The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-05 00:00:00

siders such a result seems unattainable, and it would be at
once rejected were it not for the confessedly large numbers
already employed in attendance on the Federal army. It is
clear that refugees thus enrolled in the service of the North
will not involve, in attendance upon them, the usual pro-
portion of women, children, and infi,rm ; but we might
perhaps estimate at 500,000 the number of negroes thrown
upon the Federal Government as a direct consequence of
services in the field, if the enlistment of negroes should
really be carried out upon so large a scale. We know the
device by which Mr. Lincoln last year sought to meet the
difficulty which he saw looming in the future. As he
looked upon the freed negroes in the district of Columbla,
and as he heard by every mail of the contrabands with the
army of the Potomac, at Port Royal, and at Vicksburg, ho
conceived the brilliant notion of exporting every black to
some promised land in Central America, The scheme was
a mere expression of hopeless weakness, life our oft-men-
tioned plan of removing the Irish difficulty by a submer-
sion for a few hours of the Green Island in the Atlantic;
but it gave occasion to a speech in which Mr. Lincoln
expounded to congregated negroes the unconquerable
dislike they aroused in every American breast. The
cynical frankness of the avowal, and the humorous re-
quest to the negroes to take themselves off, awoke won-
dering laughter in England; but the scheme itself, it is
needless to add, fell stillborn, and has never since been heard
of. The difficulty, however, has since then enormously in-
creased, and it is not difficult to understand the reasons
which actuated the Secretary of War in the beginning of
this year, when he appointed a commission of inquiry to
examine and report on the pressing question—What was to
be done with the freed negroes ? The commission appointed
by the American Government to examine this question of
the freed men may have been wisely chosen, but we confess
to having doubts of it when we see at the head of its three
members the name of Mr. Robert Dale 0 wen. Our acquaint-
ance with that gentleman as the evangelist of Spiritualism,
fails to satisfy is of his capabilities of investigating evidence
and discriminating causes, and can only hope that he had
able coadjutors in Mr. James M'Kaye and Mr. Samuel G.
Howe. Their report, which has just been published, 'bating
an occasional tendency to American tall talk, is, on tha
whole, sober and reasonable. It opens with a frank exami-
nation of the negro's vices; his lax notions of property, of
truth, and of the marriage relation—all, however, springing
directly from the slave system of the South ; and proceeds
to a report on his value as a military labourer. It is on his
willingness to work that the future well-being of the negro
and the success of any Government organisation on his be-
half depend ; and the report of the commission is, as far as
it goes, very favourable. Major-General Dix, in his evi-
dence, declared that the military labour furnished by the
refugees under him was a full equivalent for the rations
and wages which they, their wives, and children received ;
and Brigadier-General Saxton, Military Governor of the
Department of the South, who had about 18,000 refugees
under his care, said, " The coloured people here have been
no expense to the Government. They have received a good
many articles of clothing from charitable societies at the
North; but the balance of credit, I think, is largely in fa-
vour of the negroes." The work, however, which is thus
done under military supervision, would probably differ
materially hem the work which would be voluntarily ac-
complished. Our own experience in the West Indian
Islands is that, except at Barbadoes, where the population
is so great that the negroes must either work or starve, no
wages will induce them to do more than procure the neces-
saries of life.