George M'Clellan will again
resume his command in Virginia. Nor, indeed, does
much depend upon the particular choice of the
Federal Government in respect to its generals at the
present crisis. The capture of Richmond has been
so frequently attempted, and invariably with such
ill success that we doubt much it the Confederate
capital will fall before the close of the present war.
Fs fate would not, however, in the slightest degree
affect the ultimate issue of the struggle. The faLl
of Washington would not compel the North to
acknowledge the independence of the South ; and still
less would the capture of Richmond convince the six
millions of the Southern population that their t fforts
to secure their political independense were altoge-
ther futile. It is not in Virginia, nor, for that mat-
ter, in any other State of the Con tederacy, that the
great contest is to be decided. If the American
Union is to be again re-established in its original
integrity, its supporters must not only subjugate
\rush:lie, but every other State which lies south of
the Potomac. They must not only overrun the entire
area of the Southern States, but they must reduce
their population to complete subjection. Whilst,
however, the people of the Northern States are thus
busily engaged in an attempt to trample upon the
independence of their quondam fellow-citizens in the
South, they appear to be entirely oblivious of the
jeopardy in which their own political privileges are
placed. It is strange, but it is nevertheless true, that
i
the great mijority of the population of
States live at the present moment under a regime
which would not be tolerated by the peopleof any State
in Europe. Liberty, in the sense in which that word
is understood at this side of the Atlantic, has ceased
to exist. Martial law has superseded civil jurisdic-
tion, and no one is exempt from liability to arraign
ment before a court composed of half-a-dozen sol-
diers, which can impose any penalty that to it
seems fit. The Government, though the weakest
and most contemptible the world has ever seen, is
all-powerful, and no one appears endowed either
with the spirit or the power td question its decrees.
In Cincinnati, the General of the District has car-
ried his point, and by the aid of an obsequious judge
has justified the deportation of an obnoxious though
unoffending citizen. To do them justice, the citi-
zens of New York have protested against the ille-
gality of this proceeding, but the Executive have
not found it necessary to yield to the protests af
the people. The political philosopher may well
doubt the efficiency of the checks imposed by what
is termed official responsibility, when he finds ?that
an elected magistrate, whose term ot office must ex-
pire in a very brief period, call with impunity pro-
ceed to such extravagant lengths. It is perfectly
conceivable that a nation might pardon much in 11
chief magistrate who, by his ability or his prowess,
gratified its ambition, or materially increased its
prosperity. But even the most ardent supporters
of the American Union admit that Mr. Lincoln and
his advisers are far below mediocrity. During the
miserable two years which came to a close a few
months since, neither he nor they have advanced
either the credit or glory of the nation ; nay, so far
from that, they have brought it into the greatest
disrepute. The American Republic never held so
low a position either at home or abroad as it does at
the present time. And to whom is the blame to be
attributed ? Is it to the people themselves or to
their chiefs ? Their can be no doubt that it is ex-
clusively to the latter. The people of the North
may have demanded what in Europe is regarded as
an impossibility, the subjugation of the South ; but
those who should have counselled and directed
them pandered to their passions, instead of en-
deavouring to restrain them. From the Cabinet at
Washington there has not at any time emanated a
single word of wholesome advice. We do not sup-
pose, and indeed it is not suggested that the Federal
Government commands the respect of the Northern
population ; it is therefore the more surprising
that it can enforce obedience to its preposterous
decrees.
TIMM—The spectacle presented by Paris at this
moment is one for which we should vainly seek a
political parallel in this country. For the like of
it we are driven out of statecraft into priestcraft, or
rather what should be priestcraft, and is not. Here
is a magnificent new church, or an an ancient fabric
restored, with every possible decoration and every
requisite for the old worship. Nothing can be more
complete and unexceptional than the sculptures end
paintings. The angels adore, the cherubs beam
with love, and the saints in the windows are most
holy. The seats are all adorned as cbureh Feats
should be. But where is the congregation ? They
have all gone off where there is little to please the
sense, but where the soul is free, and feels itself a
spiritual existence. The people are ail gone to those
who have the secret of their thoughts and their
affections. They have left the solemn pile w'.ere
matter is made so splendid and so significant, and
they find a home where every word revives a memory
and every tone thrills through the soul. The Em-
peror is just completing the second foundation of
Paris. He is finishing the great work of the Bour-
bons and their Italian Queens. He has washed
out of the map the old city and the old University,
and drawn miles upon miles of splendid Boulevards
through the vacant ground. He found Paris brick,
and he has left it better than marble; he found the
Seine a mudbank, and he has left it a sculptured
canal; he found the Bois de Boulogne a tangled
copse, and he has left it something between
Hyde-park and Richmond. But Paris and the
Parisians are not the same thing. The Parisians do
not even thank him for Paris. He bas given them
what they never asked for, and what they accept
with unthankful admiration. They asked for poli-
tical life, and he has given them sculptured images.
So when the time is come to receive a million
acknowledgments, his candidates received but
82,607 out of 235,250 votes given las; Sunday and
Monday, or little more than a third. This is the
old proverbial ingratiude ever rendered to benefac
tors—to the imperious obtruders of benefits con-
ceived after their own model. The saw and the
chisel have regenerated the city, but not touched
the people. They are what they were, and always
have been. They love their own likeness, and they
find it in anything that rebels against dictation.
They find it in everything that is proscribed and
free ; in the older Bourbon and the younger ; in
the Republican and the Communist ; in the eloquent
speaker and graceful writer; in anything that soul
can commune with. The benefits, the bribes, the
arguments, the menaces of the Empire can reach
but few ; and for every man who worships the
marble image in the city of Paris there are found
two others who turn their faces another way.
The Minister of the Interior was the man who
had undertaken to get up the free homage of a
grateful people. For several weeks he has been
drilling them, and teaching them to discriminate
with instinctive piety between the true father of
his country and the many counterfeits. " This
is not the man, nor yet this, nor yet this, that you
are to rush and fall down before and embrace."
No
stage manager laboured so hard to make a peasan-
try do its duty on the appearance of its lord and
master. But though the boards of the Theatre
Francais afford space for hundreds Paris and France
are wider still, and the inhabitants more numerous
and more unteechable. We cannot understand how
the
great functionaries who have now for 14 years
been in the closest contact with the people of Paris,
and employed in their conquest or their govern-
ment, should so completely have lost the true mea-
sure of the men they deal with. When commands
and menaces take the place of sound reason and
gentle persuasion it is commonly ascribed to the in-
perience or unfit education of those who make the
blunder. It is either some soldier bred in camps or
some scholar or philosopher, or a devotee from the
cloisters, or the heir of a seraglio. Such governors
expect to mould their subjects as they would the
plastic clay, for they can only give the word of
command, or dream, or play with toys. They have
not had to do with men, and know not how to ad-
dress them. But in this case, whatever the imperial
officers were 15 years ago they have had time to
learn and unlearn ; yet they have done nothing for
weeks past but ring an incessant alarum, with ever

increasing violence of language, against a few me;
whom it was their true policy to leave unnoticed,
described, wecommitted, and disunite d. These men
were not collectively Ore aniets, or Legitimists,
or
even an Opposition, in any whole sense of the word.
They have been driven, compelled, aggregated into
an Opposition by being made the objects of a com-
mon denunciation. They are now one party, in
self-defence, and by the instinct of this joint success,
When the Chamber meets there will at 1-ast be 30
me❑ who have entered in spite of the Emperor, who
have burst in through bolts and bars, through
crowd of satellites, and forced themselves into the
very presence of power. There will be 30 men
whose admission was announced to be the signal of
the last agony that precedes revolution. The
course pursued by the French Government has
ministered unwittingly to one of the best known
and most dangerous tastes of the Parisian public.
They like a conflict ; they want a distinct issue ;
they desire to see the sides called and sorted—
the one on the right, the other on the left. The
Minister of the Interior has opened the lists, and
marshalled the opposing and defending forces with
all the skill of old or modern knighthood. It
is seldom one can get a distinct issue upon any
question, for mankind do not of themselves readily
divide as one might wish them. It has taken near
a century to ripen the Northerners and ihe South-
erners into implacable foes and make their hatred
internecine. But one busy gentleman has managed
in a few weeks to blow a heap of stray materials
into one hot glowing mass, which will find, perhaps,
a better man than he to forge it. The word has gone
through all France, to every episcopal see, to every
frontier fortress, to every naval depot, to' every
seat of commerce that the Empire is in danger, an
that a few men, once let in, will open the gates to
a besieging army. There is the same struggle from
Calais to Marseilles, and the same result. France,
wearied with a monotony which is not interrupted.
by even a speech or a paragraph without the official
visa, desires to see politics once more a question.
Tnere is now a fair prospect of her being at liberty
to do right meritoriously or wrong if she prefers.
In this country we should not attach much import-
ance to the election of thirty free thinkers and free
talkers to an assembly of ten times their number;
but there are occasions in which a hundred meta flee
before ten, and this we are told on the best official
authority is one of them. M, Persigny forecasts
with certainty a conflict between the feeble many
and flee strong fey, and, if we are to judge from his
demeanour and tone, he expects another Thermo-
py m, in whica, howt-ver, the- defenders are the
many, and the invaders the few,

COUNTRY MARKETS•

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MANCHESTER—JUNE 4.
At our market this morning there was an average at-
tendance. with a very dull demand. For both English and
foreign wheat the rates of last week were commanded. In
flour no material change was observable. Oats and oat-
meal dull. Indian corn and beans slightly in favour of
buyers, but also dull.