The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-09 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JAN. 9, 1862.

On the TWENTY-SEVENTH of December—three
days before Lord LYONS was otherwise to have left
Washington—the Federal Government placed the
prisoners in the Lands of our Ambassador. We
have long hardly doubted any other result of the
firm yet conciliatory demands of our Government,
the preparations made to back them, and the moral
support accorded to them, first in such an emphatic
way by France, then by the other Powers of
Europe. Nevertheless, we all feel as if suddenly
relieved from the pressure of a load. There
was no absolute certainty that the American
mob would not be mad enough to force its
madness on the Government ; we knew that
in Mr. SEWARD, if his own words belie
not his opinions, they had a willing tool in
any "insult" to England; and, therefore, till we
received last night's telegrams, we could have no
absolute assurance that even the clearest expediency
would weigh with the Washington Government,
and dispose them to do right. War is so horrible
as well as costly an alternative, that we can but
feel thankful to escape it for the present. But we
have evidently only narrowly escaped it—escaped
it with a feeling left behind in the North which
will require us henceforth to be on our guard against
the irresponsible folly and spite of the American
mob for long years to come.

In deferring• till the last hour the surrender of
the captives, the Federal Government has marked
more emphatically than any words can do, and in
a manner no words can explain away, if that were
wished, which_is not likely—that it winces to the
last under the consciousness of wrong, under the
strongest wish to enjoy the fruits of its wrong, and
under the necessity of doing what is right, while its
heart is yet wrong. We have little doubt that in a
grandis et verbosa epistola Mr. SEWARD will attempt
to show that England and all Europe are wrong
in their moral judgment. He will attempt to prove,
in a case remarkably simple as one of interna-
tional morality, that the moral sentiments of im-
partial bystanders are not so correct as those of
one of the parties, of one obviously blinded by in-
terest and passion. We can, however, say thus
much for ourselves, that we believe that England,
had all Europe been of the opinion opposite to her
own, would have attributed the greatest weight to
the sentiments of every Power in a position to be
impartial. We should have suspected that
our interests, or temper, had blinded our judg-
ment. We might even have withdrawn
our demands. We should certainly have shown no
signs of angry fretting, nor have retained ill will
against the Northerns for a case in which they had
so many impartial judgments in their favour. We
are not to expect the same from the North. We
are told that the affair is to become the ground of
a lasting enmity against England, to be appeased
only by plunging into the earliest possible war with
her. America seems to have no sense of the
dignity and honour of preferring the judgment of
a cool and disinterested neighbour to her own, in
a case in which her own feelings are too liable to
bias.

The telegrams tell us that the seaboard of the
North will be much more likely to approve the
action of the Government than the eastern and
inland parts, which seems as much as to say, that
politics, in America, are not only extremely selfish
as regards foreign countries, bat as regards their
own States. We are disposed, however, to think
this is a mistake. If the Atlantic towns feared
direct attacks, or loss of trade, the inland and agri-
cultural parts of the country must fear