The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-03 00:00:00

L-sblz

iONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 18E3.

There was a very interesting meeting yesterday
at the Mansion House, concerning the Indian
Famine Relief Fund. The LORD MAYOR inti-
mated that he had received a letter from Lord
ELGIN, informing him that he would be prepared
to honour his Lordship's draft for £20,000, a por•
tion of the surplus of the fund raised by the noble
charity of the people of this country. A letter was
also read by the Secretary, stating that at a public
meeting in Calcutta, it was resolved that the money
should be devoted to the Lancashire distress, since
there was no present probability of charitable ob-
jects in India requiring it. After a resolution had
been passed agreeing to this appropriation, some
objections were taken to the whole sum being
applied to the exigencies of the North, on the
ground that other places were also in great want
of assistance. All these objections were overruled,
however, and the Committee agreed on the original
appropriation of the whole sum. This, under the
circumstances, was the only way of meeting the
difficulty, since altering or amending the
prior arrangements would inevitably have
led to confusion. Also it would have disappointed
and irritated the parties in India who had so gene-
rously agreed to forego their own advantages and
the claims of a local nature to bestow on those whose
need was more imminent. Sir E. RYAN truly
stated the difficulties of the case in his address, but
he wisely argued that the only rational conclusion
to adopt was to leave the sum for those for whom
it had been intended. He said there was no other
course to be pursued, and his argument will be best
seen in his own words :

" A committee was originally appointed for a
specific purpose, and a large sum of money
was raised, which was sent away, the com-
mittee was dissolved, and the affair brought
to an end so far. It was now discovered that there
was a large surplus, and it certainly appeared to
him that they had no power to deal with the
portion of that surplus that was offered to them
in any other manner than for the object for which
it was offered, namely, in aid of the fund for the
relief of the distress in Lancashire. He believed
that the application of the money to such a pur-
pose would be perfectly satisfactory to those who
had subscribed to the Indian Famine Fund ; and
believing that this was the most satisfactory course
to be taken, he should cordially support the re-
solution." _ .

Some considerations occur to the mind when
the wisdom of this resolution is admitted. Right
and fitting as it is to do all that is possible' far
more than would ordinarily be convenient, for the
benefit of the Lancashire operatives, still there
are others whose claims must not be wholly
put aside or forgotten. The opulent among
us should remember that if they abstain this
year from their ordinary donations to smaller
communities, in order to aid the overhelm-
jog calamities of the North, these small
circles will soon equal in misery their
afflicted brethren, and if their numerical inferiority
will prevent their sufferings being generally
known, still they will not be the less severely felt,
and the less deplorable to encounter. Care and
caution are necessary even in the bestowal of
charity, and it is to be earnestly trusted that the
arguments of those Who advocated the cause of the
detached bodies of the poor and distressed, though
ineffectual at the time, and for many reasons de-
sirably unsuccessful, may not be wholly forgotten
now that the meeting is over. Now that this
princely sum has been added to the stores accumu-
lating at home, some of the wealthy among us may
look around, and if they see any charity particularly
in need of assistance, let them spare something from
their intended amount for Lancashire to bestow on
the humbler claimants who may be forgotten in
the excitement of greater and more important in-
terests at first, till at last it will be a new tax on
the community to relieve those who were not at-
tended to in time. It is always ten times more
difficult to assist those who have become exhausted
in their resources from waiting too long for extra-
neous aid. The meeting of yesterday was eminently
satisfactory in its primary object of appropriating
the funds of the Indian Famine Relief Fund for
Lancashire. It will complete the gratification to
all well-wishers of the community at large if the
secondary bubjcet there descanted upon is attended
to in due time and place,

The working men of Manchester have but too
much leisure for attending public meetings, yet it
is ono of the most remarkable facts in the history
of this stoppage of employment that next to none
have been convened. We can all well remember
the time when the moors of Lancashire and York-
shire had, in times of difficulty, their silence broken
by demagogue orators haranguing vast crowds whom I
no building could contain, and holding forth to
t hem on the selfishness and oppression of their

masters and the aristocracy. We have ourselves,
unnoticed and unsuspected, mingled with a multi-
tude, where the SOVEREIGN herself w Eta, with half

satirical, half good-humoured banter, designated as
the " Little lass in London," and where memorials
to her were adopted, intended by their authors to

dissatisfy the mob with the civil list of their
QUEEN, by comparing her life of unqualified splen-

dour with the squalid sufferings of their wives and
daughters.

To those who had visited the north at such times,
the country now hardly seems like the same. The
tall chimnies are there, though, alas! not pouring
forth now so much as then of their unpleasing testi-
mony to pleasing industry below; the wild-looking
country, wild-looking often when populous, is there ;
and the unmistakeable northern figures and features
and dialect are all there still ; but the discontent is
no longer there. It is greater suffering, and deeper
sorrow, but it is free from any rankling enmity
and from bitter speeches. The noted sturdy inde-
pendence, which then showed itself in every mode
of threatening to all of the higher classes, now
shows itself in patient enduring up to the very
point of starvation, and in receiving, though with
gratitude, yet with an averted look of shame, the
charity which the donors themselves proffer, but
as the debt of wealth to want. The employers are
now honoured as generous benefactors, the aristo-
cracy as the collectors and distributors of the na-
tion's and the world's munificence; while our SO-
VEREIGN is adverted to by them as the sympathis-
ing, widowed Duchess of LANCASTER, who, in that
capacity, can mingle her offerings with those of her
wealthier subjects. The political and moral aspects
of a season of Lancashire distress are indeed wholly
changed. The ignorance of a naturally shrewd
people is exchanged for knowledge to appreciate
the conduct of the ruling classes in regard to the
crisis. And, as Mr. HoRSMAN truly remarked, that
knowledge and intelligence must be considerable,
since we might, at one time, have legally refused to
acknowledge the blockade, and national honour
chiefly bound us to a different course. Former trials
of this kind produced on the higher classes the
strongest determination to refuse the franchise to
these very men. " Will you give votes to such
a blind mob ?" was, rightly or wrongly, the feel-
ing of both the aristocracy and the middle classes.
Now, we find Statesmen of all parties—Statesmen
of Conservative tendencies, perhaps more even than
Whigs—pointing to the conduct of the masses, and
declaring that some means must be found to bring
such an intelligent and self-restrained population
within the pale of the constitution.
These thoughts naturally arose in our minds
while perusing the report of a Manchester meeting
in the Sun of Thursday evening—a crowded meet-
ing of operatives in the vast Free Trade Hall, not
an ill-conditioned hot-blooded demagogue, but the
Mayor, presiding—and the subject which collected
such a monster meeting, not as we might in reason
have supposed, their own distress, but, of all things
in the world, the emancipation of four millions of
American negroes ! We may well ask whether any
parallel to this working class philanthropy can be
found in history. Thousands of men, in deep dis-
tress, assembling, as the EMPEROR might say, " for

an idea"—not the empty idea of military glory,
for which Frenchmen can be beguiled into fighting,
but the genuinely English idea of personal and
political freedom ; and that for a race so different
from their own, wrongfully enslaved by a portion
of their own race. Negro slaving in America was
sufficient to gather together the thousands who
have lived hitherto by working up its produce, to
demand that slavery should furnish that produce no
longer.

This operative meeting is also remarkable as a
response to recent American commendations of the
Manchester masses. Mr. ADAMS, even, has reported
well of them to the North,contrasting them, favour-
ably, with the higher classes. The generous con-
tributors also of New York and the North to Lan-
cashire relief, in their speeches, spoke strongly on
the fidelity of the starving operatives to the cause
of the North; though we did not observe a single
mention of the undisputed fact that the contribu-
tors who thus spoke had compelled Mr. LINCOLN
to declare war, and, of course, to declare also a
blockade of his enemy's ports, and thus virtually
to declare that Lancashire should be idle ! While
we frankly acknowledge the generosity, we yet
must be pardoned for not overlooking that it is the
generosity of those who have caused the need of it.
The response of our operatives is, however, very
instructive to their commenders. Their resolutions
and their admirable address to the President, show
him pretty plainly what is uppermost in their'
minds—they barely mention maintenance of " the
Union"—they dwell on, at large, and enforce in
every way, the necessity of negro emancipation.
Evidently, they would not care a straw for " the
Union" if it was to be again a pro-slavery Union.
They show him, unmistakeably, that their desire
for the triumph of the North is a desire for the
triumph of real freedom throughout the whole of
North America.
We apprehend the difference of feeling between
Mr. LINCOLN, who is at heart an anti-slavery man,
and all Englishmen, is just this :—He has said,
" Save the Union ; whether with or without slavery
is of secondary importance." Every Englishman,
every operative at the meeting in the Free Trade
Hall, would say—" Abolish slavery, whether with
or without the Union is a secondary matter." In a
word, we all place first what Mr. LINCOLN and the
' North place second ; and the operatives at Man-
chester, and all who care for the preservation of
the Union, care for it but as a means to attain the
nobler object. Apart from the slavery question,
England unquestionably now sympathises with the
South. We admire their skill and courage ; we
cannot be indifferent to their wish for independence ;
would they .but become Emancipationists, we doubt
much whether another meeting at the Free Trade
Hall would not demand their immediate recogni-
tion. What chills us all is the recollection, that
they are not only a nation of slaveholders, but in-
stead of being ashamed, are proud of it. That
theirs is an attempt, the first in history, as they
themselves declare, to base a republic on the D:vine
right, and the social and political advantages
of JACKSON,
of
slavery ! We are thrilled by the deeds
STUART, and LEE; but we sicken at the thought
that the object is—slavery from the Ohio to the
Isthmus of Panama.

Mr. LINCOLN and the Republicans,
now be unable to misapprehend the cause of the
goodwill of Manchester operatives to the North.
w however,
They tell him frankly, that while honouring the
free states as "a singularly happy abode for the
working millions, where industry is honoured," one
thing alone has lessened their sympathy with the
Union and their confidence in it. The one thing
was the ascendancy of pro-slavery politicians in
their Congress—an ascendancy, we may observe,
which seems likely to be regained by the triumph
of the Democrats, who are pro-slavery men, at the
late elections. The operatives proceed to recount
all the numerous anti-slavery deeds of Mr. LINCOLN
up to his last proclamation, as steps practically
exemplifying his belief in "all men being created
free and equal." They tell him they "assume that
he cannot, now, atop short without uprooting
Slavery." They remind him that if in any state it