The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-19 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, DEC. 19, 1862.

The two Members for Birmingham met last
night to differ. Not on English politics, not on
the necessity of reducing the Army and Navy
Estimates, nor on the sufferings and merits of the
Lancashire sufferers. It was on the war, and its
causes and results, that these otherwise almost
perfectly harmonising political brothers had to
agree to differ. Mr. SCHOLEFIELD had, like every
one at first, thought the secession of the Southern
States "an act of incredible folly." He had
never doubted their moral right to secede; 8,000,000
of people had such a right. He did not think that
their success would rivet more firmly the fetters of
the slave, and he thought we should consider the
question just as if slavery were not connected with
it. The conduct of the North in making it a war
for the Union, not against slavery, in his view jus-
tified those who, with Lord RUSSELL, regarded it
as a war of ambition. Such were Mr. SCHOLE-
FIELD'S principal statements, and it wilt be seen at
once that all their force is due to suppression of one
side of the case altogether. Perhaps, knowing
that he would be followed by so able an advocate
of views nearly opposite to his own, he felt re-
lieved from the obligation to give the other
side.

Certainly no two opposing counsel could ever
address a jury as better personal friends. Mr.
BRIGHT would have almost preferred not to have
to speak at all, than to be obliged to differ from one
with whom he was so uniformly in accord. However,
there he was, and he must do his duty. A great
part of Mr. BRIGHT'S defence of the North was an
argumentum ad patriam, in regard to England. If

the North went to war when Fort Sumter was
attacked—a Federal, not a Southern fort—we must
remember our readiness to go to war when two
men were taken out of the Trent—an apparently
lighter cause. What would England do if only
Gibraltar were attacked by the Spaniards—a
fortress which Mr. BRIGHT, like Mr. GOLDWIN
SMITH, considers to be perfectly useless,
except as a nest for patronage. What would we do
if any attempt were made by any part of our vast
empire to sever itself from the mother country ?
What have we done in the case of Indian insurrec-
tion ? In this rather telling appeal Mr. BRIGHT
seemingly forgot that our leading statesmen have
most of them professed willingness to accept the
demand for colonial independence if the colonies
made it. Those larger colonies which have legisla-
tures of their own—and which, therefore, come
nearest to the United States system of Sovereign
States in Federal Union—well know that they are
at perfect liberty to " secede," as the South calls
it. Notwithstanding that the greater part of Eng-
lishmen, with their leading statesmen, feel
no inclination to what they term " dismem-
ber the empire," yet we question whether
even those who least wish it would for
a moment oppose a general demand on the part
of any of the non-military colonies for national
independence. The best appeal to our practice at
home would be in reference to Ireland. Probably
nothing would induce our statesmen to consent to
its separation from Great Britain. Yet it contains
as many whites nearly as the Southern States, and
if Mr. SCHOLEEIELD be content to rest the jus-
tice of the Southern demand for independence, as
he seems to do, on the national numbers of the sepa-
ratists, then he must explain why he for one would
not listen to the all but unanimous voice of Ireland
when its millions demanded the Repeal of the
Union. They, then, asked less than the Southern
States, and by almost as many voices.
Mr. SCHOLEFIELD is prepared to recognise the
South.
We rather wonder he should be so, since
the "answered and unanswerable letter of His
TORICUS, known
lawyers, has shown
to
ino intervene
o u r
, cede
own
üby force, nt for doing so i
\
to be by one of our first civil
that we have not a single pre-
BRIGHT evidently car-
. ried the way.
sympathies of Mr.l
would, we think,
English audience, carry
publ:o which, in language really
n such haste, unless we meant
B atnd settle the whole business
the
with him, and
i n
refustihnea Styomp a
recogniset h ies oof aitney.
blasphemous