The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-04 00:00:00

corner, goaded to exasperation by the devastating
march of Sherman through one of its richest and
fairest States, and unable to cope with the new
levies of the North without breaking in upon its
negro reserves, will finally abandon t le last lin-
geringof its scruples ago, nst the arming
ofits emslravensan, and d call into its servic3, on the pro-
mise of liberty and a farm to all the survivors a
quarer of a million of able-bodied blacks. The
Southern President did not think a month ago
that the time had come when it was politic or
necessary to make the hazardous experiment,
but Sherman's march, Porter's armada, the re-
verses which have befallen Hood, and Mr. Lin-
coln's call for so large an additional force—a call
which will be met by money if it cannot be met in
any other way—have so altered the circumstances as
to have created throughout the South a very general
feeling in favour of the measure, as one absolutely
indispensable not alone to the safety of the Con-
federates at home, but to its prestige abroad. It is
asserted in the Richmond Enquirer of the 15th inst.'
that General Lee has become a convert, and that he
has written a letter to Mr. Porcher Miles, Chair-
man of the Confederate House Committee on Mili-
tary Affairs, in favour of immediately arming the I
negroes. The Enquirer argues that independence
is dearer to the South than negro slavery. " Shall
we," it asks, " prolong the war for the sake of our
negroes ? Shall we sacrifice our children to pre-
serve our slaves ? Shall we exhaust our country,
destroy our noble defenders, and endanger every
institution rather than test an experiment that may
give us the means of recruiting our army, of assum-
ing the offensive, and of conquering a speedy peace?
Neither rhetoric nor argument nor authority can
determine whether the negroes will make for us
faithful soldiers. The experiment must test and
decide this question. General Lee asks that this
experiment be made. For us this is sufficient.
Never will we put our prejudices against his de-
liberate judgment and advice. He is a rash man
that does. He is not a wise man that imposes re-
sponsibilities and yet withholds means for their ac-
complishment We hate, detest, and
despise the enemy far more than we love and ad-
mire slavery. If our liberties cannot be gained but
by the sacrifice of slavery, we are prepared to make
that sacrifice, and to urge that sacrifice upon our
countrymen. We would not return to the Union
if every slave could be returned to his master, and
if every guarantee that human ingenuity could de-
vise were secured for the protection of the institu-
tion ;' we prefer liberty with free society to reunion
upon the.securest basis of slavery."
President Davis is tenacious of his individual
opinion, but he is a statesman in the best sense of
the word, and as such knows how to yield at the
proper time to the force of circumstances which he
is unable to control, and will not, it is to be fairly
presumed, set himself in vain antagonism to the
judgment of stich a general as Lee, or the sentiment
of the Southern people. The closing of the ports
of the South has deprived it of the aid which the
North derives from Ireland and Germany. The
negroes alone remain to right the wavering balance,
and it is asserted that when the South employs
them it will not only strengthen its arm to achieve
the independence it seeks, but will remove the
greatest stumbling-block which has ever stood in
the way of the cordial good wishes and the recog-
nition of Europe.
The order of General Dix, which virtually
amounted to a declaration of war against Canada, if
the Canadian Government failed, as he pre-supposed
it would, to do a certain thing in a certain contin-
gency, has been disavowed by President Lincoln,
and the general has been directed to rescind such
portion of it as was offensive to Canada, and conse-
quently, to Great Britain. General Dix has borne
the snubbing with the profoundest equanimity. In
any other country so high an official would resign if
his conduct were publicly condemned by his supe-
riors. Not so in America. It costs much trouble,
much twisting, much wriggling, much sacrifice,
much eating of dirt, much expenditure of vital
energy, much adaptability, much humiliation, and
much self-abasement to get into office ; and once in,
it is the rule to hold on " like grim death" to the
last extremity, or until the periodical change of
Administration at the end of the customary four
years shall make an end of all officials, both high
and low, and leave a fair field and a tobula rasa for
the new comers. Besides, every official has the
idea that if he be not President he ought to be, and
may be, and in this expectation he considers it to
be his bounden duty to become popular, to pander
to the passions and the prejudices of the people—to
make political capital for himself, and to be a some-
body amid the crowd of nobodies that surrounds
him. There is no denying the fact that in issuing
his orders to his subordinates on the Canadian fron-
tier to pursue any future marauders into Canadian
territory if they could not otherwise kill or capture
them, and on no account to deliver up any prisoners
they might make on the demand of the Canadian
authorities, General Dix struck a sympathetic chord
in the hearts of his countrymen. He was, in Ame-
rican parlance, endorsed by the public, and not only
endorsed, but vehemently applauded. It is always
popular to threaten Great Britain always unpopu-
lar to assume towards that powerful, but in America
very grossly misunderstood, country a position of
fairness or conciliation. Hence General Dix, the
receiver, and not Mr. Lincoln, the administrator, of
the snub carries off the honours of the day in the
Canadian imbroglio ; and the friends of General Dix
believe they can safely calculate that by his prompt
and what they call truly American action he has
perceptibly strengthened his chances of a nomina:
tion for the Presidency in 1868. The unanimity
with which the Canadian press has reprobated the
conduct of the Vermont raiders, whether they be
thieves or soldiers, and the sincerity with which
they have deplored the imperfection of the law by
means of which Mr. Justice Coursal conscientiously
felt himself compelled to discharge them, together
with the earnest determination of the Canadian
Government to re-arrest the malefactors if that be
possible, and to prevent as far as the utmost-vigilance
will allow the organisation of similar acts of warfare
on Canadian soil, have somewhat cooled the anti-
British war fever of last week. There, neverthe-
less, remains a sufficient amount of excited ill-will
to portend, unless the greatest care and caution be
employed, an unsatisfactory, if not explosive, state
of public feeling towards Canada and Great Britain
during the whole continuance of the war. Hitherto
the sympathies of the Canadian people have been
almost wholly with the South. 'But if Southern
osireo Northern
Government
to
agents in Canada, with the view of aiding their
and that
creating
animosity
of Gtyat betweenßn.tain the e
attempt
causeby
organise invasions of the Border States on Canadian
soil, they will run the serious risk of converting
friends into enemies, and arraying against their
cause the interests of a great nation. They may,
perhaps, imagine that the sympathies of Great
Britain count for little, and have been of the
smallest possible aid to them in their struggle, but
they ought to be wise enough to know that if
British sympathy had gone wholly to the other side
the. Confederacy would scarcely have stood so high
as it stands to-day in the world's opinion, or had
half the chances that it now has of proximate ad-
mission into the family of nations.

CONVOCATION OF YORK.—The Archbishop has
appointed this Convocation to meet for despatch of
business on Tuesday, the 21st of February. His Grace
has named the following subject for discussion :—Subscrip-
tion ; the Burial Service ; the Position of Lay Helpers ;
the Table of lessons from Holy Scripture.

took place on
melan-
choly occurrence
who had just been appointed
married man named Sweeney,
had gone
LOST IN THE SNOW ON DARSTaMtouOrdlta.—y.AAyounginto Tavistock on business.
e 8 o'clock in the evening.
schoolmaster to the Dartmoor cleofntvtihcet
return to Prince Town soon after
at the time, the drifts in some places
A heavy snowstorm came on, and, a fierhceeeawmi
Merrivaleridge, a distance of four ptoriwnson'on foot to
to reach
deep. (Sweeney took two hours and a quarter
u_
lie-house at thee,
bridge, and there he stopped en dmany blowingfeet
and partook of refreshment. The gale had by that time
increased in fury, and the landlady urged the
miles. There
poor fellow
to stop the night, but being anxious to get home to his
reforisaawphib-le
wife and and young children he refused the proffered hos-
pitality with thanks, and set out for his home. He never
reached it, his dead body being found the following morn-
' ing about three-quarters of a mile from Prince Town, in a
6 crouching position, close by the hedge.