The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

`fIM
Es.—American affairs have two aspects, and
one seems to belie the other. From the field of
battle we get none but the gloomiest pictures and
the darkest views. The Federals are beaten in suc-
cessive engagements, without a gleam of good for-
tune to cheer them ; they fail hopelessly in one en-
terprise after another, and above all the loss of
life in their armies is so great and so terrible that
it might be expected to throw the whole land into
mourning. If we look, however, at the actual con-
dition of things, we find no mourning at all—no
distress, no symptom of public suffering or national
woe. The great cities of the North-Eastern States
are as full of gaiety, gladness, and mirth as Paris
on a day of festival. Never were New York or
Boston in better or apparently happier plight than
at present. " Society" enjoys itself with every
appliance of contentment and luxury that opulence
can yield. We are assured that their prosperity
takes even the form of progress, and that they have
advanced with rapid strides during this devastating
and ruinous war. Of this material prosperity and
present abundance we can give some explanation,
but it is not easy to understand how such an
enormous sacrifice of life can have left such little
apparent impression on a population in which the
ties of blood were never held in light esteem. An
intercepted despatch from the Confederate Govern-
ment to one of its own representatives puts the
losses of the Federals since the commencement of
the war at 349,500 men, and this statement was
transmitted to our own Government by the Federal
authorities without any impeachment of its accu-
racy. But the reckoning was made in September
last,—eight months ago,—since which time the
most dreadful carnage has taken place on the Rap-
pahannock,
and a more silent consumption of life
has been steadily going on in the pestilential camp
before Vicksburg. Altogether we may be justi-
fied in supposing that the estimate recently
given by our own correspondent in the Southern
States is not much overstrained, and that the
total losses of the North up to this time ap-
proach to half a million of men. The South, it was
computed, had lost 200,000; but, whereas that sacri-
fice had filled the Confederate States with grief,
and plunged society everywhere in the deepest
section, the North has given no indication of sor-
row or distress. An explanation of this contrast is
to be found to some extent, no doubt, in the diffe-
rence of material distinguishing the Northern and
Southern armies. The Southerners have sent their
best blood into the field for a cause on which their
hearts are set, and they mourn over the slain as
Tyrolese or Swiss might mourn over the fallen cham-
pions of independence. The Northerners, on the
other hand, have created and replenished their
armies from the floating Population of their large
cities, from Irish and German settlers, and from
newly arrived emigrants. Still, they must needs
have drawn also on their native stock. If we allow
that of the 500,000 slain on the Federal side as many
as 300,000 were men little likely to be missed or
mourned, there will still remain 200,000 to be ac-
counted for on different terms. Admitting, again,
that these 200,000 were drawn from a population
nearly three times as numerous as that of the South,
such sses, we should think, would still be serious
enough to leave marks of affliction on many a house
hold. The North-Western States, which have borne
the brunt of the war in Tennessee, must have sent
some of their best citizens to those bloody fields, and
we can hardly doubt that the New York and Mas •
sachusetts regiments include some of the genuine
population of those parts. They certainly did so at
one time, for the earliest victims of the war were
young men from Massachusetts of consideration
enough to be sent back to their own country for
interment. It was said, too, that embalming had
become a regular trade, and that practitioners in
this ancient art attended the Northern armies—a
fact which would
bespeak the value and impor-
tance of the lives exposed to destruction. Never-
theless, look where we will, we find no evidence
of mourning in the North. The letters of our New
York correspondent give us pictures of feverish ex-
citement, of groundless confidence alternating with
deep despondency, of political intrigues, of wild
speculation, of profuse expenditure, and of riotous
living, but not of a State mourning for her children.
Even the day appointed for a public Fast was de-
voted to public enjoyment. For all that reaches us
from these North-Eastern cities we should be unable
to conclude that any drain upon the lifeblood of the
nation has been going on at all. Even the loss of
officers—heavy as it has occasionally been—seems
not to have been felt. We know how different were
our own feelings during the war in the Crimea, and
Mr. Kinglake has described the impression which
may be produced on English society by the casual-
ties of even a single brigade. But there is no such
impression made in America. Either the lost men
were never "in society,"
or society loses them
without regret. Less surprising, however, is the
material abundance in which these great towns are
now revelling. If they have, indeed, no losses to
deplore, we can understand readily enough how
they find much to enjoy. It is in these towns that
the money raised so recklessly by Government is
mostly spent, and though it may be only paper
money, this, as long as its credit lasts, will do as
well as any other. It is in New York and in Penn-
sylvania and in New England that the rich con-
tracts are taken on which
so many speculators
fatten. All who gain by the war belong to those
countries. Enormous fortunes are realised at
public cost, and money so got
is proverbially soon
spent. The results are seen in that excess of
luxury which astonishes European visitors. Money
of Mr. Chase's manufacture is abundant, and it
circulates without stint.
War is raging on the
Rappahannock and the Mississippi,
but trade is
good in Boston and New York, and "society" in-
dulges itself in brilliant and sumptuous festivi-.
ties with little heed of war's costs or consequences.
One of the favourite topics
King George
orators in former days was drawn from the employ-
ment of German troops in the armies which we sent
of the United States'
over to compel their return to allegiance. That
111. should not only fight against
American patriots, bat fight them with Hessians,
was described as an act of
peculiarly odious tyranny.
We have just read, however, that the right wing of
the army
ginia was comp
which the Federals sent to invade Vir-
nsed mainly of Germans, and its
other Divisions, we believe, included a very large
number of emigrants recently landed from these