The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-30 00:00:00

TIC" CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From .the Correspondent of the Times.)
NEW YORK, Sept. 18,
The fear of a war with France, arising out of the
Mexican question, and the well-known sympathies
of the French Emperor with the cause of Southern

independence, lies heavy on the spirit of such

Americans as have time to think. Some of the

journals continue to bluster upon the subject, and
to vaunt that " our great country" can not only
" whip" the South, but France, England, and
Spain—not one down and. the other on, after the

fashion of boxers and athletes, but all four at once.
The silly braggadocio, however, falls dead upon the
popular ear, and most people who condescend to argue
the question think, with Mr. Lincoln, that one war
is enough at a time, and deprecate any action with
regard to the French Government which might ex-
pedite or cause a collision. Bat the uneasiness on
the subject is great, and the advance of the Federal
expedition through Texas to the Rio Grande tends
to increase it. Three weeks or even ten days ego
the and of the rebellion was generally believed
to bo close at hand. To-day the beatific vision
has changed its colours of light and glory into those
of gloom andmarkiness ; and were the Secretary
ak' State to resew his promise of pacification at 90
days, as a old, there is not a mercantile man in New

York who would consider it of the slightest value.
Nor is the aspect of foreign affairs altogether plea-

sant as regards Great Britain. The New York
Slanderer and Scarifier may cry out for the imme-
diate annexation of Canada, and proclaim thilt irre-

pressible Yankee genius has invented, or speedily

mill invent, engines of destruction that will blow
the British isles out of the ocean, or at the very

least burn Brighton, Hastings, Portsmouth, Dover,
-Ramsgate, Margate, Sheerness, and even London,

by. means of its monster Monitors and invincible

iionelidei, firing redhot shot. and Greek fire into

those defenceless towns and cities; but the drive'

is either looked upon as clumsy jesting or the proof
of dementia. The irritation against England is ex-
treme; but scarcely any one advocates war at this
moment, except the journal above mentioned and the
rowdies, who think the first duty of an American
" patriot" is to stir up insurrection in Ireland, Ame-
ricanise the institution of Great Britain, and wipe
the British Church and aristocracy out of exist-
ence. A more sensible, and, it must be added, an in-
finitely more numerous class than these we'd opinion
that the British Government is really powerless to
prevent the building of ironclads and other ships for
Confederate use iti British ports, and that a decorous
protest from Mr. Seward woul eet with a decorous
reply from Lord Russell that 'child explain the real
State of the laws of Great Britain on the subject, and
help to allay the ill-feeling that unhappily prevails.
And while such is the foreign situation, the domes-
tic or military one is not encouraging.
There are
suspicions, not only that Gen. Lee is in a position
to force General Meade to accept battle, against the
will of the latter, but that the mysterious evacua-
tion of Chattanooga by General Bragg covers a
design the probable fulfilment of which will bring
discomfiture upon the army of General Rosecrans.
The obstinate defence of Charleston adds to the
popular discouragement, and the feeling grows that
that city may be utterly destroyed by Greek fire
and guns of long range sweeping over and tcyond
the doieltces, but that the defences themselves can
never be taken by any force naval or military that
the Federals can bring against them.
In the midst of this perplexity and discourage-
ment the President has suddenly thrown what ho
doubtless intended as a moral bombshell into the
community by the suspension throughout his whole
dominions of the writ of habeas corpus. The reason
may be sought in the admitted failure of the con-
scription. With all the efforts which the Govern..
meat and its friends have made that unpopular
measure has not produced more than 100,000—some
authorities say only 80,000 men—above two-thirds
of whom are substitutes, partly Irish and Germans
newly arrived in the country, and partly veterans
of the armies of the Potomac and the Cumberland,
whose term of sere ice had expired. It has, theie-
fare, been resolved by the desperate heads that rule
at Washington to order a second levy. Whether
it shalt be for a quarter or half a million, or any
intermediate number remains to be decided. As
the first conscription was for 300,000 men, it will
follow, if the whole were drawn, that 200,000 per-
sons have eech paid the Government 300 doll., and
thus placed the Treasury in possession of the very
considerable sum of C 0,000,000 dois.—enough to
pay Mr. Stanton's war expenses for 30 days.
Another haul, if the people sabmit to it, as in
all probability they will—for civic courage to re-
sist oppression is a virtue that yet remains to
be developed in America—will, perhaps, produce
more money and fewer men than the last, and
prevent to the extent of so many millions the
inflation of the currency, which it is Mr. Chase's
misfortune as a financier to deprecate while he pro-
duces, and to loathe while he embraces. But as it is
possible that a second draught, coming so speedily
on the heels of the first, may create opposition
more serious than the Government has yet ex-
perienced, Mr. Lincoln has been persuaded to annul
the law and the constitution, and to suspend over
the whole country the operation of the writ of
Habeas corpus. His proclamation to that effect was
published the day before yesterday. Incredible as it
may seem in Europe, and especially in England,
where the writ of habeas corpus is considered as the
main pillar of the constitution, to lay violent hands
upon which is a crime next to sacrilege in the esti-
mation of a liberty-loving people, Mr. Lincoln's
coup detat has excited but little attention. The
Abolitionists, who called upon God to bless Abra-
ham Lincoln, for setting the blackmen free by pro-
clamation, call upon God to bless him for enslaving
white men also by proclamation ; while the Demo-
crats utter a faint protest against this final act of
usurpation, by which Mr. Lincoln has gathered
into his:own hands greater powers than were ever
wielded by a man of British birth, descent, and lan-
guage since the days of Henry VIII. Onefearless
papenthe Few York Daily News, which alone of all
the Pztea of America has the courage to advocate
-peace, even at the price of the recognition of
Southern independence, parodies the Abolitionist
prayer that God will indeed bless Abraham Lincoln
—bless him with intellect, which he does not pos-
sess ; with honesty, which he does not exhibit ; and
with a true appreciation of the dangers of the course
into which his reckless hands are driving the
country, of which he does not seem to have even the
faintest glimmer of nu idea. The public takes the
matter verylcoolly—k, coolly as to justify the sus-
picion that it really don, not understand what the
writ of habeas corptig, means,
and has never heard
of the struggles by which its blessings were wrested
from the hands of despotic poeferby_ thebrave people
of England, or that it is
Be
- slow to move on any
spur except the love:of the dollar or an insult to the
flag, or so demoralised by the war and the evil pas-
sions it has engendered as to care
nothing about a
matter so unimportant as its own liberty. In the
constitution of the United States—a document which
few of the Northern people, except lawyers, news.
paper editors, and professional politicians, take the
trouble to study, and of the provisions of which the
masses are profoundly ignorant—the writ of habeas
corpus, is only once mentioned. It is spoken of as a 1
privilege, not as a right—a designation to which Mr.
Lincoln has scrupulously adhered in his proclamae
tion. He thrice calls it a privilege, which he is
authorised by the Constitution, as well as by the Act
of Congress of the 3d March last, to suspend, when-
ever in the case of rebellion or invasion the public
safety may seem to him to require it. Though the
original framers of the Constitution were content to
consider the habeas corpus as a privilege only, the
fourth, fifth, and sixth of the 12 amendments ap-
pended to that document, and of equal validity with
the text, state that the "right of the people to be
secure in their persona, houses, papers, and effects
against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not
be violated ; that no warrants shall issue but upon
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
a'
that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an im-
partial jury of the State and district wherein the
crime shall have been committed." But whether it
be a right—sacred as the right
to life—or a privi-
lege like that accorded by
the State to a bank
or other corporation, a privilege which the State

may withhold as well as grant, it has been
swept away by a stroke of Mr. Lincoln's, pen,
and the countersignature of William Henry
Seward. At this moment the whole ncrth, east,

and west are under the operation of martial law.

Any person whom a military officer arty believe—or
assert—to be a spy, a deserter, or an eider or
abetter of the enemy may be seized in his home,
and imprisoned as long as Mr. Lincoln or any of
his Ministers pleases. No civil judge shall have the
right or the privilege of inquiring into the case
unless Mr. Lincoln pleases, and it shall be the duty
of no jury to decide whether the suspicion on which
the arrest was made was well or ill-founded, or
whether the malice of a personal enemy, and not

;he act of the citizen himself, were the reason:of his

incarceration. In a time of foreign war the crime

of " aiding and abetting the enemy" may be easily
defined, but amid the complicated miseries of a

civil war such aiding and abetting admit of an
elasticity of interpretation that may place the in-
dulgence of the commonest sentiments of affection
and humanity at the mercy of the military power,
and convert a once free and happy country into a
pandemonium of tyranny.
And no less remarkable than the stolid apathy, if
not the positive approval, with which the measure
has been received is the time selected by Mr. Lin-

coin for its infliction. The profoundest tranquillity
prevails throughout the North. The anti-conscrip-
tion party has been bought off by enormous bribery

on the part of the manicipalists. There is not the
slightest reason to believe in the existence of any
plots for the disturbance of public order. The men
who ought, from their social position and character,

to direct public opinion are all engaged in money-
making, and care for nothing else. The professional

politicians of both sides are-discredited. They are
not only adventurers and schemers, and men with-
out principle, but they distract the attention of
wisciand thrifty men from the 4' almighty dollar,"
from stock operations, from oftracts with the
Government for the supply of leaky Ships; Of 'aged
and infirm horses, of mouldy hay, of shoddy cloth-
ing, and of boots that wear out, in a day's march.
Nobudy has any time, and few have any inclination
for intermeddling in public affairs, and enacting in
this hour of national peril : cairemunerative part
of Hampdens
Sand Pyms. .to atmosphere of the
grossest sensuality and corruption peryades society ;
so gross that even the "rowdies" of street ap-
pear to be pure-minded and patriotic cite • IA when
compared with the base commercial classes who
flourish upon the expenditure of the war. So little
do they care for liberty that they are not only wil-
ling, but anxious to sacrifice it, if by so doing they
can secure the subjugation of the South, and the
erection of the North into a huge military des-
potism, powerful enough to play the leading part in
the politics of Christendom. It is not only the des-
cendants of Irish, Germans, Hungarians, and other
Europeans who have immigrated into the country
within the last quarter or half a century, who feel
and think in this manner, but the Americans them-
selves—the descendants of the original colonists—
the Quakers, the Independents, and the Pilgrim
Fathers—who have allowed the Vestal fire of liberty

to be extinguished in their hearts, and who knee
down in the mire to supplicate Mr. Lincoln to rule
over them without embarrassing himself or them
with such idle forms and obsolete guarantees as
were thought necessary to national happiness by
those antiquated pedants George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel
Carroll, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin.
Why Mr. Lincoln should have taken the trouble
and incurred the odium abroad, if not at home, of
declaring martial law at a time like this is difficult
to discover, unless it be his fear that the new
draught may too severely try the temper of this
quiescent and easily-satisfied nation, and that the
camel's back will not bear many more feathers.
That this is the real explication of an otherwise in-
comprehensible policy would seem to be confirmed
by the utter failure of all the attempts of the Re-
publican and Abolition press to justify the measure
on the ground of its present necessity. They state
that the action of the courts in granting writs of
habeas corpus prevents the Government from pro-
curing the soldiers that it needs ; but, as the
courts have granted no such writs except on the
application of the parents of boys of sixteen or
seventeen, who have enlisted for the sake of the
bounty money, without the consent of their
natural protectors; of the wives of men who
volunteered in fits of drunkenness, and when sober
repented of their act ;.and of aliens, able to prove
their alienage, who have e been draughted into the
army, contrary alike to national and to interna-
tional law, there does not seem to be any necessity
for resorting to so sweeping a measure in order to
kidnap so small a proportion either of willing boys
or unwilling men, Sensible people do not kill mos-
quitos with swords, or burn down a city to roast a
pig ; and even Mr. Liaeoln is not likely to have re-
sorted to a measure so mighty for a cause so trivial.
To overawe the voters of Ohio, and make the ballots
given for Mr. Vallandigham a military offence; to
carry on all future elections under the auspices of
the bayonet; and to procure by fear the levies which
the Government cannot procure by love—such are
probably the secret motives of a measure which
makes the subjugation of the North anterior in point
of time to the wished-for atibjugation of the South.
The two circumstances may have no connection,
but it is suggestive and curious, to say the least,
that the suspension of the habeas corpus and the
shutting up of Fort Lafayette for repair and enlarge-
mentrhave beers simultaneous. The 60 prisoners in
that celebrated sea dungeon have been transferred
temporarily to Fort Warren, in the harbour of
Boston, and a large squad of masons, brick-
layers, and carpenters have taken posses-
sion of the fort. Some persona assert that the
probability of a visit from one or both of the
iron-clad rams supposed to be building in Mr.
Laird's yard at Birkenhead for the Confederate
Government, or the outbreak of a war with France
for contempt of the great Monroe doctrine, has
determined the Government to put the harbour of
New York into a proper state of defence, while
others are of opinion that the enlargement and re
pair of Fort Lafayette will servo the double pur-
pose of harbour defence and the safe detention of
three or four times the number of political prisoners
which it has hitherto been capable of accommo-
dating. With a Government that looks so far into
the future as that of Mr. Lincoln, and that is us
mindful of the necessity of a strong hand at home
as of a defiant:attitude abroad, it ie probable that the
double purpose is the real one, and that Fort Lafa-
yette will not only mount a greater number of guns
of long range and wide calibre than it has ever done
before, bat that it will be so arranged as to provide
lodgings for at least a thousand prisoners, in addi-
tion to those which it can now entertain.
Among many scores or hundreds of men who have
rendered themselves conspicuous in their outcry for
a vigorous prosecution of the war, and the extermi-
nation, if need were, of the Southern people, few
have been more zealous in the cause than the Rev.
Theodore Tilton, who believes that the America of
the future is to be an America of mulattoes; Mr.
Edward Everett, once Minister to the Court of St.
James's, and a candidate for the Presidency ; Mr.
Wendell Phillips, the apostle of negrophilism ; and
Mr. George Opdyke, Mayor of New York, and con-
tractor for the supply of army blankets and cloth-
ing, Of these gentlemen, only one, Mr. Tilton, is
of the fighting age. The other three are all above
45, and, therefore, non-liahle to personal service,
unless they choose to shoulder the rifle as volun-
teers, Which not one of them has manifested the
slightest Inclination to do. Mr. Tilton was
draughted in Brooklyn, and some curiosity was
expressed among the peace party, though none
among the Republicans or War Democrats, to
know whether he would exemplify his doctrine
by his life, and consent to make one in the
army of General Meade. Mr. Tilton did not keep
the Government long in suspense, but in a few
days appeared before the Provost-Marshal, with a
stalwart subject of the King of Prussia, who had
seen service in his own country, had within a few
weeks arrived in this, and had consented for a con-
sideration in greenbacks to be substitute for
" War christian." The substitute was accepted,
Mr. Edward Everett has two sons above the age of
18, and both of them were draughted. Mr. Everett
may or may not have tried the power of persuasion