The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-24 00:00:00

TILE Cr

_gm WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Times' Correspcmclent.)
CLIFTON HOUSE,
FALLS, Aug. 8.
To eFe ape the horrors of the " heated term" the
American phrase for the Dog-days, which have
this year burst upon the land into the tropical se-
verity of 96 degrees in the shade, I have betaken
myselif for a iew days to the pleasant purlieus of
Niamira Falls. Had I merely wished to leave be-
hind me the suffocating streets and broiling pave-
ments of New York, where the victims of sun
stroke during the past week have amounted to
more than 130, of whom upwards of 50 were immo-
lated in one day, and where a worse than Egyptian
plague of mosquitoes renders life all but unendur
able, I might have remained on the American side
of the great cataract. Here, with the thermometer
at 76, with no insoct in the air more noxious than
a bee or a butterfly, with windows facing the most
magnificent waterfall in the world, filling the eye
with the colour and the ear with the murmur of
cool waters, I might have found repose and comfort;
but as, in addition to they physical pleasures, I
wished to enjoy the moral satisfaction of treading
upon a soil where the flag of ...gngland marks the
ownership, where law reigns su,ureme, where the
Government (if not the Administt Ation) possesses
the love and confidence of the peo:ole, where no
rumour of approaching convulsion fills t 'he air, where
no conscription takes the husband from :lie wife or
the son from his mother, and where the ./lands
of
one half of the community are not raised in ,deadly
warfare against the other, I took up my parte:ll°n
the Canadian side of the torrent—to study a nee vet
phase of the great American civil war than Ne w
York affords, and to note what the Canadians think
of the not improbable contingency of a war between
Great Britain and the Federal Government.

Clifton-house is a favourite resort of Southern
Americans, and of those natives of the Northern
States who decline to take the oath of allegiance to
a revolutionary despotism, or who have by their
real or supposed " disloyalty" rendered themselves
obnoxious to the authorities of Washington. Here
they are safe from all molestation but that which
springs from the presence of the übiquitous spies of
the State Department. These emissaries of Mr. Se-
ward are both amateur and professional—male and
female, American and foreign. The professional spies
are the most numerous and the most mean. They
note down who talks or dines with Mr. Vallandig-
ham, what refugees from the military tyranny of
Gen. Schenk at Baltimore or Gen. Burnside at
Cincinnati consort together, or what Englishmar.
or Canadian indulges in a tae-a tete with a gentle-
man from New Orleans or Virginia. They catch up
scraps and cdds and ends of conversation ; they
sit, Yankee fashion, balancing their chairs, with
their heels on the window sills or the balustrades,
pretending to read the newspapers, but straining
their ears to catch the disjointed fragments of the
confidential talk of the bystanders. They claim
previous acquaintanceship with persons who never
saw their faces. They assume the guise of Southern
sympathisers the better to draw forth the free
thought and expression of those whom they wish to
betray, and not unfrequently carry their impudence
to the length of passing themselves off as British
officers who have seen service in the South.
They pretend to have travelled through the
seat of war, and to have been with Gen. Beau-
regard at Charleston, or with Gen. Lee at the
battles of Gettysburg, and resort to every despicable
shift to worm themselves into the confidence not
only of the American refugees and exiles, whom
their dastardly reports may ruin, but into that of
Englishmen and Canadians, to whom, fortunately.
they can do no greater injury than a skunk or a
polecat can do in the society of gentlemen. It must
not be presumed, however, from this slight sketch
that these creatures are peculiar to Niagara. They
abound in New York and other cities, and, in fact,
all through the North, and are maintained in their
disreputable calling at a very considerable outlay
from that all but illimitable fund of secret service
money which the President and his Ministers are
known to have at their disposal.
No traveler can remain six hours on Canadian
soil without recognising the fact that the sympa-
thies of the people are in favour of the S .uth. It
was so from the beginning, is so now, and is likely
to continue so to the end. Were the country
polled upon the question it is probable that 75 out
of every 100 Canadians, both of the East and the
West, would declare themselves against the Federal
cause. The Northern Americans are at a loss to un-
derstand the reason. They fancy that if the Cana-
dians were to revolt against the rule of Great
Britain, and desire either to establish themselves as
a separate nationality or to annex themselves to the
Federal Union, Great Britain would resist by force
of arms. They argue, therefore, that in striving to
retain the unwilling South by the ageneies of fire
and sword, and, if need be, of extermination, they
are but doing what England would do to Canada
now, and as it once unwisely strove to do against
Federal America in the days of George 111. But
the Canadians are better informed. They know
that if a? majority • of their people were to vote
themselves out of the British Empire to-morrow
Great Britain would neither draw a sword nor fire
a gun to compel their loyalty or their submission :
and that the British people, sympathising with the
British Government, whatever party might be in
power, would cheerfully acquiesce in the decision of
the Canadians, and bid them God speed in their new
career. For these reasons they look upon the North
as a nation of tyrants, at war with the principles of
their own Government, and content to destroy
liberty itself for the sake of the Union. They see
how illogical as well as how cruel is the war which
it thus wages. In spite of all considerations con-
nected with the question of slavery they sympathise
with the Southern people in their gallant struggle
to rid themselves of a partnership which,they abhor,
and from future connexion with a people whom
prior to the w-s.r they despised, and whom subse-
quently they helve learnt to hate with a bitterness
unparalleled in. history.
If the idea of annexation to the United States
!ter recommended itself to the minds of any por-
tionof the Canadian people, as alike their destiny
ande their interest, the progress of the war has
sphettlY weakened, if it has not utterly dispelled it.
amecanny%. Scotch element prevails largely
know when
v them. They look before they leap. They
in the hard
are well off. They prize the bird
They have see above the two birds in the bush.
in the fate weather
ship of the Yankee Republic
covered that the gallant
and in the foul, and have dis-
covered its`bni jallant vessel is not quite so sea-
worthy
represent. They prefer
imagined and its crew would
of
fer the reality of liberty with-
out the drawbacks
constant electioneering, and
think it a blessing tattier
than a misfortune that a
Governor of limited pow
either for good or evil,
should be appointed eyeretT
expel); without the trouble,
the inconvenience,
whonisee, and the general
nuisance of convulsing the
dangerre to be involved
In addition to this, they have to elect him.
no edou'lltry
before they
squestions that
in the many intricate and
North and South have yet to setrrtlll;3le
o not desire
even become good neighbours. can
participation in controversies that
may breed
anarchy and revolution in long and miserable
succession. They have not the slighest inten-
tion to submit themselves to the slavery of a con-
scription ; to make themselves participators in a
debt as huge as that of the mother country, in_
curved in about a hundredth part of the time; to
share in the onerous taxation which it will entail
upon themselves and their posterity if it be paid, or
in. the shame of its repudiation should an indignant
and dishonest people resolve to shake it off. What-
ever force of attraction, the Federal Government
may have once exercised upon Canada has been
changed into repulsion, and even the vision of inde-
pendence, once cherished by many as the natural
growth and certain fortune of so noble a colony, has
ceased to possess its former charm in their eyes.
They see that Great Britain, strong with the
strength and. wise with the wisdom of a thousand
years, possesses to-day a more stable as well as a
more liberal Government than it enjoyed a hundred
years ago, while the great American Republic, that
has not seen its ninetieth birthday, is falling to
pieces, to be rt3placed, after a series of bloody and
fruitlessstrugigles,by a relentless military despotism,
that will allow no right to the people but the right