The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—An ancient rhetorician wrote about
Xerxes that he turned dry land into sea, and sea
into dry land, making a canal through Mount
Athos, and building a bridge across the Hellespont.
The American Republic seems to partake much more
of the violence and extravagance of the Persian
monarch than of the wise counsel and well combined
action of the Federation of Commonwealths which
opposed him. Excited by a tremendous war, and
all the portents of approaching revolution, the ima-
gination of the American Democracy seems to have
run riot. Not satiated with all the destruction
which modern science has enabled mankind to wreak
upon each other, the North has called to its aid the
mighty agencies of nature, and seeks to ruin and
mutilate half a continent in the vain hope to over-
throw or intimidate its inhabitants. In vain has
Nature, after a series of tremendous convulsions,
settled herself down into something like order and
regularity, indenting the coast with bays and har-
bours, at d draining the vast area of a continent
through the agency of enormous rivers. The rage
of man frets against these natural and beneficent
ordinances, just as Xerxes flung fetters into the sea
anti lashed the winds that wore rebellious to his
commands. By the aid of the " stone fleet" the
United States have blocked up the entrance to seve-
ral much frequented harbours, and no R, with less
labour and far greater success, they seek to drown
the land which they cannot conquer. It is calcu-
lated that, by the action of the Federals in cutting
the levees, or dams, which keep the Mississippi in
its course as it runs through the level lands towards
the sea, a district as large as Scotland has been
drowned in the State of Mississippi, and 5,000
square miles in the State of Louisiana. It is
curious to remark how utterly paralyzed for the
purposes of legitimate war are the very persons
who are anxious to wage it with such extremity
of ferocity and fury. The Army of the
Potomac remains inactive; nay, there is much
reason to believe that Washington owes her
safety at the present moment to prudential and
political, rather than to military considerations,
and that the capital of the Northern Confede•
racy though able to effect the easy and fruitless
crime of drowning whole provinces by breaking
down the bank of a mighty river, is incapable of
defending her archives, her public buildings, and
the teat of her Government. The promised ven-
geance against Cherie-don languishes and evaporates
in empty threats. Savannah, taken with so much
ease by the British in the War of Irdependence, re-
sists firmly and effectually. Port Hudson has re-
pulsed an attack, and the Mississippi itself has
turned traitor, and by way of set-off for the inunda-
tion of Southern territory, has filled up and rendered
useless the canal which was to carry the Federal
gunboats to the other side of Vicksburg. The Con-
federates threaten Fort Donelson, and a new inva-
sion of Kentucky is seriously apprehended. Under
these gloomy auspices the month of March has
closed, and the period will shortly arrive when the
summer heats will again lend their powerful co•
operation to the cause of the North. No one can
presume to say what are the reverses and vicissi-
tudes which fortune, not yet satisfied with the suf-
ferings of the American people, has in store for
either party. But the information which has just
reached us makes it abundantly evident, if it were
not so before, that the choice henceforth for the
South is between victory and extermination, for the
North between peace and ruin—ruin certain if the
war be protracted, as it easily may be, to a point
which.will leave the President without a revenue
and without an army— ruin still more certain and
complete if the wicked aspirations of fanatical hate
be accomplished, and the Central Government, al-
ready triumphant over the liberties of the North,
shall obtain as the prize of success the unenviable
duty of holding down, under the heel of military
despotism, the struggling and palpitating remains
of what were once the Southern States.

POST.—The defeat and flight of the recently ap-
pointed Dictator of Poland appears to have exercised
but little effect on the progress or the insurrection.
From some correspondence which has recently been
published, it would seem that, almost immediately
after the outburst of the revolt, the Provisional
Government nominated the exiled General Micros-
lawaki to be Dictator of Poland. This high office
the latter, however, on patriotic grounds declined to
accept ; or, perhaps it might be more correct to say
that, without declining it, he considered that the
time had not come when, consistently with the in-
terests of the insurrectionary party, he would be
justified in exercising publicly the functions of his
office. In the meanwhile the skill and success of
Marian Langiewicz placed him in the foremost
ranks of the Polish chiefs, and—whether with the
previous sanction of the Provisional Government or
not, is doubtful—he proclaimed himself Dictator_
It is but fair to say that during his brief tenure of
office his authority was recognised by the Com-
mittee of the National Government, which dated its
decrees from Warsaw. To Mieroslawski the as-
sumption of the Dictatorship by Langiewicz gave
much umbrage, and in a communication to the Pro-
visional Government, published some days since, he
did not hesitate to charge Langiewicz with having
usurped an authority to which he had no legitimate
claim. Recent events, however, would seem to
show that Mieroslawski did not confine himself to
empty protests against the acts of one whom he
regarded as having usurped an office which had
been conferred upon himself. It has not been ob-
scurely hinted that, in their desire to crush Langie-
wics, Mieroslawski and his supporters actually com-
municated the movements of that unfortunate
general to the Russian Government. This, how-
ever, we must refuse to credit. We do not believe
that either envy, or what General Mieroslawski
would consider just indignation, would induce him to
endanger the common c ruse in which the insurgents
are engaged for the mere sake of ruining his rival.
Besides, the dispersion of Langiewicz's corps, and
the flight of its leader, may be accounted for without
having recourse to the supposition of treachery on
the part of his seeming friends. l'he Russian gene-
rals had for some weeks been endeavouring to hem
in the Dictator with the insurgents under his com-
mand, and this end they attained by the compara-
tively easy process (considering the magnitude of
the forces placed at their disposal) of cutting off his
retreat on all sides, save by that of the Austrian
frontier. It is, however, notorious that serious
dissensions have arisen amongst those who claim to
direct the course of the insurrection. Without unity
it is needless to say that every effort of the insur-
gents in the field, however brilliant or however suc-
cessful, must prove utterly barren, It may be that
the Poles will fail to establish a Government of their
own choice, but still they might succeed in organis-
ing so strong a resistance to that of the Czar as to
compel the latter to confer upon them a constitu-
tion. • The Russian Emperor seems not disinclined
to make concessions, and is reported to have pro-
posed to accede to the demands of his Polish subjects
as soon as he learned that by the flight of Langie-
wicz a prospect appeared to show itself of putting
a speedy end to the insurrection. It is, however,
not to be supposed that the insurgents would lay
down their arms on the faith of promises which are
not now made for the first time. The Russian Go-
vernment have never shown themselves lenient to
those who in vain endeavoured to subvert their
authority. The Poles have a right to demand
guarantees that faith will be kept with them, and,
in their absence, are justified in securing by their
own prowess such a vantageground as would enable
them to secure the due fulfilment of the engage-
ments into which the Russian Government might
think proper to enter.

MORNING HERALD.--The conviction that the
attempt of the North to force the South back into
the Union is an utterly hopeless one has long been
universal in this country. Every week the wanton
war runs on marks a rise in the tide of destruction.
If we wait much longer there will be very little in
the South to recognise. The Northern generals
cannot win battles, but they have a devilish in-
genuity in destroying all the gifts of God. They
cannot vanquish the Southern armies, but they can
do the deeds by which the meanest scoundrels of
history have sought to immortalise themselves.
They can do wanton and irreparable mischief.
It required no ability to burn the temple of
Ephesus ; mischief is the work to which fools
are handiest. General Grant cannot take
Vicksburg—that was a work which needed
some talent and courage ; but ho could cut the
levees of the Mississippi—just the achievement
to commend itself to a half-witted fellow.
Vast countries lie under water. Enormous tracts of
land admirably adapted to the production of the
comforts and necessaries of life have been made use-
less for generations. The South will not be cowed
by this ruin into surrender; its spirit will rise
higher; its resolve to gain independence will grow
into a bitter and relentless hatred of the scoundrels
who have acted with such foul malignity. The issue
of the contest wtll not be affected by these acts of
Grant, or by any similar atrocities which Federal
commanders, in their despair of success, may perpe
trate. But the country which England will recog-
nise, if this contest is to be continued in this
fashion, will not be the storehouse from which she
has been accustomed to draw the materials of her
industry. Suffering from these wanton depreda-
tions, all the results of long battles with the elements,
all their victories over the forest and the swamp
annihilated, the Confederate States will be in no
condition to supply England with cotton or to con-
sume English manufacturers. They will be in no
mood to trade freely with her. When she could
have helped them without risk to heraelf she choose
to coolly condemn theni to a struggle of the end of
which she was assured. Recognition when the
North, satisfied that it has done all the destruction I

that its devilish malignity could suggest, has re
tired from the contest, is a mockery for which the
Southern people will give no thanks. The recog-
nition of the Southern Confederacy by England and
France would avert the otherwise certai.. ruin of
the cotton industry of Europe, and save for the
world a vast store of comforts and necessaries which
once destroyed can only by slow and painful labour,
if ever, be replaced.

LONDON GAZETTE—Yesterday.

ADMIRALTY, MARCH 28.

With reference to an Order in Council the following
appointments have this day taken place :
Royal Marine Artillery—General Charles Menzies, K.H.,
to be Colonel.

Royal Marine Light 'lnfantry—Lieutenant-General Sir
Samuel Burdon Ellis, K.C.8., to be Colonel of the Ports-
mouth Division ; Lieutenant General Thomas 'Nearing to
be Colonel of the Plymouth Division; Lieutenant-General
Henry Ivatt Delacombe to be Colonel of the Chatham Di,
vision • Major-General John Alexander Philips to be
Colonel of the Woolwich Division.
WAR-OFFICE, MARCH 31.
The Queen has been graciously pleased to give orders for
the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Purves
Phayre, of the Bengal Staff Corps, Chief Commissioner of
British Burmah, to be an Ordinary Member of the Civil
Division of the Third Clres, or Companions of the Most
Honourable Order of the Bath.
FOREIGN-OFFICE, MARell 25.
_ _

The Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint John
Gordon Kennedy, Esq., now Attache to her Majesty's
Legation at Washington, to be a Third Secretary in her
Majesty's Diplomatic Service.