The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIAIES.—A quarrel goes through many stages.
For a time the cause is simple, the provocation fresh,
and the parties well defined. There are furious parti-
sans and hopeful peacemakers. The terms of recon-
ciliation and the duties of submission are seriously
discussed. The previous tenour of quiet times is so
recent in the memory, and seems so much the natu-
ral order of things, that people find it as difficult to
conceive the quarrel going on as a wall always fall-
ing, a window always breaking, or a piece of ordnance
in continual discharge. The crash must soon come
to an end. After a while it becomes painfully evi-
dent—perhaps by that time not so painfully as it
ought to be—that the quarrel is going on, and
will go on, for it breeds its own perpetual in-
crease, and supplies sufficient causes for endless
endeavour. No want of money, no paucity of men,
no horrors, no despair of success, no utter dark-
ness of the future, no humanity, no wisdom will
stop the war once begun between men of utterly
antagonistic principles and sentiments. It becomes
internecine and suicidal. Implacable hate on one
side, and the sting of wounded pride and disap-
pointed ambition on the other, will goad on comba-
tants till they have no other thought in life than
mutual destruction. Even wearied, wounded, and
half disarmed, they thrust against one another in
deadly silence, till the poised balance slightly turns,
and a death-shriek shows the losing scale. Then
the gentle instincts begin to rise in the spectators.
They pity, they pray for peace, they repent of a
partisanship which can neither hurt one side nor
help the other. Then the quarrel passes from one
ground to another. There is revealed an earlier and a
deeper hostility than the petty pretext. At last we
find it as difficult to imagine peace as once to anticipate
war. The state of war has rapidly become normal in
North America. The spark dropped on the sun burnt
prairie has filled the horizon with fire, and one sees
no outlet—not a break in the wall of flame. War,
having now ravaged Eastern Virginia, will either be
continued under much greater disadvantages to
the Federal side in the Carolinas, or on the com-
paratively unexhausted soil of Pennsylvania. On
either side victory only entails a greater distance
from the basis of operations. Meanwhile, there
has started into sudden life a military class ;
men who can do nothing but fight, and who have
no sooner spent their pay than they take the
bounty. There are now, on either side, a host of
Generals and men who hope soon to show them-
selves better Generals than any yet tried. There is
an aristocracy said to be created by the war, con-
tractors and manufacturers of all the things wanted
for this most consumptive and spendthrift of wars.
Everybody is said to be enriched by the war, and no
doubt many thousands pray that it may last their
time. The old buccaneering spirit is thoroughly
aroused, and the sea now vies with the land in sud-
den productiveness and the ready prize. Glory,
money, power, distinction, all that dazzles the
crowd is now flung about broadcast. We do not
hear a single protest against the war on the Federal
side on the ground of its private and public injuries,
for any body who can speak thinks himself the
better for it. If the tide of war roll north-
ward, we shall hear another story ; but then pas
sions will come to reinforce selfishness. If it be
the turn of the Federals to see their cities besieged
and bombarded, their homesteads ravaged, their
harvests destroyed, and their fair country made
a desert, they will find revenge the master im-
pulse. But that revenge they will have to seek
under enhanced difficulties. Nobody can doubt
that they will continue to seek it, but with what
success time alone can show. Disabused as we all
must be of our first hopes as to the early termina-
tion of the war, perhaps we are driven by the force
of reaction to the other extreme. Yet every analogy
justifies the worst fears. We cannot find much fault
with the Federals if they are as long finding out
their mistake as we were 70 years since. Mexico
has been in a stateof civil war, diversified by foreign
interference, for more than 40 years. Our own
Wars of the Roses may be considered to have lasted
30 years, as also did the great German war of opi-
nion. From the division of the Roman Empire
its territory was for several centuries the scene of
an almost incessant struggle between the eo called
northern " barbarians" and the more settled in-
habitants of the South. There is much to be said
for the rather gloomy anticipation that North
America is beginning her Middle Ages, and that,
with a new variety of manners and forms, she will
follow the successive stages of European progress,
some fif tern hundred years behind. What is there
to make peace ? There is no third Power to inter-
vene at the happy juncture and mercifully compel
the vanquished to accept the best terms. Both belli-
gerents have been taught to regard us as aliens and
intruders. Hitherto the two sides have been singu
larly balanced, for if numbers and money nave been
on one side, personal strength, generalship, and na-
tional sentiment have been on the other. Our old
history tells us that the latter always constitutes the
winning side, and it is at least difficult to conceive
that they will in this case be the characteristics of
losers. The Americans themselves are beginning to
look forward very tar, with a complacency strangely
It variance with their first feelings. There are
Federalists who see that it will take at !east twenty
years to exterminate the Confederates, but who are
prepared to spend twenty years in that ruinous mis-
sion, ins smuch as it will take at least thirty years
to bring the North to consent to disunion, or any
peace based on separation. This certainly implies a
cruel idea of human existence, and the objects for
which this fair earth was created. It is admitted that
so far as regards personal suffering the prospect is as
gloomy for one side as the other. Both North and
South are to perish ; but as the North, it is said, has
the longer tail, in its continual immigration
and its populous interior, it will have still a remnant
when nothing at all is left of the other combatants.
Nor is this simply the ferocity of an antagonist who
is content to perish himself if he can drag the
other down with him. There is calculation as
well as feeling in the prophecy of a universal
wreck. If this secession be acquiesced in, others
will rapidly follow, and there will be East and West
as well as North and South. It is the mountain,
not rent in twain, but shivered into fragments,
which excites the greatest horror in the American
mind. One missile has " starred" the brittle fabric
into fragments, and the American cannot see his
own loved image in any one of them. To the Eu-
ropean eye this is not so intolerable a result. We
are taught to consider the division of this continent
into more than a dozen considerable States, besides
a host of small ones, the best thing that could have
happened to it. We never cease to congratulate
ourselves that the Roman Empire broke up, that
Charlemagne's scheme of universal empire died with
himself, that all the attempts made to weld England
and France into one monarchy were finally fruit-
less, and that Napoleon's gigantic enterprise recoiled
on his own head. Of course, such disappointments
are intolerable to the authors of these grand ideas.
It requires some philosophy to bear being beaten by
" rebels" and " invaders;" and loyal Englishmen
were very unhappy in 1782, as French Imperialists
were in 1814. No nation can see its unity broken,
or its frontier contracted, with a good grace. But
the event generally shows that no territorial ar-
rangements answer so well as those which best re-
present the wishes and character of the inhabitants,
and that if a number of people sufficient to stand
alone and make a State wish to do so, it is best to
let them go. It is their matter more than ours, for
it concerns their life and only our pride. If they
are still held to the terms of some charter or cousti-

tution which they have long outgrown, and are re-
tained rather as subjects than fellow-citizens, the
only result will be a triumph to the common foe,
and a final calamity, in which there will be but few
to suffer defeat, and scarcely more to enjoy the
barren triumph.
POST.—We yesterday endeavoured to state the
character and terms of the settlement which was
made in 1852 for the succession of the Duchies of
Holstein and Lauenburg, as well as of the rest of
the Danish empire. We then showed that the order
of succession was arranged with the concurrence of
the five Great Powers, as well as of Sweden and of
Denmark herself. By the agreement of all these
Powers, all the dominions of Frederick VII.,
whether as King of Denmark or as Duke of Hol-
stein and Lauenburg, were to pass to the Prince
Christian, now King Christian IX. ; and, so far at
least as this recent and European sanction is con-
cerned, the right of King Christian to the Duchies
of Holstein and Lauenburg is as good as his right
to the kingdom of Denmark, of which Schleswig
ais
t
a part. Now, this is as clear a treaty right as ttlte
on which the limits of almost any modern
aS
depend. The recognition of certain rights
in
shmpe n
ar-
ticular line, even as the creation and been
to the five Great Powers, because the
voice
oftbd
of a given territory, has commonly
the
vtthie
s
five Great Powers is practically
conacaltus aideot s.
to I
course which Europe in general m
by just such a treaty
thadt King Leopold holds the
Crowno the crown of Belgium is
n
lgeisusinh i; an
s that the Dukes of Coburg
and
n and Weim,r were not invited to
a whit ofa i thenßg eel
the Conference of 1832 which defined the indepen-
dence and neutrality of the Belgian kingdom, and
the rights and conditions of the Belgian succession.
It is vain, therefore, for certain petty States to
plead the want of a universal adherence to the
Treaty of 1852, which defined the Danish succes-
sion, and which has obtained also the tacit assent
of all those States which were not parties to it
during the last eleven years. To the pretence that
the Federal Diet itself was not a concurring party
to this treaty, it is sufficient to point out that the
two leading Powers of the German Confederation
were parties to it, and that Hanover, Saxony,
and Wurtemberg subsequently acceded to it. How
eau a few of the minor States of Germany act with-

out the support of Austria and Prussia ? and hovl
can Austria and Prussia dishonour the treaty to
which they are committed ? The second pretest
which has been set up in support of the pretensions
of the Duke of Augustenberg is one which, if car-
ried out elsewhere, would be inconsistent with the
erritorial rights of some of the Powers which ere
apparently disposed to endorse it. It is alleged that
the consent of the Duchies themselves, by popular
vote, was never taken to the settlement that had
been provided in the Treaty of 1852. If this is an
argument which is good upon the Elbe and the
Eider, it is also an argument that !t3 good upon the
Rhine. If Prussia, for example, as the leading
Power of North Germany, and the chief promoter
of the Danish war of 1848, were to hold such a doc-
trine as this, on what ground could she defend her
retention of her own Rhenish provinces, which,
with quite as much reason, France might reclaim,
upon the plea that the settlement of those provinces
by the Treaty of Vienna was never confirmed by
any vote of the Rhenish population ? Moreover,
the usage which Germany pretends to arraign is
one which has been in conformity with public law
for a far longer period than the Vienna settlement;
of 1815. The claims of Austria to interfere in the
affairs of Italy were based in the main on the stipu-
lations of the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, wt.ich
settled on the House of Austria the reversion to the
succession of the Italian Duchies—a settlement
which no one ever disputed on the ground that a
plebiscite of those Duchies had not been taken at
the time. Neither were the appropriations of Prus-
sia at the expense of Saxony, nor the mediatiaation
of certain petty princes within the Confederation,
attended by the formula of a popular sanction..
Thus, then, we observe that the territorial rights
both of the German States, and also of Austria and
Prussia, beyond the limits of the Confederation are
built up in great measure on the very principles
wnich Germany, to a greater or less extent, is now
endeavouring to repudiate to the prejudice of Den-
mark. In the meantime, however, indications are not
wanting that North Germany in general is endea-
vouring to slide by some dishonourable pretext out
of its obligations. The Prussian journals, both po-
pular and semi-official, breathe very much the
same language. One of them even pretends that
Austria and Prussia are no longer bound by their
engagements with the rest of the great Powers, on
the ground that Denmark has not fulfilled its obli-
gations to the Duchies ; as though the settlement of
the succession in 1852 had been conditional and not
positive and absolute ! Another journal, the Na,
tional Gazette of Beriir, argues Inat the treaty of
1852 has expired ; but without any further succees
than the exhibition of a readiness to perpetrate an
untruth for the sake of a policy. A third newspaper
actually tells us of Prussian preparations for war
both by sea and land. But we yet hope that this is
not the real attitude of the Prussian Government
itself ; and, in spite of the undoubted popularity of
a crusade against Holstein and Schleswig among
(tie German people, neither they nor the Federal
Diet can do much harm without the concurrence of
Austria and Prussia. An attempt to support by
arms the pretensions of Prince Frederick of
Augustenberg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, by
the German Diet, would be equivalent to a war for
the Danish succession, to the duration and to th e
scope of which no limits could at its outset be•
placed. The famous war of the Swedish succession
lasted for sixty years, and the combatants contrived
to embroil nearly all Europe in their cause. Mean-
while it appears that the extreme section of the
Holstein Diet have resolved to assemble at Kiel in
spite of the prohibition of the Danish Government,
with the object of soliciting the assistance of Federal
Germany against their lawful Sovereign, according
to the settlement of 1852. The Danish Govern-
ment will probably know how to deal with an act
of treason against Christian IX. But there is no
doubt that, whether this meeting be dispersed or
not, it will be used as a handle by the allies of the
Prince of Augustenberg, with whom the section of
the Holstein Diet are probably in collusion. If;
however, as we have no doubt, Denmark knows how
to hold her own, the Western Powers will be ready
to protect her from an infraction of the Treaty of
1852, which settles the succession of the whole
Danish empire upon the present monarch, Christian
IX., and which they are themselves under an obli-
gation to uphold.