The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-01 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

THEATRE-ROYAL, HAY MARKET.
Lessee. Mr. J. R. Rnckstone.
THIS EVENING, at Seven o'clock, will be performed
OUR AMERICAN COUSIN. Asa Trenchard, Mr. Buck-
atone ; Lord Dundreary, Mr. Sothern.
After which, a new and original Extravaganza, entitled
RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA ; or, The Happy
:Valley. Rasselas, Miss Louise Keeley.
Followed by A DAY AFTER THE WEDDING. Mr.
W. Farren, Mr. Rogers, and Miss Harfienr.

THEATRE-ROYAL, LYCEUM, Will OPEN,
under the Sole Management of Mr. FECHTER, on
SATURDAY, 10th January, 180, with a New Romantic
Drama, entitled THE DUKE'S MOTTO, in which the prin-
cipal character will be sustained by Mr. Fechter, supported
by Messrs. G. Vining, J. Brougham, H. Widdicombe,
tyre, F. Charles, Garden, Raymond, H. Butler, Dawson ;
Iffsges Carlotta Leclereq, Kate Terry, E. Lavenne, and Els-
worthy. Box-office open This Day, Ist January, from 11
till 5.

NEW THRATRE-R0 VAL, ADELPHI.-
Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. B. Webster.
r"TIIIS EVENING, MARGERY PAW.
After which, A TICKET OF LEAVE : Messrs. J.L.Toole,
P. Bedford, and Mrs. Billington.
• To conclude with (Gth time)"GEORGE DE BARNWELL
w tgar,
or, Harlequin Folly in the Realms of FancyL". Tlllolosioseinrrt
ISliss K. Kelly, Miss Seaman ; Messrs. J.
lord, Stephenson, C. .J. Smith. Harlequin, Mr. midyard
Columbine, Miss Caroline Adams ; Clown, lifr- W.
l'antaloon, Mr. J. Paulo. The celebrated Arthur and
-Bertrand.

Commence at 7.

ROYAL pRINcESS'S THEATRE.
Lessee and Manner, Mr Undue.
'THIS EVENING, TIME TRIES ALL: Mr. H. Vezin
VA Miss Constance Aylmer.
After which, the New Grand CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME,
" RIQUET WITH THEor, Harlequin and Mother
Shipton." Mr. G. lielmore, Mr. C. Seyton, Misses Gray and
ndspeth, Mr. Milano, Mr. R. Power, Miss A. Collinson, and
311 r. laalford.
4

The WEATHER,.--Sun Office, Jan. 1, 1863.

THERMOMETER.
Highest since Noon yesterday.
Lowest during the night
This day at Noon .
Barometer-29.89.

Wind—S.W.; blowing a gale, with dirty weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tste DAT.—Morning, 11h. 35m.—Afternoon, h. —m
To-moßlio w.-Morning, 12h. 7m.—Afternoon, 12h. 36m
_AI

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1863,

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE opens
before us propitiously. Even the Revenue Tables,
when we come to :ook into them, appear to be, on
the whole, highly satisfactory. Notwithstanding
the gloom, and doubt, and stagnation incidental
to the year that has just now passed away, the
Balance Sheet of the Nation for that year tells a
welcome tale to us all in many particulars. If it is
borne in mind how many millions sterling have
had to be docked from the wealth of this industrial
country during 1862, in artisan's wages and in the
manufactured products of their skill—ordinarily
exercised harmoniously with the agencies of ma-
chinery—it is something surprising to find that in
spite of all this glaring deficiency, in spite of this
wide-spread and long-sustained interruption of one
of our most important trades, the net increase upon
1862 (the Year of the Cotton Famine) exceeds by
two round millions and very nearly a half million
into the bargain, the net increase of its immediate
predecessor ! Sixty-One, in that one particular,
was good, but Sixty-Two proves to be better—the
net increase upon the latter, as compared with the
net increase upon the former, amounting precisely
to £2,392,578. In other words, it should be said
that, whereas the gross produce of the revenue
reached upon the New Year's-eve of 1861 the sum
of £68,603,851, it attained yesterday a total of no
less than £70,996,429. This, notwithstanding a
dropping down in the Excise returns from
£18,161,000 (as it was at the close of 1861 on the
31st day of December) to (what it proved to be yes-
terday) £17,534,000. Otherwise, a falling-of in
the duties—by reason of a diminution in the con-
sumption of spirits—to the amount of exactly
£626,000. It is in the Excise Department
alone, however, that the Returns exhibit any
appreciable diminution whatever. In all the other
departments is a slight noticeable increase—that is
to say, in Customs, stamps, Taxes, Property Tax,
Post-office, Crown Lands, and Miscellaneous. In
each and all of these there is moderate but appre-
ciable improvement. The Post-office increase we
take now as really and truly a matter of course.
It is in one sense inevitable. As it lives, so by ne-
cessity it grows. What it will come to eventually
—who shall say ? To conjecture any limit might
belie even, we should conceive, the imagination of
Sir RoWLAND HILL. This last twelvemonth, but
just now dead and gone, has given a ripe plum to
the great letter-carrying institution of St. Martin's-
le-Grand, in addition to its revenue of the year
preceding. At the termination of 1861 the Post-
office returns amounted to exactly £3,500,000.
Yesterday they turned out to be precisely
£lOO,OOO more, or to a nicety £3,600,000. The
Customs again—notwithstanding all the draw-
backs of 1862 in regard both to the extent of
our imports and of our exports—has declined be-
tween the last two New Year's Days from an aggre-
gate of £23,774,000, as those returns were at the
end of 1861, to £24,036,000, as they were yester-
day. Again, the Stamps show a rise of a little
Over 1:300,000—having yielded £8,488,170 the year
before last, and during this year £8,913,945. The
Taxes (so called by an odd particularity as if none
of the other returns upon the tables came under
the head of that unwelcome noun " of multitude,
signifying many I") The Taxes par excellence are,
as nearly as could reasonably have been looked for,
equipoised at the end of the last two Decembers—
£3,119,000 in 1861
Notwithstanding
in 1862; or £29,000
to the good!
the Property-tax will be e the drop of a penny, E
to have expanded
in its productiveness from 9,962nn O
---,or close upon
£10,000,000 sterling, to £11,104,000. Even the
Crown Lands show a slight advance in these re-
turus—namely, from having been 1223,479 in Max
becoming this last year £208,521. Finally, there)
is noticeable under the head of Miscellaneous an
expansion from £1,306,202 to £2,361,962. Every-
thing considered by no means an unsatisfactory
Balance-Sheet for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to lay before the nation just after Christmas. Only—
that the bloom is taken off the ripe plumspoured forth
so abundantly from the seven cornucopias—by the
circumstance of their king littered amongst a yet
more affluent outpouring of Bills perpetually re-
quiring payment. If only the returns for the year
—extending as they do to £7o,ooo,ooo—were not
counterbalanced so very heavily by an equivalent
in the shape of our annual national expenditure!
A different tale, however, will have to be told
now upon that head by the right hon. gentleman
the Chancellor of Her
Majesty's Exchequer. A
new leaf is about to be turned over at the
Treasury. That ererybody knot" already to have
been resolved upon by her Majesty's
Ministers. It
is their only chance indeed of rema •
'lung in office.
There it is that the screw has been put on effec..
tually—namely, in regard to their selfish fears,te
to the possibility of being summarily dismissed
from office by a combination between the powerful
Conservative Opposition and the chiefs of the in-

dependent section of the Liberals below the
gangway. As broad a hint as ever pro-
bably was vouchsafed by a Tribune of the People to
the administrative holders of power was the one
given to Lord PALMERSTON and his colleagues by
Mr. COBDEN immediately prior to the close of last
session. Already it has told. It has brought con-
viction home to the minds of statesmen always I
exquisitely sensitive, we may even with a more or
less invidious stress upon the phrase add, constitu-
tionally sensitive, of the advantages accruing to them
from the tenure of place, with its prerogatives of
power and patronage. Her MAJESTT'S Ministers
are prepared, upon mature consideration, to mode-
rate their previously expressed views in regard
to the requirements of the Government in the way
of expenditure. They
will, however tardily or
reluctantlj, it matters little—they will—to a cer-
tain extent—economise. As a commencement,
perhaps that is enough. The member for
Rochdale may congratulate himself upon
how adroitly he thrust in the small end
of the wedge. It rests with himself, and with
others thinking and sympathising with him, to
drive it later on fairly home. A comprehensive
change for the better in the way of economy can
only be brought about by degrees. Ce West que le
premier pas qui coute. And that pretty " pass,"
as we are fain for the nonce to spell it, our own
veteran Premier is in a fair way of being brought
to, at length, by the exigency of circumstances.
Financially, therefore, in a twofold sense, retro-
spectively viewed in regard to the returns, and
anticipatorily viewed in regard to the probable re-
duction of the expenditure, the new year begins, as
we have said propitiously.

The " North American" has brought us some
further particulars of the recent Federal catas-
trophe at Fredericksburg, and its consequences.
Notwithstanding the statements of La France, the
news just arrived indicates no lack of determina-
tion to continue the war. On the Confederate side
this is natural, and we are not surprised to read of
fresh aggressive movements on their part ; and,
apparently, of a determination to extend the area
of attack to the West and the Mississippi. But
the Federals also appear equally determined.
Though defeated, they are bent, rather on tracing
the disaster to its primary causes, and on stimulat-
ing the Government to more efficient action, than
on accepting the conclusion which Europe deduces
—that the South is not to be vanquished. On the
19th, we were told that a public meeting was to
have been called " to inform the Administration
of the people's opinion regarding their misconduct
of the war; but the Senate having ordered an in-
quiry to be made into the facts of the disaster at
Fredericksburg, ,the next day's telegrams inform
us that the meeting was postponed pending the
report of the Senate. Meantime the tendency of
popular opinion is to throw all the blame on the
Administration. This is natural enough. Our
Crimean war will remind us of like feeling
so recently, in England ; but we apprehend
there are far weightier reasons for dis-
content with Messrs. SEWARD and STANTON,
than there were with our Premier and War Minis-
ter at the time of the Crimean disasters. The im-
portant fact, however, for Europe, for Lancashire,
for India, and for all cotton-producing and cotton
manufacturing countries is, that the fearful repulse
of Fredericksburg affords no prospect of a termina-
tion of the war. It is surely of the last importance
that all, practically concerned, should be fully awake
to the temper of the North. While to all at a
distance it seems as if the last five months of 1862
ought to convince the North that success is hope-
less, the North refuses to be convinced. It has
had throughout the year abundant crops, and a
good trade ; it has actually felt nothing of the
miseries of war, and it will go on, so far as its
temper can yet be judged of, for years, rather than
recognise Secession.
Perhaps the North may have made the best, basl
as the best is, of its losses on the 13th; yet the offi-
cial account of a military man, like BURNSIDE, is
not likely to be much wide of the truth. Ten or
twenty thousand, it will be remembered, were the
loose guesses at first. BURNSIDE makes the total
9,400, of whom 1,400 were killed. To these must
be added 800 taken prisoners. He is said to have
resigned, but his resignation, it is added, was not
accepted. We hear nothing more of 11PCLELLAN,
who by the first accounts had been sent for from
Washington. BURNSIDE has officially reported
that his retreat was a "military necessity." It
would certainly seem to have been so. The great
body of his army was exposed to the converging
fire of almost an amphitheatre of batteries. To
pierce the centre, according to the original inten-
tion, was hopeless, and had he attempted any crush-
ing movement against either flank of the enemy,
the other flank would have been ready to attack
him, almost in his rear. The best thing he could d•
was to retreat, while he could, " without lops of
property or of men." The Southern journals esti.
mate their loss at only 500 killed, among them
three generals, and 1,600 wounded. LEE says 1,800
killed and wounded. _ .

We have accounts rather perplexing of exploits
of both parties in North Carolina—the State im-
mediately south of Virginia. The Federals, it may
be remembered, early in the war, seized on certain
coast towns in that State, and have held them till
the present time. They gained such a footing as
to justify them, they thought, in setting up a rival
Governor. We are now informed of a little fresh
activity there. The Confederates are said, by one
account, to have attacked Plymouth—a town occu-
pied by the Federals on the south side of Albe-
marle Sound, on the 9th; to have driven the Fe-
derals out of the town, and to have damaged a
gunboat lying off the town. Probably it was a
I surprise, a calamity to which the Federals appear
to be everywhere liable. The other account refers
to a Federal army further south in the State, at
Beaufort and Newbern. It chiefly refers to a place
called Kingston, some way inland on a railway. A
Confederate General first reports, with much parti-
cularity, that on the 14th the Federals attacked
Xingeten with nine gunboats and 15,000 men, but
were driven back to their gunboats after 10 hours'
fighting ;
but the Federal Government, semi-
officially, announces, that it has heard no-
thing--
repulse.
of this The next day's
telegrams, however, tell
us that the Confederates
have "captured Kingston, with 500 prisoners and
Bonthern
11 pieces of artillery."
The journals an-
nounce that they "captured" the town, but were
compelled to leave it on account of the injury done
by the Federal bombardment. But then follow a
much more mysterious two lines, informing
US tiutt
the Federals " were advancing from Kingston, in
the direction of Goldbborough and Weldon ; this
would indicate that they had left Kingston, and
their gunboats too, by a railroad direct for Rich-
mond or fur Norfolk ! Before the battle on the
Rappahannock we had intimations that a move was
to be made on Richmond from the South in combi-
nation with that from the North, but it was to be
from Norfolk. Even a "Stonewall" JACKSON or
a STUART would hardly attempt such a bold and
desperate move as that now ascribed to the Federala
starting from Kingston, and that too after a defeat.
We must leave the solution to another mail.

But the Confederates are showing activity else-