The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-12 00:00:00

which they threaten the rebel States should be fore- I
stalled by the accidents of war and the operation of
disease, leaving the fertile fields and plains of the
South ready for them to step in and take possession,
is too acceptable to be doubted. It is also a very
welcome suggestion that the recruits of the Con-
federacy will soon be exhausted, so that the weary
and costly struggle which many in the North itself
are beginning to think is hopeless, may terminate
from sheer inanition. This notion, so exhilarating

to the North, and so injurious in its effects from
encouraging them to the further prosecution of the
war, is also prejudicial in the South, where it fosters
any lingering traces of despondency or discontent,

and seems to diminish that firmness of pur-

pose and unanimity of spirit which are the
most powerful weapons of the Confederacy. Yet
although many both North and South have yielded
to this impression, it is altogether a mistaken one.
"No proposition," says the writer we have been

referring to, "is more erroneous than that the Con-

federacy is exhausted, or even nearly exhausted, of

its arm-bearing population." To prove this, he
examines carefully the statistics of the whole popu-
lation of the Southern States, with the exclusion of

Missouri and Kentucky, as given by the United
States census of 1860. At that date the total num-

ber of white men in the 11 States now composing

the Confederacy was 2,799,818. He then proceeds
to eafeulate the number between the ages of 17 and

50, adding those that have arrived within those
limits during the last four years, and deducting the
amount of the natural average mortality of that
time. The aggregate remainder leaves nearly a
million and a half, which number, however, has to be

put through several more processes before the final
estimate is arrived at. Allowance has to be made
for those killed in battle, dead from the exceptional
diseases of the campaigns, or permanently disabled
by wounds. It is very difficult to make this com-
putation, since there are no actual figures to go
upon, but the calculation does not proceed without
some foundation to go upon. He says, first, that
the casualties of General LEE'S army during the
last campaign have not amounted to 85,000 ; there-
fore, if he takes that number as an estimate, he will
be certainly over rather than under the mark. Of
these 85,000 he allows 5,000 to have been killed
and 5,000 permanently disabled ; and reckoning the
same for the army of Tennessee, and for the other
forces of the South collectively, he arrives at an
estimate of 30,000. To this he adds 45,000
for the losses by exceptional diseases of
war, allowing for them at the rate of 50 per
cent. above the ordinary standard. But this is only
the loss of one year, and there remains to be added
the casualties of the previous years. He reckons
these on a different scale, as at first the losses were
comparatively trifling, and in 1862 and 1863 they
were much less than in 1864. For those four years,
then, he allows respectively 30,000, 50,000, 60,000,
and 75,000, so that the losses from the casualties of
war stand at 225,000. But these are not the only
deductions to be made from_the numerical strength
of the Confederacy. There remain deductions for
50,000 prisoners of war now in the hands of the
North ; for exemptions from disability and other
causes, and for the population belonging to Southern
States under the control of the enemy, which, in
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia, he reckons at
one-half of the white population of those States, and
in Tennessee at two-thirds. He is still not satisfied
with these reductions, but reckons 5 per cent. as
having left the country, a ratio which, he observes,
is much too high. The result of all these calcula-
tions, which can scarcely be objected to as being too
favourable to the Confederacy, leaves to the South
a force of about 700,000 fighting men. Allowing
two-thirds of these for active service, the Southern
armies in the field should consist of more than
460,000 men, a larger number than any force which
they have yet had under arms. The labour of these
calculations must have been amply repaid to the
ingenious Southerners who undertook the task by
the gratification of being able to publish such a fact
to his countrymen. It is to be hoped that it will
not be unheeded in the North, but that Washing-
ton and New York may pause to consider the pos-
sibility of subduing an army of nearly half
a million, animated by a fervid patriotism
and an uncompromising hostility to the invaders,
and the expediency of prosecuting such an endea-
vour with a national debt already amounting to
hundreds of millions. Europe, too, may read a
lesson from these figures. In the first place, the
estimated amount of losses during these four years
must strike the most unreflecting. Nearly a quar-
ter of a million on one side alone to be reckoned as
a reasonable computation of the destruction of
human life and health within that brief period. The
Thirty Years' War, which remains the terror of
modern history, was said to have cost the lives of a
million of men, but, according to a calculation
based on estimated probabilities, these four years
have cost the young Republic of the West already
half that number. No country can stand such a
rate of depopulation, no exchequer can endure the
maintenance of such a war. Heavy taxes press more
and more upon the people, the necessaries of life
grow more and more costly to the rich, more and
more inaccessible to the poor. The rate of pre-
mium on gold, looked for so eagerly in the American
mercantile news, represents but feebly the sufferings
of the people, while of domestic and individual
misery these four years of warfare have been fertile
enough to supply a thousand tragedians. Half a
million deaths and hopeless invalids represent an
amount of mourning in families terrible to contem-
plate ; and when we add to this the misery inse-
parable from civil war, the feuds, the dissensions, the
bitter separation between friends and relatives, the suf-
ferings of prisoners, and in the Souththe -wretchedness
caused by burning houses and devastated property,
we shall shudder at the result. How much of all
this was preventible, and preventible by the inter-
vention of Europe, is a question which conscien-
tious men may well ask themselves. Had England
agreed to the proposal of France two years ago—
had she recognised the Confederacy even a twelve-
month since, many a brave man now wept over in
vain might be alive to serve his country in some
better cause—many a vigorous frame now help-
lessly maimed and crippled might still rejoice in its
strength—many a broken heart might have been
spared its Affliction. These considerations, of
course, cannot always be allowed to prevail. There
are times when the sword must be unsheathed at
whatever cost : when nations are called upon to
make such sacrifices and to shrink from them, is
that moral cowardice which is the worst of evils.
But the question now is, to what purpose is all this
misery ? Are we called upon to stand by and
watch the struggle until both combatants pause
from exhaustion—until the fair and flourishing na-
tion we were proud to call our descendants shrink
into physical and financial collapse ? We boast of
our neutrality, but even granting it to be genuine,
we can hardly applaud the strong man who stands
by
and
sees two
frenzied, weaker brothers fighting to
the death, and
we have quoted prove that there is life enough left
boasts of his love of peace, because
he will not lift his artn
to stay them. The figures
in the Confederacyt° preserve
a resolute stand.
The latest news we have received
and courage.
skill testifies to their
Surely, then, after four
continued warfare, whose only rn,L* • years of
military conclusion,