The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-15 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

The South has numbered up the most various and the

most signal victories, and has given rise upon the
battle-flelas to the most illustrious reputations !
The Northern armies, and not those of the South,
have familiarized observers in Europe with the
ignominious fact expressed by the ludicrous word
—Skedaddling! One Federal Commander-in-
Chief after another has been worsted, while General
LEE has held the same post of honour and respon-
sibility over the Confederate forces, un-
interruptedly to this hour, with this only
change, in himself, as the Southern Commander-in-
Chief, that he has been increasing his high repute
all this while as a Great Captain, by the variety and
importance of his warlike achievements. Grouped
about that one central figure of LEE as the Foremost
soldier of the South, Generals like " STONEWALL,'
JACKSON, and like BEAUREGARD, and JOHNSTONE,
and a throng of other brilliant chieftains, have ap-
peared during the progress of the conflict—leaders
with whom the Federals themselves have none, no not
One in any Ray fitted to compete. As MANHATTAN
bas it, the Panther of rebellion in the Confederate
States, has been hunted "up a tree" by the Federal
Government—it is true • but, lo! and behold the
hunter finds his piece, the weapon upon which he
has been relying, not loaded ! He cannot run—or
the Panther will be after him ! He lies down—
and waits ! The Panther waiting, too, probably—
for a spring !

The intelligence which reaches us from New Zea-
land is anything but pacific in its character, and is
not altogether satisfactory. The Maories are still
in a state of great excitement throughout the whole
of the Northern Island, and, from their numbers
and resources, their proceedings cannot be regarded
with indifference. We heard a short time since that
General CAMERCN'S energetic measures had struck
terror to their minds ; that the English soldiers had
occupied the disputed block of ground; and that
the colonists were sanguine as to the results. Now,
however, all seems to be changed for the worse.
We learn from the Australian papers of last month
thet the troops, for some unexplained reason, have
been withdrawn from Tataraimaka, leaving only a
garrison, a circumstance which has given great
encouragement to the natives, who have mustered
in considerable force-5,000 Waikatos having taken
the field. It is rumoured that they have threatened
Auckland, and, what is still more surprising, that
they have captured an English schooner, hoisted
the colours of WIREMU KINGI, and sailed up and
down before Government House by way of bravado.
Unless these accounts are very greatly exaggerated,
it seems strange that our authorities should not act
with more promptitude and vigour. According to
the latest intelligence no fighting had then occurred;
but the Waikatos were busily engaged in entrench-
ing themselves ; while volunteers were on duty at
Auckland, and the Governor had issued a requisi-
tion to the Maories to lay down their arms and
swear allegiance. This may be a necessary form,
but it is certainly not very likely that the Waikatos
will heed it, and it seems singular that they should
be allowed to entrench themselves unmolested.
Their fortifications are not to be despised, for they
have obtained a good idea of throwing up earth-
works, so as to make a formidable resistance. Why
they should be suffered to turn this knowledge to
account if there are men enough in the island to
prevent them is hard to guess, as it is manifest that
the outbreak must be put down with a strong hand,
and that nothing can be hoped from forbearance
and conciliation. The natives misconstrue every
sign of toleration and mercy into an evidence of
fear of provoking them, and this mistake has been
very often committed of late years by our autho-
rities. The savage and relentless cruelty of
PIZARRO has found no imitators in modern times,
but the aborigines have often doubtless been the
victims of harshness and oppression in European
colonies up to a very recent date. The very pre-
sence of the white man, with his knowledge, his
energy, his skill, and his power is prejudicial to the
original race. However few in numbers or scantily
equipped, the settlers are generally regarded with
not unfounded suspicion by the natives, and in their
sense of the justice of this feeling, and our contrition
for the cruelty and greed of other days, many ex-
cellent persons have rushed into the opposite ex-
treme. Conscious of the horrors of a war in which,
however secure onr ultimate success, stray travellers
and outlying settlers are at the mercy of the
natives; conscious, too, of the loss and inconvenience
occasioned to the colony and colonists generally, by
long-pending strife and internecine warfare, they
been so eager to avoid giving provocation that they
have let the Maori perceive that they dreaded war,
power Then lying
gard the natives, ignorant of the vast
in the shadow of their pretentious but
inactive Government, have been ready to avail
themselves of any trifling excuse to endeavour to
regain their pre-eminence in the islands. Some
months since we remember seeing a letter which a
resident in New Zealand had addressed to an Aus-
tralian paper, ie which he expressed the indigna-
tion felt by the colonists at the manner which the
natives were allowed to assume, and the petty
tyranny which they exercised over European
settlers. The writer expressed his conviction that
before long the authorities
would see reason to re-
pent of the line of action they Nver
the insolence of the Maories wasepursuing, since
growing
bounded. Such anticipations have been but utono-
soon verified. However energetically defensive
measures are now being carried on, it is too
late
to to
undo the mischief done by allowing the natives
usurp the power and privileges which they have
hitherto assumed ; but it is all important to
succeed, if possible, in overawing them at
the commencement of hostilities. It was hoped
that the movements of General CAMERON, which
we recorded last month, would have had that effect,

This morning:
This day at Two o'clock 6O

Barometer-30.26.
Wind—S. to S.-W. ; , cloudy.

4-14telltik kaAllto

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPT. 15, 1863.

The clouds that are now looming up from all
quarters beyond the Atlantic, threatening to over-
shadow the Northern States of America with a
darkness ominous of all kinds of disaster, will be
found elsewhere most minutely enumerated and
picturesquely described by MANHATTAN. That
brilliant, but as some cynical readers are disposed
to consider him also, flashy, correspondent of the
Herald and Standard, proves himself, in this last
effective communication of his, to be not only still,
as one may call him, a genuine Yankee JUNIUS,
but, in his power of word painting, a sort of Federal
RUSKIN into the bargain. After his grotesque
fashion, he sketches in, rapidly, in a sort of MINAS'
pen-and-ink drawings, a series of rolling volumes
of clouds, comparable only (in their odd way) to the
cloud-pictures pencilled in glowing colours upon so
many pages of that first wonderful book on "Modern
Painters"—the famous volume originally presented
to the scrutiny of the public, by the then unknown
JOHN RUSKIN, under the titre rather than the nom
de plume of "An Oxford Graduate." The worst of
it is, for his co-Federalists, that the clouds painted
here by MANHATTAN, are essentially different from
all other clouds, according to the old proverb, for
inasmuch as they manifestly have no silver lining
whatever I Lurid, they are, sombre, conflicting,
charged with lightning, stored with thunderbolts,
and lowering up from all directions. The " News"
transmitted now by MANHATTAN from the seat of
war, in the midst of which he—ever vigilantly
watching, and quite frankly reporting upon the
instant, from mail to mail—is compounded from
the same diverse regions, from the initiale of
which the very name of NEWS is made,
according to the felicitous explanation of that
problematical word, according to the old rhyming
epigrammatist :
"North, East, West, South, and the solution's made,
Each Quarter brings account of War and Trade."
Only, the accounts of War predominate now disas-
trously, as they have long done, over those of Trade
in the half serious, half sarcastic, wholly sinister
record of events compiled out yonder in North
Americs by that " cheil" jotting down his
notes with a stick of lunar caustic—MAN-
HATTAN ! One, whose even most hurried
scribblings are luminous, page after page,
as he writes, with a phophorence of irony almost
glittering at times into wit. Hitherto, with all his
blunt out-speaking, whatever the nature or bear-
ing of the truth he has to tell, MANHATTAN has
hardly ever assumed to himself the character of
an Alarmist. Reading him nosy, however, in this
his latest communication, he seems at last fairly
and honestly to come within the category. Not
applying the phrase to him, however, with any
sneering significance latent in it, but simply and
purely as the statement of a fact. MANHATTAN,
in truth, here does quite unmistakeably sound the
alarm. He tells his brother Federals, that the
future looks black enough before them, in whatever
direction they may look for comfort. Whether to
the Army of the Potomac, or to the assault upon
Charleston ! Whether to the calling out of the
white recruits in the North, by order of Mr. LIN-
COLN, or to the summons of the black resruits (to the
number of 500,000) in the South, by order of Mr.
DAVIS ! Looking, as it were, before him and be-
hind him, to the right hand and to the left, MAN •
RATTAN can:see only the dark clouds gathering, and
mustering,
and lowering up' more and more threat-
eningly. Clouds, once—as with so many a tempest
while in preparation--no bigger than a man's hand!
In this instance—the hand of that great Yankee
Tilarplot, Mr. ABRAHAM LINCOLN—in old times
a splitter of rails, now a
splitter of
States asunder! Not a mere ordinary political
hair-splitter, mind ! but a render in twain of
Republics. The wonder is that With such a dis-
ruption as has taken place in the sonaetime United
States of America, ever since the evil hour when
Mr. LINCOLN was raised to the Presidential chair,
and was located for the customary term of four

but the unfortunate removal of the great body of

years in that White House, from which he has yet

to "hail" for rather more than one year 0,,,

of those four still remaining to him ! Within

which interval he has, alas! to play out Lis

little game, his wretched little losing game
of misgovernment. The wonder is to us that

with such a disruption, caused mainly by the

_ -
flagrant incapacity of Mr. LINCOLN, the rods
of the American fasces were not separated and
scattered widely apart, directly the bond of Union,
binding them for a time together, bad once been
snapped ! Instead of which—they are clubbed
together, all this while, in two distinct clusters—
there the States of the Federalists, there these of the
Confederates. Only with this discernable, through-
out, upon a comparison of those belligerent powers—
that while the North, in wealth,
intelligence
extent of popu-
lation, in value of commerce, in (so far
as the educated proportion of each community is
concerned), in resources of all kinds, in maritime
armaments, and so forth, enormously surpasses the
South, the South in the long run has held its own
throughout the war the more securely of the two !

TM!? SON, LONDON TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1863,

ould bring it to meetings of that kind it wou 1

be very beneficial in showing the farmers and
labourers its actual workings. He considered it
the " great arm" of agricultural improvement now

in vogue, and just being made conducive to the
cultivation of land by being brought into active
use. Mr. HENLEY concluded his excellent address
by impressing upon his hearers the importance of
their making progress and keeping up with the
spirit of the age in which they lived. "In the race
of life now being run by different classes of the com-
munity," he said that it behoved farmera to use
every means that " skill, energy, and capital"
allowed to make the best of their trade, which
agriculture, after all, must be considered to be. In
the cultivatioa of the earth, steam-power was of
the greatest advantage. Those who have been in
the habit of ranking Mr. HENLEY as one of the old
school who do not approve of change and progress,
must acknowledge that he could not have spoken
out more heartily for improvements, and advised
more strenuously the use of the appliances of
modern science, had he been an out-and-out re-
former of the latest date. He remarked that "in
this world an impetus is required to be given to
everything—nothing will gu of itself ; and certainly
a very great impulse has been given to agriculture
of late years which cannot but be attended with
the most important results." On the whole it may
be considered that the "senior member for Oxford-
shire" spoke to the point, and his speech deserved
the applause with which it was greeted. It was
suited to the occasion, which, as one of the after-
speakers observed, was the only opportunity afforded
to
agrit
e gen et
ur
yl t,urit
farmers,
s s of bringing
and
a bo their
ure
labourers—three"
t_h,r,eteo
together tahs classes--
—a t
least once in the year."