The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-13 00:00:00

—and of the ungentle General Butler, are both

said .to4e engaged for the occasion—the one to
be rewar ed by "greenbacks," the other b 7 the pro-

miss of a high military appointment. Lectures,
pamphlets, newspaper articles—all the parapher-
nalia and appliances of political wad %T.( —are in full

activity. the soldiers of Ohio, servin; with Gen.

Meade or Gen. Rosencranz, or scattered in other

parts of the Union, are to be allowed to vote in

camp; and there can be little doubt that, under the
control of their officers, they will be persuaded that
to vote for Mr. Vallandigham will be treason,
coming under the category of aid and comfort to the
enemy. Should there be any ultra-democratic dis-
trict in the State likely to give Mr. Vallandigham
a majority, disturbances will be fomented before
the day of election, martial law will be proclaimed,
and the ballot prevented. As the Irish vote in Ohio
is strong, and the Irish are Democrats in the pro-
portion of nine out of ten, and therefore likely to
support Mr. Vallandigham and the Democratic
ticket, it has been considered of extreme import-
ance that some eminent Irishman, having the ear
of his compatriots, should publicly address the
Irish in Ohio in favour of their Ministerial candi-
date. For this purpose General Francis Thomas
Meagher, known in the cabbage garden rebellion as
" Meagher of the Sword," has been selected. For-
getful that had he not been a rebel he would have
been nothing, not even a brigadier-general in the
service of the North, and that be not only owes his
present position but his life to the contemptuous
clemency of the generous Government against which
he took up arms, Gen. Meagher has written a long
letter to the Union Committee of Ohio in denuncia-

tion of the Southern " rebels" and of Mr. Vallandig-
ham. He speaks of" the brilliant and vast advan-
tages of national unity," advantages that he would
deny to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, and indulges in a vast amount of Hiber-
nian eloquence on the subject of the Southern
leaders and the Northern friends of peace. For the
Copperheade, whose principles are those of the Con-
stitution and the. law as it existed prior to the
assumption of office by Mr. Lincoln, he has nowords
but those of hate and scorn. New York, he says,
abounds with them, which is true, and their venom,
he adds, "as well as the slime, the fangs and the
slippery skin of the reptiles, warn the country of
danger," which is a figure of speech somewhat stale
and overworn. He admits Mr. Valiandigham to be
no contemptible foe, but one who has been consis-
tent, intrepid,uncompromising, and implacable from
first to last, and as such calls on the people of Ohio
to deal with him, and keep him, if not in exile, in
obscurity until the war is over. If he be elected Go-
vernor, the imaginative brigadier without a brigade
is of opinion that "the drooping spirits of the South
will revive ; that the severe thin features of Mr.
Jefferson Davis will dilate and soften with the
news; that the sweetest smiles will break out
and play in tropical radiance all over the neat
round chin, the dainty lips, and the plump and
cosy cheeks of Mr. Judah Benjamin ; that Mr.
Tombs will be induced in the enlivening sunshine
of the event to think better of Southern finances
that ",the London Times will plunge into the
wildest raptures of rhetoric ;" that " Lord Palmer-
ston, spirited old rake that he is, will straighten
himself up and talk more jauntily and impudently
than ever ;" that "the shipwrights of Glasgow and
Birkenhead will be emboldened to lay the keels
of another couple of monstrous ironclads, to be
named respectively the VallAndigham and the Cop-
perhead;" and that "M. Michel Chevalier will be
inspired to write another pamphlet setting forth the
expediency and grandeur of recognising the South."
From these excerpts it will be seen that General
Meagher's longer residence in America has not de-
prived his phraseology of its native characteristics ;
that the fun of Donnybrook Fair, the persuasive-
ness of Blarney Castle, and the style of the Four
Courts, still linger in his words, and lend to his pen
those peculiar graces that flourish so luxuriantly in
the Green Isle, and that not even transplantation
to another hemisphere can deaden or eradicate. The
General has been rather shabbily used by the Fede-
ral Government. His brigade was reduced by the
casualties of war, by death, sickness, desertion, and
disgust, to less than the number of a regiment; and
he was not allowed to replenish its attenuated
ranks, and march, as he wished to do, to new fields
of glory, with " the green flag flattering o'er him,"
in loving companionship with the stars and stripes.
But he has not been discouraged, and if, after his
letter to the people of Ohio, he be not again ap.
pointed to a command, Mr. Lincoln will be as un-
grateful as all Princes are supposed to lee, and as he,
having more than the power and authority of a
Prince, ought certainly to be, if he would duly
qualify himself to take his proper moral rank
among the despots of the world.
Want of sympathy with the effort of the Federal
Republicans to overrun the South with fire and
sword, and with a policy of emancipation that
would only free the slave in order to expatriate him,
has long been considered so flagrant an offence on
the part of the British people and their rulers as
almost sufficient to justify a declaration of war. But
weary of declaiming against Englishmen in the ag-
gregate, the Abolitionist fanatics who think the
Union of all the States preferable to liberty and the
law in any of them, have taken to abusing English-
men and English institutions in detail. The clergy
of the Church of England, as a rule, sympathise
with the South. For this reason, the Church of
England is a wicked institution, and ought to be
abolished. The titled aristocracy of England consider
that Mr. Jefferson Davis has as good a case against
the North as Ger. Washington had against George
III.; therefore the aristocracy of England ought no
longer to be suffered to exist. The commercial classes
rejoice at the prospect of Southern independence,
for commercial, not for sentimental reasons; and
therefore these classes are base and sordid, and ought
in due time to be made to suffer for their heresy by
feeling the fall weight of a war that shall sweep
their commerce from the seas. Any one who does
not side with the North is "no gentleman." And
as for the poets, novelists, essayists, and historians
of England, they have not the slightest spark of
manly feeling in their bosoms, not because they
exalt the cause of the South, but because they have
not a word to say in favour of the North. " We have
yet," says a New York Abolition journal of Satur-
day last, "to encounter among the idealists of
England the first great, generous, far-reaching
phrase, respecting the nature, aim, and result of our
mighty contest. Dickens has not a word of cheer,
nor Thackeray, nor Tennyson, nor Bulwer, nor
the lesser lights." A Bostonian Abolitionist is
equally scandalised at the apathy of British men
ofow httebot
et
have
ear letters, "_Let us not," he says, " reprint the
Works of or even make quotations from the pages
death struggle:Eagatotsh enemies, There is no good time
nt
,h,wv nohahhtpf
"fling this country for the poets and novelists
ftaoe sympathy h:histodiseixikpereosfs fsolarvuesryt,'nnitahye
st
causehhi
ne It never seems to strike such cri-
tiEnienstghasiall, there may be something
raelri•els sympathy, and that an
kindness, prefer the strai
the negroes With
made
enforcedl to o i
st, labour,
who
has tSouthern planter, who treats
While he utilizes their
the hypocritical
as remorselessly
be extruded from
h. 'heal
is over that every black mPaulashlnind
Northern Abo-
litionist,
when the war
troemorselessly as the
the country, or hunted down
that the sturdy
Red Indians. They do not see,
w
Englishman, whenever he is
be-
tween a big man and a little one, alawer a fight
little one's part. The heathen philosopher takes the
Pher declared
that a brave man struggling with adversity
spectacle that was pleasing to the gods• was a
A gallant
nation its
fighting for independence against fearful
odds, and never losing heart or hope in the darkest
day of its fortunes,
desiring only to be left alone,
no dream of conquest or dominion over
encouraging
others, and turning defeat itself with matchless skill
and courage into a fulcrum of future victory, is, in
like manner, a spectacle that the idealist, the poet,
and every generous-minded man, mast look upon
with favour. That they should withhold their
sympathy because these brave men possess slaves is
simply impossible ; for, if the question of slave-
holding were to determine eitner in the past or the
present, the degree of favour wiih which the heroic
struggles of individuals or a people for independence
and their libded such havoc
erty were to be reg.4,-r 2
would 125
nlade in the pages of history that there
would scarcely be It great mime left in the wide