The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1863,

The possible surrender of the Peterhoff, as
announced in one of our latest telegrams, may be
all well enough in its way, supposing that pos-
sibility to be realised! Bat immediately after-
wards, at the next clicking of the electric needles,
there comes another telegram (" the antidote and
the bane are both before us") intimating upon the
authority, such as it is, of the New York Evening
Post, that, unless the English Government enters
into some distinct understanding, that the fitting
out of certain privateers in British seaports--
privateers, that is to say, having destinations
merited out for them in the direction of the Con-
federates—Mr. ADAMS must be recalled forthwith
from London, and Lord LYONS sent home again
from Washington. "If it is true,'' says this
New York journal (for the precise words here
given are really worth repeating in, shall we
say, their integrity ?)—" If it is true that Mr.
SEWARD has sent a note to the British Govern-
ment demanding that the encouragement given to
the fitting out of privateers shall cease, then the
honour of America will demand an immediate
reply, and, if the British Government hesitates,
the Federal Government can do no better than
recall Mr. ADAMEI and send Lord LYONS
home." The Federal journalist adding, with exem-
plary coolness, with an absolutely delicious effron-
tery of self-possession, under the circumstances—
" There should be no hesitation in doing this, and
there will then be time enough to deliberate on
further measures." Precisely. That is—If—and
—Then Not otherwise. The gracious sur.
render of the Peterhoff, now said to be thought of
so benignantly and magnanimously bylir. SEWARD,
would thus-appear only to have been thought of as
something calculated to mitigate slightly the
excessive bitterness of flavour characterising the
cup proffered to us to drink, at the very same mo-
ment, by that same magnanimous, beneficent, and
superlatively gracious Mr. SEWARD, the Federa
Administrator.

The entire course marked out for themselves by
the Federals in this matter, it will be observed,
is one so adroitly assuming, that they, and they
exclusively, are throughout the whole of these
recent transactions in the right—that the English
from first to last are, and all along have been, alone
the aggressors. Reading these telegrams one might
really be led to suppose that Mr. ADAMS had never
-written a letter, and that Admiral WILKES had
never commanded a Federal man-of-war. None
are so blind, says the proverb, as those who
won't see. And it is therefore, of course, the most
consistent thing in the world, on the part
of the Federal Government and the New York
newspapers, that the fitting out of privateers,
as they are called, should alone be recognised as
taking place here on this side of the Atlantic—not
one syllable of reference being made, as an obvious
matter of necessity, to the munitions of war shipped
westwards, not for the use of the Confederates, but
—of the Federals. So that Mr. SEWARD is to write
a note—if he have not already written and de-
spatched it—demanding, peremptorily enough,
from the British Government that this and that
shall be done on our part. Otherwise, quoth the
New York Bouncer, Mr. ADAMS must be recalled at
once from London, and Lord LYONS sent home as

summarily from Washington.
Now, it needs only that Mr. SEWARD should act
to a nicety in this very insensate manner—it needs
only that he should act to a nicety thus—to afford

the world once more that often before now wit•

nessed spectecle—always a ludicrous spectacle in
itself—to wit, that of " the Engineer hoist' with his
own petard!" To Suppose, fnr one single instant
that, with the Lords and Commons of England in
the humour in which they are now perfectly well
known to be—with the public feeling hers through-
out this country inflamed and exasperated to its
present pitch—with Lord PALMERSTON, of all men,
living, entrusted at this moment with the responei.
hility of presiding over the British Administration
—we will even add, with Earl RUSSELL in-office at I
the head of our Foreign Department—to Su
ppose,
we say, for one single instant of time that, under
these circumstances, a vote of the nature thus coolly
and complacently talked of, by the telegram, can

actually Shave been penned by Mr. SEWARD, with-
out Mr. SEwARD knowing perfectly well, at the

moment of sending it, that it could have but one

only result, that it could but elicit one only reply,
would le an insult to the common sense of both

great both the
Aivisions of the Anglo-Saxon race,

English and the American.
Another Yankee paper (the New York Times)
goes so far as to say that "it is physically certain

America will exact atonement for British ontragee,

the only certain thing being the question of time.
It may be next mouth, or next year, or ten years
hence [says Mr. JEFFERSON BRICK, evidently
drawing in his breath with a deadly relish through
his set teeth, in the intervals of talking), but every
dollar destroyed by English privateers will be made
goo by Port
Wad r arY payments or reprisals : and [the
COrnisPondent of the New Xvk Times there- I