The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TILE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—On Monday, the 27th April, began the
fifth F deral invasion of Virginia. Generals
M'Dowell, M'Clellan, Pope, and Burnside have had
their trial and their failure, their day of populari' y,
and their chill night of neglect and oblivion. It is
now the turn of Gen. Joseph Hooker, and to him his
hopeful country men are looking to redeem their
mililitary fame and avenge them of their enemies.
In the opinion of Gen. Hooker himself they could
not have chosen a more fitting man. The General
has openly or covertly censured the plans of all his.
predecessors, and by intimating his conviction of
their incompetence has insinuated his own far su
perior skill. The President has taken him at his
own valuation of himself, and given him the com-
mand of the chief army of the Republic, and the task
of capturing the enemy's capital. With the first
days of the early summer the army of the Potomac
enters on the campaign, and we shall shortly learn
whether the lofty criticisms of General Hooker on
others were dictated by conscious genius or only by
the restlessness of ambitious mediocritc. The army
which Gen. Hooker commands is supposed to num-
ber about 100,000 men. These, as regards the de-
tails of drill and discipline, are probably equal to
any that the Federals have had or are likely to have.
If two years are not sufficient to make an army it
is not likely to be made at all. The Rappahannock
was crossed, according to the most trustworthy ac-
counts, without any heavy loss, though one letter
speaks of two regiments as having been " cut up,"
and there is a long list of killed and wounded offi-
cers. The crossing was effected near Fredericksburg
at places called Port Royal and Kelly's Fold. In
December Gen. Burnside crossed in the same way
with equal ease, and the exploit was equally trum-
peted forth to the world. For a few days Europe
believed that a Confederate retreat was imminent,
until the news of the Battle of Fredericksburg ex-
plained the military plans of Gen. Lee. A Federal
General has again crossed the Rappahannock, and
we must now expect the battle which is to show
how far the operation has been skilfully con-
ceived. The time must indeed be an anxious one for
the Government of Washington. In spite of the
alleged enthusiasm and pertinacity of the North,
the President and his advisers are aware that the
question of finding men for the vast armies neces-
sary to carry on the war is full of difficulties. The
Northern people will speak, and vote, and march
in procession, and even pay taxes for the preserva-
tion of the Union, but a period is arriving when to
make them shoulder a rifle and fight for it is beyond
the power of statesman or orator. The truth is the
fighting elements which exist in every population,
and which existed more largely in America than
anywhere else, is beginning to be exhausted, and
must be replaced by a class which has no impulse
towards soldiering, and can only be brought into
the service by force or by the temptation of exces-
sive bounties. It seems to be agreed that the
draught which was fixed for the Ist of May can-
not be enforced; and that the President, to whom
a moribund Crongress gave the power of conscrib-
ing the whole population, will no more get his
300,000 whites than the 300,000 negroes whom the
same Legislature desired him to enlist. At this
crisis the old regiments are returning in mass from
the war. The account our correspondent gives of
these men leaving the service in disgust and re-
fusing to be retained in it by any amount of boun-
ties shows a state of things highly ominous to the
Federal Government, more especially as the dis-
content seems to have taken possession of the Irish
and Germans, to whom the Government must look
for most of the new blood which is to be transfused
into the service. When we remember that these
are only the first to abandon the war, and that next
month the time of the nide months' men who were
enlisted at such an extravagant cost last autumn
will begin to expire, there is goon reason to sup-
pose that if General Hooker fare no better than
his predecessors the conquest of the South will be-
come hopeless in the minds of very many who still
cling to it with ali th© tenacity of pride and ambi-
tion.

MORNING POST.—In a large and densely popu-
ated city like London there must ever be a class of
adventurers and swindlers waiting for opportunities
to plunder the unwary. Since the admirable act
for the suppression of gambling-houses, the field of
operation for this class of individuals has fortunately
been much straitened. Card-sharping and skittle-
sharping have been the chief resorts of the limited
capitalists ; but gangs of others, who have been
better able to bide their time, have set themselves
up as sham firms, buying goods by agency with
bills of exchange drawn the one upon the other.
When the time for payment arrives, the firm that
has accepted the bill of exchange is sought after in
vain, while, as a matter of course, the goods that
have been obtained by fraud are found to have been
disposed of at any sacrifice for cash. Among the
many devices that have been resorted to for robbing
the public, we may mention that of the loan-office
swindle. A case which appeared recently in our
columns is only one cf many of the kind which it is
unfortunately the province of this journal, from
time to time, to chronicle. As the case in point
seems to have borne unusually hard upon the victim,
we bring it forward for the purpose of showing how
necessary it is that every one in the present day
should be on their guard against the tricks and
rascalities that abound. A man who had succeeded
in saving a sum of £5O while exercising the profes-
sion of band• master in one of her Majesty's ships,
was anxious to invest his hard-earned gains to the
best advantage, and was caught by an advertisement
which stated that a clerk was wanted in a commer-
cial establishment, which turned out afterwards to
be a loan office, who would receive a good salary,
would require to give as a security a sum of .£5O. It
must be admitted that the hook was baited with some
skill, and, as the result proved, was readily swallowed.
The advertisement having been duly answered,
and a reply received, dated from St. James's-place,
Pall-mall, an interview was fixed to take place.
The victim was made to call at the " office" where
his future services were to be engaged at a weekly
salary of 205., with a commission of one per cent.
upon all loans transacted. Nothing in the way of
detail appears to have been neglected that would
have been likely to arouse feelings of distrust in the
mind of any person anxious to obtain the desired
situation. The window blinds of the office—which
no doubt wore got up to assume an appearance of
age, like the cheap portraits of ancestors that are
manufactured to order—had printed upon them the
imposing title of " Loan, Discount, and Deposit
Bank, established 1849." It was evidently no fault
of the out ward appearance of the establishment
that but little business was transacted within it, for
it appeared in evidence that the applications for
loans were both numerous and frequent, and it must
have been almost enough to have driven the presid-
ing genius of the place frantic with grief to feel
what a thriving business he might have been driv-
ing had he been in possession only of the necessary
capital. The impossibility, however, of transacting
any business of this description without capital,
strange as it may appear, is not altogether an im-
possibility. In the first place, these loan offices
have instituted for their alleged protection a preli-
minary deposit in the shape of two guineas from
each applicant for money, which sum of two guineas
is extracted from the borrower under the name of
an " enquiry fee," for the supposedd-purpose of enab-
ling the firm to ascertain what degree of faith they
may place in the power of the borrower to repay
the money which they may be inclined to advance.
It is evident therefore that where the applications
for loans of money are numerous a handsome in-
come may be derived by this means alone, without
any necessity for an expenditure of capital, and there
appears nothing to prevent this part of the business
continuing to thrive until some dissatisfied appli-
cant should take upon himself the task of exposing
the system of fraud which by such a system is car-
ried on.

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