The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SAIMIDAY REVIEW.—The people of England
have spoken, and Exeter Hall, to use Macaulay's
expression, has brayed. That bray is a curious thing
to witness. The long, dry seesaw of its monotonous
howl is an English institution. There is something
impressive, and in its way striking, in a thorough,
honest, earnest shout of defiant fanaticism and
ignorance. A strong solidity and stolidity of one-
sidedness—a resolute, vigorous, and firm determina-
tion to see only one aspect of a question—a fixed
and thorough grasp of only a single fact, and a de-
termination to pursue it to all consequences—is the

characteristic of a popular fanatical sentiment.
There can be no question that slavery is, as it ought
to be, an unpopular thing. It is so easy and so true

to lay down that man has no right to breed men
for the purposes of sale, that to separate husband
and wife is treason to humanity, and that " to flog

women is wrong, be they Hungarian coun-
tesses or African slaves," that it is no wonder that
a speaker who confines himself to such safe plati-
tudes will always get three or four thousand people,
either in London or Bradford, to cheer him. In
reasoning powers and in political wisdom the masses,
as they are called, are of course but slenderly pro-
vided. And when they are told that all this is what
the south is fighting for, and what the North is
fighting against, nobody will be, or perhaps ought
to be, surprised on which side their sympathies lie.
Those who teach them and speechify to them are not
much to blame, for the prophets are little wiser,

and many of them less sincere, than their hearers.
But it might, perhaps, have occurred to some of the
good simpletons who crowded Exeter Hall on Thurs-
day evening that there must be a fallacy somewhere.
With all their sympathy it must have startled them

not so much to listen to those who instructed them,
as to remember those who did not talk to them. The
men who were conspicuous by their absence must
have been in the thoughts of the enthusiastic audi-
ence. How comes it that it is not as in the days of
Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton, and Brougham ? The
slavery question is now what it was ten, twenty,
thirty, forty years ago. The slave trade is in the
abstract neither better nor worse now than then.
The lineal representatives of the great warrior of
old survive ; one of them at least is himself alive,
and has lost neither tongue nor energy. Why did
they not yield at will, as of old, that fierce democracy
which used to echo the great doctrine of the equality
of race and the nullity of colour in the sight of God
and man, of nature and grace ? There must be some
reason for this; and it is not to be found in the easy
explanation of penny papers, that generous fathers
produce degenerate sons, that the Times is written
by inconsistent renegades, and that the proud oli-
garchs who rule this country are the natural enemies
of human freedom. Settled national convictions do
not travel backwards on the dial of history; and the
men who, when swaying the destinies of this
country, threw away twenty millions for the eman-
cipation of British slaves, were at least as much
tinctured by feudal traditions as the thought and
intelligence of the present day. The question which,
when the enthusiasm and the riot of such a meet-
ing have subsided, must confront whatever reflec-
tion it included, is this—How comes it that an anti-
slavery meeting forty or fifty years ago would have
included so much that was noble and high princi-
pled in English life, and that on Thursday night it
only presented itself in the shrivelled and attenu-
ated form of two dissenting preachers, a novelist,
one M.P., Mr. Holyoake, and the Chamberlain of
London ? It is very comfortable for the obscure to
glory in their obscurity, and to console themselves
that not many wise, not many learned, at a greater
crisis of humanity accepted higher truths than even
these. Surely there must have been some present
to whom the contrast may have suggested a
deeper scrutiny into facts. The avowed object of
this meeting was to deal with a pressing danger.
Because it was notorious that English sympathy,
as expressed by the educated classes, is rather in
favour of the South, the meeting was convened to
show that the great popular feeling was in favour of
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation,and
therefore, in favour of ithe North. Here is a curious
complication of fallacies. Our feeling is not in
favour of the South because the South is based (if
it is based) on the corner-stone of slavery ; but we
lean to the South, so far as we do lean to the South,
because the North seeks to subjugate the South by
fire and blood, by terrorism and a servile war. Of
course, the details of Thursday night's meeting were
grotesque enough, and suggested to the thoughtful
mind Bishop Butler's melancholy mediation whe-
ther whole nations—in this case it was the nation
in its Tooley-street manifestation—might not go
mad. The spectacle of a perfectly irrational fana-
ticism is saddening ; for the howlings of the Eman-
cipation Society do not rise into the reasoning vice
of hypocrisy. At the preliminary little-go which
was held at the Whittington Club, the Society sum-
marily set down a pool Mr. Alexander, who whim-
pered his honest regrets that Mr. Lincoln's charity
had not begun at home, by emancipating the slaves
in the Federal States. And on Thursday night the
fanatics had it all their own way. They came to
have their own prejudices roundly endorsed and
firmly stated, and they would listen to nothing else.
The chairman, one Mr. Evans—a not very lively
person—they conjured very early in the meeting to
" shut up ;" and when a fervid and injudicious
speaker offered an amendment, they shouted,
and roared, and screamed, and " turned him
out," after the manner of the English deliberative
assembly, and called lustily, and with a bold defi-
ance of the aspirate, for " Newman 'All." And
they endured good prosy Mr. Baptist Noel, told
tolerated and even cheered " Tom Brown's" flax of
quotations, which were rather tedious than novel;
and " Newman 'All" won the honours of the even-
ing, and pitched it strong into the Times, and,
as we thought, plagiarised a good deal from
the -Morning Sear, and charged vigorously
a certain article called " The Carnival of Cant,"
and exhibited—as a popular Dissenting teacher
was likely to do—much fluency, with a very fair
command of the English adjectives in their super-
lative form. And certain inconvenient hints about
Butler and M'Neil were groaned and bellowed and
hooted down ; and the solitary M.P. made a solemn
and priggish oration, which fell very flat ; and there
was one darkey, to carry out the good old man-and-
brother tradition, and he was judiciously placed in
a forward row in the pit ; and there was an immense
multitude—so vast that it overflowed Exeter Hall
itself, and filled one of the cellars—and a frightful
noise and intense heat; and a telegram was sent
from the Bradford meeting to the Exeter Hall meet-
ing, and it vi as read with vehement cheering—only
there was nothing in it. And so the British nation
has pronounced—at least, Mr. Baptist Noel, and
Mr. Newman Hall, and Mr. Taylor, M.P., and Mr.
Hughes have pronounced—and, in the eyes of
Exeter Hall, it is all the same thing. One warning
we must venture to give to Mr. Lincoln and his
friends. If they imagine that this sort of trash, and
all the volubility of Exeter Hall, and all its vast
cheering, howling horde of men, women, and Dis-
senting preachers, is the expression of English sen-
timent, they will commit the very same blunder
whica Russia made in mistaking the Peace Society
and the Manchester clique for the English people.
SPECTATOR.—In October, 1854, Mr. Delane, then
in correspondence with Sir Charles Napier, and
sharing with Government an impression that Sebas-
topol had surrendered, wrote to Sir Charles Napier,
then in command in the Baltic, a letter of strong
remonstrance. Nobody contends that the letter, so
far as it represented public opinion—and it pro-
fessed to do nothing more—was not strictly true.
Englishmen were for the time excessively discon-
tented with Sir Charles Napier, whose previous
achievements had ltd them to expect that his
errors, if he committed any, would be all on the
side of dash. That discontent might be, and
we believe was, somewhat unjust. The navy was
at the moment but little better organised

than the army. Sir Charles Napier took his fleet
to sea, unavoidably manned with crews who wanted
twelve months' sharp discipline to make them fit
for work, fettered, as he thought, by secret orders

from Sir James Graham, and profoundly impressed

with the peril to which the loss of his fleet in the

Baltic might expose the coasts of Great Britain.
But the discontent was felt by the public, who, like

all publics, thirsted for :action ; and even by
politicians, who thought that in wars waged by free
States heavy risks were far less dangerous than an

inaction which chilled the public mind. Nobody,

moreover, affirms that Mr. Delane rushed into the

correspondence simply to instruct or to menace the
Admiral ; he wrote only in answer to two letters
previously addressed to him by Sir Charles Napier,
an officer who, like every Napier that ever lived,
from the man who invented logarithms to the man
who, by rushing on an army of 30,000 men with

less than 600, turned Tantia Tepee, and saved the
Bombay Presidency, knew how to do great deeds,
but liked that his deeds should be widely known.
What Mr. Delane did, therefore, was simply this.
Feeling that the popular judgment, whether well
or ill informed, had condemned the Admiral, al td

hearing much of the criticism Government always
pass on men who make them wait, feeling also that.
the Times, in the exercise of its habitual function

as looking-glass to society, would be compelled to
reflect that opinion, he warned the Admiral frankly
of the approaching storm. So far from being in
the wrong, any other course would have exposed
him to the imputation of sneaking. We ask any

editor in Europe whether, if compelled, or about to
be compelled, to attack a political acquaintance, he
would not deem it honourable to give the assailed
fair warning ? Had Mr. Delane shirked the sub-
ject, or written common-place compliments, he

would have been accused, not unjustly, of soothing

as an individual the very man whom as an editor he
was about to betray. The language of the letter is,
doubtless, too peremptory; but its peremptoriness,
one sentence excepted, is simply that of the leading-
article writer, who cannot by mental habit use
feeble or slipshod expressions, of the publicist who
cares for England a great deal more than for his
own reputation for suavity. With all deference
for club critics, Mr. Delane does not dictate the
Admiral's course. He simply affirms that action
of some kind against some place in the Baltic is
expected by the people of England, and no more
attempts to suggest time or mode than to instruct
an engineer when to fire a blasting-train. He only
intimates the work wanted—a function which
strictly belonged to the people of England, and to
any one endeavouring to express their inarticulate
thought. One sentence, about an old woman's
difficulties, ought to have been spared ; but it does
not affect the principle, which is simply that it is
an editor's business, so far as he conscientiously
can, to express to all servants of the State, be their
rank what it may, the thought of those upon whose
shoulders that State is built, and for whose behoof
it exists. Any other course, any attention on State
questions to claims of rank, or character, or friend-
ship, is simply on the part of the publicist, as on
the part of the Minister, a failure in an admitted
duty. He may differ from the public, and ought in
that case to express his own judgment ; but fear,
favour, or affection should be as foreign to him as
to a judge on the bench. Nobody reaches that
standard? Very likely not, but let us at least keep
the ideal before us, and not give up together the
object and the hope of obtaining it. One-half of
the fuss raised about this letter proceeds from this
feeling, common though not avowed in clubs and
drawing-rooms ; " an editor censures an admiral—
what impudence !" So deeply has the dry rot
eaten into society, that there is scarcely an ensign
spitting over a bridge in country quarters, but
deems himself socially the superior of any editor,
though the latter may be guiding half the world.
Indeed, by Heralds' law, he is so, unless the gentle-,
man who smiles at his assumption happens, as
usual in England, to have some other profession.
Imagine Frenchmen, when they were free, thinking
M. Thiers audacious for warning Jurien de la Gra-
viere that France expected him not to let his fleet
lie idle ! The mere idea answers itself, for in
France the publicist, if not the rival, is still in
times of freedom the social equal of the statesman
whom he so often informs. England has not yet
arrived at that point, nor do we care that she
should ; but the claim of " the services" to escape,
because they are services, the criticism to which
statesmen subject themselves with approval, is one
which, if conceded, would end the function of a
free press.
LONDON REVIEW.—Mr. Kinglake (in his " In-
vasion of the Crimea") has discovered, or fancies
that he has discovered, that Marshal St. Arnaud,
at some early period of his life, went by the name
of Le Roy; that M. de Persigny, whose father's
name was Fialin, bears his mother's name; and
that M. de Maupas has no right to prefix to his
name the aristocratic particle by which it is pre-
ceded. Not content with stating these utterly
irrelevant facts—if facts they be—in the most
offensive manner, Mr. Kinglake has pursued his
enemies with them through hi whole narrative.
Again, and again, and again— twice, thrice, in the
same page—do we see those unhappy " brethren
of the Elysee" pelted with the fact that they have
assumed other names than those to which they
were born. It is right to add, however, that Mr.
Kinglake does not pretend that they have thus
changed their names from any disgraceful motives ;
indeed, on one occasion he admits that they pro-
bably did so for the sake of mere euphony—
exactly as very respectable British peers have been
known to transmute Smith into Vernon and Caring-
ton. Mr. Kinglake ought to have reflected
that if the French were minded to pay us
back in the base coin which he has used in
his dealings with them, they might easily do
so, and that it would not need a very micro-
scopic investigation to show that in the English
army also there are a few distinguished men who,
from no disreputable reasons, have preferred their
mother's to their father's names—that there are ille-
gitimate children, bearing fancy names, who are
nevertheless men of conduct, courage, and sensitive
feelings, who would all be sorely pained at having
these facts, unimportant to everybody but them-
selves, maliciously paraded by a French Mr. King-
lake in the face of the world. The other matter to
which we have to allude is more important. We
lament to say that Mr. Kinglake appears to take a
strange delight in affixing on those he seeks to dis-
parage, thewithering imputation of cowardice. This
he does more often inferentially—but in one very
signal instance, by direct assertion. If a French aide-
de-camp brings Lord Raglan a message, he describes
the lad as canfused and breathless, observing,
significantly, that his agitation may or may not
have been caused by the rapidity of his movements
and the steepness of the hill which he had just sur-
mounted on foot ; if a French general is not exactly
where Mr. Kinglake thinks he ought to have been,
it is insinuated that, his heart not being in
the right place, it is not surprising that his corps
should have been in the wrong one. But in speak-
ing of Louis Napoleon Mr. Kinglake uses no cir-
cumlocution. he distinctly says that, in circum-
stances of personal danger, the Emperor invariably
becomes a helpless coward. At Strasburg, he sneers
at him for not having used the sword he had by his
side when he, a single man, found himself surrounded
by a regiment of hostile French soldiers,whom he had
been deluded into supposing eager to espouse his cause;
at Boulogne he sneers at him because he did unhappily
use the pistol he carried in his hand with fatal effect.
On these occasions Mr. Kinglake compares the Em-
peror's outward appearance to that "a weaver."
Now, we have no doubt that, both at Strasburg and
at Boulogne, Louis Napoleon cut as pitiful a figure as
baffled conspirators generally do cut in presence of
their victorious opponents, but we deny that Mr.
Kinglake has produced the slightest proof of his
want of personal courage beyond his own unsup-
ported assertion. And we protest most earnestly
against the feminine malignity of his remarks on the
Emperor's personal appearance. What would Mr.
Kinglake himself think; what would any gentleman
of sense think of a French writer, who, even in reply
to the work of which we are now speaking, should
condescend to remind its author of the ludicrous cir-
cumstances under which " the staff officer" represents
the future historian of the war as having intrr-
duced himself to the notice of Lord Raglan on the