The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The debate in the House of Commons on
Tuesday night represents with more than usual
fidelity the varied sentiments of the British people
upon the drama which the Americans are enacting
tor our instruction. Incisive, vehement, and vitupe-
rative, sharpened perhaps by Canadian antipathy to
a bordering Yankee population, and prompted by
generous sympathy for a brave people who are suf-
fering at their own heartha the extreme agonies of
being sabred and plundered by the mercenary scum
of Europe, Mr. Roebuck speaks the indignation of
millions among us who hate oppression whoever
may be the oppressor, and who sympathise with
suffering whoever mg be the victim. He is the
mouthpiece of perhaps the most numerous class in
these islands—men who indulge their feelings un-
checked by any sense of responsibility, and who
cry aloud to stay the horrors that shock them
without troubling themselves as to how this is to
be done, or considering the probability of other
and nearer horrors being created by the inter-
ference they invoke. Mr. Roebuck's speech was
imprudent, telting , and eminently unpractical, but
it was a faithful representative speech. Fortu-
nately, the class which he represented is not the
governing class of this country, or we should
never be at peace, but always crusading on behalf
of some " idea." Mr. Gladstone's task was to
infuse the practical element into the question be-
foie the house, and to do so without denying the
poetical justice of the view adopted by the mover.
Mr. Gladstone also represented what is happily
a very large section of our population,—sober
thinking men who hold their imagination under the
control of their reason, who can be religious with-
out becoming ascetics, who can be generous without
giving all their goods to feed the poor, and who
can feel for Poles, and Romans, and Egyptian
labourers, and North American conscripts, torn from
their families for certain sacrifice in the South, and
for Irishmen and Germans kidnapped to the same
wretched end; and can also sympathise with the
desolation caused in the South by these miserable
instruments, but who have too much good sense to
wish to be always rushing over the earth to redress
every wrong and vindicate every right. Lord Robert
Cecil also was in his way a representative speaker,
for he represented a large class who, in and out of
Parliament, look upon this and every other subject
as a possibility for the creation of political party
capital. When these speakers had been heard the
great bulk of our population had spoken. If three
average Englishmen should find themselves together
in a railway carriage, and a quiet fourth in the corner
should listen to their conversation, he would probably
hear one impetuous individual inveigh against the bar-
barities of the Northern mercenaries much as Mr.
Roebuck did, while the second would say " Yes,
that is all very true, but--" much as Mr. Glad-
stone did, and a third would perhaps suggest
that it would be a very awkward subject
to deal with at the next election. For our-
selves, we confess to great indifference as to
the exact means by which the Emperor of the
French may contrive to make use of members of
the House of Commons to effect his own purposes
without directly compromising himself. Mr. Roe-
buck and Mr. Lindsay will probably both think
that their occupation as unacknowledged go-be-
tweens has not been very dignified, and perhaps
the Emperor of the French may now reflect that
his agents in this matter were not chosen with com-
plete good fortune. Certainly no plot could have
been worse contrived to attain a joint action
towards a recognition of the Southern States. This
already appears in the debate, and we shall be sur-
prised if it do not become still more evident as the
discussion I roceeds.
POST.—Whether the Southern Confederacy has
or has not furnished conclusive proofs of being able
to establish its independence may be disputed by
those who desire at any price the re-establishment
of the American Union, butits bitterest enemies can-
not deny that it still possesses sufficient power to
terrify its assailants. It sufficed for the general of
the army covering the approaches to Richmond to
change his position, and despatch a few handfuls
of cavalry across the Federal frontier, to spread a
panic throughout the principal States of what still
represents the original Republic. It now appears
that the apprehensions of the populations of Mary-
land and Pennsylvania, of New York and of Ohio,
were exaggerated, and that it was little more than
a raid across the Potomac of some three or four
thousand Confederates which has afforded suffi-
cient excuse to the Federal Executive for calling
out one hundred and twenty thousand State militia.
The rapidity with which the Northern States pass
from one extreme to the other—one day flushed
with the hopes of speedy victory, and the following
one congratulating themselves on being in a position
to resist the aggression of their foes—cannot fail to
excite attention, though from those who are ac •
quainted with the character of their population it
does not elicit surprise. The invasion of the Fede-
ral States is clearly not meditated by Gen. Lee, and
the expedition into Pennsylvania is only to be re-
garded as a diversion for strategic purposes. But,
even supposing this to be so, the significance of
the fact that the Confederates have been ena-
bled at the present stage of the war to carry
a successful raid into their enemies' country is
not the less striking. The tide of invasion has,
as Mr. Roebuck expressed it, been rolled back.
It may not, and it is obvious that it does
not, suit the interests of the Confederacy to
carry an invasion into the territory of the North.
If a league of States, with an aggregate population
of twenty millions, has been unable to subdue an-
other league with a population only one-third as
numerous, it is not probable that the latter would in
its turn be enabled to subjugate the former. For
our own parts, we distrusted the report that Gene-
ral Lee seriously contemplated the invasion of the
Northern States. The border State of Maryland
stands on a very peculiar footing. It is a stave-
holding State, and its inhabitants would more
willingly unite their fortunes with the Southern
than with the Northern Confederacy. But within
its confines stands the District of Columbia, con-
taining the city of 'Washington. If Lee meditates
the invasion of Maryland it is solely with a view
to gaining possession of 'Washington, and not as a
step towards reducing to subjugation such States
as Pennsylvania and New York. If, indeed, his
operations against the Federal capital were success-
ful, he might not unreasonably expect that the
Maryland
population would then declare them-
selves in favour of the Southern Confederacy, and,
in the event of a peace being concluded, the divid •
ing line between the two Confederacies might run
to the north and not to the south of the District of
Columbia. The Marylanders well know that, if
peace were made to-morrow between the North and
South, their State would remain included in the
old federation. To this, however, it is notorious
that they object, and it is not improbable, if the
Confederate General can maintain his position to
the north of the Potomac longer than he did last
autumn, and if he can defeat the army to which the
defence of Washington is entrusted, that they may
give him a more encouraging reception than that
accorded to him on the last occasion when he
crossed the Northern frontier.
HERALD.--No cue who has witnessed a de-
bate in the House of Commons upon a question
involving in any way our relations with the Ame-
rican belligerents can remain in doubt as to the
sympathies of that assembly. It is true that the
noisy energy of the Americanising Radicals makes
up, so far as mere vociferation is concerned, for the
paucity of their numbers. They are not checked in