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

THE SUN. LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 5, 1863

hool education of the people
the vaunted common En i
chance
noa
nreeea l loyr
ug
eo
eoodiaai
nn
;and
ig,
rr
eesaitd
ema at n;
thhaadt
Pt
he eople; remotest that
odeparasctsiocoanl raessultthse;ythwactrathe
14,b ofoyrsg,
otthrtohweinr
school
of the Constitution and history of their
lrnalearning in the business of the shop, and were
intoas
led
t oot
own country as of every other; that their course of
reading was confined to the newspapers; that the
mostn
popolar of these were of the lowest class, and
pa
dered to the most vulgar prejudices; and that
the education of the women was as defective as that
of the men, and consisted in the largest amount of
novel reading, with scarcely a smattering of any
kind of useful knowledge. All these things, and
many more such, an anti-English Englishman might
learn if he had a mind to study them. Whether he
afterwards returned to England with correcter no-
' lions both of his own country and America would
' depend upon the honesty with which he entered
into the inquiry, and the capacity of his mind to
profit by experience. Certain it is that he would be
a very tame and cold-blooded Englishman indeed if
he were not goaded into someth:ng like patriotism
by the insults levelled against his country, by all
manner of men, on all manner of occasions,—unless
I he became a philosopher, and despised a vindictive-
ness of hatred which he was unable to account for.

London ; City of London, Hendry, I Liverpool. 27—The
Contest, Amy, Liverpool. 30—Th 9 Floating Light,
Starkie, Liverpool. Sept. 3—The Maldon, Scott, Liver-
-1001. 4—The Glee Maiden, Marshall, Liverpool. 5--The
British India, llattrich, Liverpool.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SPECTATOR.--There seems to be something; of a
fatality about the appointments of the Whigs,
Every now and then they fill up a vacancy in a way
which raises public expectation very high. "Now,"
people say, "estates, degrees, and offices are no
longer to be derived corruptly—clear honour is to
be purchased only by merit." And then forthwith
the -Whigs get quietly together and perpetrate a
snug little piece of party patronage, which, if it
does not quite deserve the ugly name of job, is,
nevertheless, sure to be called so by a public which
has been stimulated to this inconvenient height of

public spirit. We think something of this sort has
happened recently. There can be no doubt that
Mr. Baron Wilde was appointed to the post of
Judge Ordinary because he was thought the best
man for the post. He had never sat in Parliament,
and though he enjoyed the highest reputation in
the profession, he was almost unknown out of it.
The vacant post was one which the Attorney-
General might have accepted, for the Judge Ordi-
nary takes precedence of the puisne Judges, and no
one, therefore, could Lave called it a descent. It ie,
however, understood that the Chancellor did not so
much as offer it to him. This was the perfect-
purity system. Then it was necessary to fill up the
vacancy left by the promotion of Baron Wilde in
the Court of Exchequer, and unhappily Lord West-
bury has not been able to maintain himself on his
flying wing at the same lofty elevation above the
vulgar assembly and damp soil of Westminster;
and consequently in some quarters there is a rather
unjust outcry of another Whig job. For six weeks
the puisne judgeship has been vacant. During this
period it has been more than once offered to the
Attorney-General, who had frequently refused a
similar post before. At last it is filled up, and at
the same moment the Attorney resigns. The reason
given is " Of course that is a sufficient
reason, and we do not doubt that it is one of his
reasons. But when a lower post, which he had con-
stantly declined, is pressed upon an Attorney who
was not so much as offered the higher one, which was

vacant only a week or two before, he may not un-
naturally regard it as a hict that the Government
does not value his services very highly. We do not
say that this was so, but it looks like it, and we
must say that if it was so, there would be some

ground for the Attorney-General's dissatisfaction.
There was at least as good a chance that he would
have made an adequate Judge Ordinary as that Mr.
Sergeant Pigott will make an adequate Baron of
the Exchequer; and one does not see why the pub-
lic might not have run the risk just as well in the
one case as the other. If ill health is really the

cause of Sir William Atherton'sresignation, we can

only hope that he may speedily be restored to active
life. We have said that the outcry against Ser-
.. .

geant Pigott is a little unjust, but it must be con-
fessed that at the present moment the Court of Ex-
chequer is rather in want of a strong judge. The
loss of Baron Wilde is a very heavy loss, and his

colleagues who remain cannot, for one reason or
another, be considered as rising above the judicial
average. Either SERGEANT SuEE or Mr. Mellish
would have imparted more strength to the Court ;
the latter as being the man who has succeeded to
the position which Baron Wilde occupied at the bar
—the former because, as we ventured to point out
some weeks back, his age, ills position as senior
Queen's sergeant, his large practice, and high char-
acter alike place him at the head of the common-law
bar. But the merits of the one are only known to
the profession, and those of the other are over-
balanced by the fact that he is a Roman Catholic.
True that he is no Ultramontane, and has more

than once shown himself independent of ecclesiasti-
cal dictation—but Exeter Hall has a loud voice,

and mere professional merits cannot be expected to
outweigh the influence which Lord Shaftesbury
enjoys with the stepfather of his wife. So the dig-
nity falls to a good Whig, whose family has made
Reading a Whig borough, and who always has
voted, as his brother before him voted, steadily for
the Whigs. But still the truth must be spoken.
The appointment of Sergeant Pigott is a fair ave-
rage appointment. He is in the rank of the Queen's
counsel, and has a fair share of business both on cir-

cuit and in town. He may fairly be reckoned on to
make as good a judge as many of his colleagues, and
it has by no means turned out to be true as a rule that
great advocates always make the best judges. The
habit of partizanship is one which it is hard to throw
off at an advanced period of life. A colder temper
and more impartial judgment have often put good
abilities on a level with very superior intellects, at
all events, in the discharge of ordinary judicial
duties. To politicians, however, the vacancy caused
by the resignation of the Attorney-General will
afford a greater field for speculation. That Sir R.
Palmer should succeed him is a matter of course,
and, in this instance, the ordinary routine promotes
the man who, whether as a politician or a lawyer,
has the best right to promotion. Once again, the
Attorney-General will be, by common consent, the
head of the profession.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—The tide of success seems
to have turned once more in favour of the South.
The decisive defeat of Rosencranz by Bragg threa-
tens to undo all the work of the Federal armies in
Tennessee; and Burnside, far from being able to
repair the disaster, appears to have placed his
troops in a position from which it may be very diffi-
cult to move them with safety. It is not to be
wondered at that the Northern press should turn
against its rulers in the hour of so unexpected and
serious a reverse, and should exclaim against the
incompetency of those who have thrown away so
many of the fruits of the patience and perseverance
of the North. The minuteness and infelicity of
the interference exercised by the Csbinet of Wash-
ington is illustrated by the revelation that the abor•
tive expedition of Gen. Franklin was undertaken
by orders from head-quarters, in defiance of the
opinion of Gen. Banks. And certainly the misfor-
tunes of the Federals do not come singly. On every
side and at every point there is success more or less
for the Confederates, and some repulse or dis-
comfiture of their adversaries. The siege of
Charleston is said to have been suspended ; and
the suspension of the aiege, when the advent of au-
tomnal storms makes every moment precious, is a
confession of present failure which will render the
ultimate capture of the city far more difficult and
tedious, if not impossible. The intelligence from
the Mississippi is little less discouraging to the
North, for not only does the river appear to be
closed to commerce by guerillas, but fortified points
are again betng occupied by the Confederates, and
the advance of thelNorthern troops into the country
of the Red River on the western side of the Mis-
sissippi has been checked by two serious defeats.
The North will be scarcely less surprised than
Europe is to find the Confederates, after all their
losses and in spite of the severe strain which a two
years' war has placed on their resources and num-
bers, still springing up at the most remote points of
their enormous territories, defiant, viotorious, and
in possession of forces which even have the supe
riority of numbers over their opponents. Both
combatants are fully aware of the importance
of the crisis which will arise in the ensuing spring.
In May, 1864, the three years' volunteers, forming
the greater part of the Federal army, will be en-
titled to their discharge. The recent draft, though
it has brought few conscripts into the ranks, has
produced, at an enormous expense, a considerable
number of recruits in the character of substitutes;
but even if the President succeeded in raising
300,000 men, a newly-enlisted army would be far
less efficient than the force which has been trained
by two or three years of war. The new levies are,
as they arrive in the field, incorporated with the
existing regiments, which will consequently once
more be reduced to skeletons if the old soldiers
claim their discharge in May. Even if the Govern-
ment devises means of overcoming the difficulty, the
Confederates will in the meantime be encouraged
to persevere in their resistance, and the lapse of
seven months affords ample scope for accidents and
changes of fortune. They will certainly not be
alarmed by the strange suspension of the habeas
corpus through the whole extent of the United
States. The expansion or contraction of constitu-
tional liberties in America concerns foreigners as
little as the physical alternations of frost and thaw,;
but it may be permitted to remark that a nation
which describes itself through a thousand speaking
trumpets as the most prosperous and united in the
world might be supposed capable of governing
itself by some less stringent machinery than the
rude contrivance of martial law. The Confede-
rates, who are more immediately interested in the
condition of their implacable enemies, will pro-
bably conjecture that Mr. Lincoln's proclamaZion
admits the failure of the first draft, and prepares
the way for the enforcement of a second. It will
be an amusing circumstance if the corporation of
New York once more buys off its unwilling con-
tingent, at a price which 'eau eearcely fail to he in-
eereesed by the rising market for substitutes. The
republication of Mr. Seward's circular to the consuls
once more exemplifies the perverse mistake or
misrepresentation which pervades all American
speeches and writings. The Secretary of State,
addressing, through the pOTIS;41:3? the cgmmersial
classes of Europe, or rather of ,ngland--proposes
to convince them that the shortest way to arrive at
peace is " to withdraw support and favour frets, the
insurgents, and to leave the adjustment of our
domestic controversies exclusively with the people
of the United States." As it can hardly be supposed
that Mr. Seward hopes to cenvinu the builders of
iron ships who may have accepted orders from the
Confederates, he must be understood to insinuate
that the mercantile body in general has not left the
adjustment of American controversies to those
whom they properly concern. II is utterly absurd
to say that English traders ha le had other the
will or $llO prow to influence in the smallest de.