The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-26 00:00:00

you his ideas on the subject in question. It has
been considered with seriousness, resulting from the
reflection that the people of France are known to be
faultless sharers with the American nation in the

misfortunes and calamities of our unhappy civil
war. Nor do we on this any more tian on other

occasions forget the traditional friends ip of the two

countries, which we unhesitatingly believe has in-

spired the counsels that M. Drouyn de Lhuys has
imparted. He says—' The Federal Government does

not despair, we know, of giving more active impulse
to hostilities.' And again he remarks—' The pro-
traction of the struggle, in a word, has not shaken

he confidence of the Federal Government in the

definitive success of its efforts.' These passages

seem to me to do unintentional injustice to the lan-
guage,
whether confidential or public, in which this
Government has constantly spoken on the subject
of the war. It certainly has had and avowed only
one purpose—a determination to preserve the inte-
grity of the country. So far from admitting any
laxity of effort or betraying any despondency, the
Government has, on the contrary, borne itself
cheerfully in all vicissitudes with unvarying confi-
dence in an early and complete triumph of the na-
tional cause. Now, when we are in a manner invited
by a friendly Power to review the twenty-one
months' history of the conflict, we find no occasion
to abate that confidence through which in an alterna.
tion of victories and defeats, as is the appointed inci-
dent of war, the land and naval forces of the United
States have steadily advanced, reclaiming from the
insurgents the ports, forts, and posts which they had
treacherously seized before the strife actually began,
and even before it was seriously apprehended. So
many of the States and districts which the insur-
gents included in the field of their projected exclu-

sive slaveholding dominion have already been re-
established under the flag of the Union that they
now retain only the States of Georgia, Alabama, and
Texas, with half of Virginia, half of North Carolina,
two-thirds of South Carolina, half of Mississippi, and

one-third respectively of Arkansas and Louisiana.

The National forces hold even this small territory

in close blockade and siege. This Government, if

required, does not hesitate to submit its achieve-
ments to the test of comparison, and it maintains
that in no part of the world, and in no times, an-
cient or modern, has a nation, when rendered all
unready for combat by the enjoyments of 80 years
of almost unbroken peace, so quickly awakened at
the alarm of sedition, put forth energies so vigorous
and achieved successes so signal and effective as
those which have marked the progress of this con-
test on the part of the Union.
"M. Drouyn de Lhuys, I fear, has taken other

light than the correspondence of this Government for
his guidance in ascertaining its temper and finances.
He has probably read of divisions of sentiment
among those who hold themselves forth as organs of
public opinion here, and has given to them an undue
importance. It is to be remembered that this is a
nation of 30,000,000, civilly divided into 41 States
and territories which cover an expanse hardly less
than Europe; that the people are a peaceful demo-
cracy, exercising everywhere the utmost freedom of
speech and suffrage ; that a great crisis necessarily
produces vehement as well as profound debate,
with sharp collisions of individual, local, and sec-
tional interests, sentiments, and conviction,:and
that this heat of controversy is increased by the
intervention of .speculations, interests, prejudices,
and passions from every other part of the civilised
world. It is, however, through such debates that
the agreement of the nation upon any subject

is habitually attained, its resolutions formed, and
its policy established. While there has been much
difference of popular opinion and favour concerning
the agents who shall carry on the war, the princi-
ples on which it shall be waged, and the means
with which it shall be prosecuted, M. Drouyn de
Lhuys has only to refer to the statute-book of Con-
gress and the Executive ordinance, to learn that
that the national activity has hitherto been, and
yet is, as efficient as that of any other nation, what•
ever its form of government, ever was under cir-
cumstances of equally grave import to its peace,
safety, and welfare. Not one voice has been raised
anywhere, out of the immediate field of the insur-
rection, in favour of foreign intervention or media-
tion, or arbitration, or of compromise with the re-
linquishment of one acre of the national domain, or
the surrender of even one constitutional franchise.
At the same time it is manifest to the world that
our resources are yet abundant, and our credit ade-
quate to the existing emergency.
" What M. Drouyn de Lhuys suggests is that
this Government shall appoint Commissioners to
meet on neutral ground Commissioners of the insur-
gents. He supposes that in the conferences to be
thus held reciprocal complaints could be discussed,
and, in place of the accusations which the North
and the South now mutually cast upon each other,
the conference would be engaged with discussions
of the interests which divide them. He assumes
further that the Commissioners would seek, by
means of well ordered and profound deliberations,
whether separation is an extreme that can no longer
be avoided, or whether the memories of a common
existence, the ties of every kind which have made
of the North and the South one whole federate
State, and have borne them on to so high a degree
of prosperity, are not more powerful than the causes
hich have placed arms in the hands of the two po-
pulations.' The suggestion is not an extraordinary
one, and it may well have been thought by the
Emperor of the French, in the earnestness of
his benevolent desire for the restoration
of peace, a feasible one. But when M. Drouyn
de Lhuys shall come to review it in the light in
which it must necessarily be examined in this
country, I think he can hardly fail to perceive that
it amounts to nothing less than a proposition that
while this Government is engaged in suppressing
an armed insurrection, with the purpose of main-
taining the constitutional national authority and
preserving the integrity of the country, it shall
enter into diplomatic discussion with the insurgents
upon the questions whether that authority shall
not be renounced, and whether the country shall
not be delivered over to disunion, to be quickly
followed by ever-increasing anarchy.
"If it were possible for the Government of the
United States to compromise the national authority
so far as to enter into such debates, it is not easy to
perceive what good results could be obtained by
them. The Commissioners must agree in recom-
mending either that the Union shall stand or that
it shall be voluntarily dissolved, or else they must
leave the vital question unsettled to abide at least
the fortunes of the war. The Government has not
shut out knowledge of the present temper any more
than of the past purposes of the insurgents. There
is not the least ground to suppose that the control-
ling actors would be persuaded at this moment, by
any arguments which a National Commissioner
could offer, to forego the ambition that has im-
pelled them to the disloyal position they now are
occupying.
"Any commissioner who should be appointed by
those actors, or through their dictation or influence,
must enter the conferences imbued with the spirit
and pledged to the personal fortunes of the insur-
gent chiefs. The loyal people in the insurrectionary
States would be unheard, and any offer of peace by
this Government on the condition of the mainten-
ance of the Union must necessarily be rejected. On
the other hand, as I have already intimated, this Go-
vernment has not the least thought of relinquishing
the trust which has been confided to it by the
nation, under the most solemn of all political sanc-
tions ; and if it had any such thought, it would
have still abundant reason to know that peace, pro.
posed at the cost of dissolution, would be imme-
diately, universally, and indignantly rejected b 5
the American people. It is a great mistake that
European statesmen make if they suppose this
people are demoralised. Whatever, in case of an
insurrection, the people of France, or Great Britain,
or Switzerland, or of the Netherlands, would do to
save their national existence, no matter how the
strife
might be regarded by or affect foreign na-
tions, just so much, and certainly no less, the people
of the United States will do, if necessary, to save
for the common benefit the region which is bounded
by the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and by the
shores of the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico,
together with the free and common navigation of
the Rio Grande, 'Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi,
Ohio, St. Lawrence, Hudson, Delaware, Potomac,