The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-13 00:00:00

The assertion that negotiations for mediation in
America by France and England are to be shortly
opened in London, is now positively made by La
P aerie. We made a few remarks on Wednesday
on the arguments offered for mediation by the
Constitutionnel, as they were, altogether, presented
in a manner intended to convey the impression
that the Imperial editor—whom M. FMB de-
clares to be the only editor in France—was more
or less directly their author. In the peculiar posi-
tion of the French press, it can never be absurd
to suppose that important political news, pretty
strongly affirmed to be correct, must either be so, or
that its publication must be authorised for a pur-
pose. In the present case it is not easy to con-
ceive of any purpose but that of, at least, inviting
the expression of public opinion in regard to an
' object the Imperial Government would like to
accomplish; while it may also be to prepare the
public for what is actually intended to be done.
On Wednesday we expressed our apprehension
that friendly mediation would be spurned till neces-
sity compelled its acceptance. We have that fear
pretty strongly still. We did not, however, mean
to deny that it would be at least honourable in
France to proffer mediation a second time, nor even
that, just possibly, it might be of some avail.
Summer heat will soon compel the Northerns to a
virtual truce; and, should Congress pass its long
lingering tax bill, and should the real worth of the
assignats now issued by the Government begin to
be appreciated, the lash of the taxgatherer and the
depreciation of paper may generate a wish for
peace. Of course our rulers ought to have the best
information, but we should have thought that
London was just the wrong place to be prominent in
such negotiations. All the snubbing and bullying we
have quietly put up with, all the attention we have
shown our " seceded" eolonies,;has done but little to
produce in the minds of the sovereign many in
America a better feeling towards England. Indeed,
looking at the United States as a great " secession"
from Britain, they but too plainly illustrate the
feeling which will be found probably a century
hence between the Northern and Southern portions
of the old Union. As politicians, we may illustrate
to ourselves the possibility of North and South
working together again in one Union, by asking
how England and the thirty-two sovereign states
could do it. England will never be forgiven by the
American mob.

England, therefore, if mediation be offered, should
keep in the back ground. She might give her
approval to the efforts of France, but, if she wish
the offer to succeed, she ought not to go further.
France may do or say anything, even march on the
Mexican capital, we cannot speak without being
subjected to the imputation of ungenerous motives,
nor even without injuring the objects at which we
aim. It strikes us that the whole responsibility of
proffering mediation, and the chief honour of its suc-
cess, if success be possible, should belong to France.
We might, in response to applications for counte-
nance from France, express our cordial approbation
of proposals so humane to Europe as well as to
America, but our alliance in the business would, we
apprehend, almost insure its failure. Altogether
different would it be were England as well as
France prepared to insist on the termination of the
war. In that case the greatest display of strength
would be the greatest kindness. We have never
denied that the moral right of English and Frerich
operatives to the means whereby they live,
is so strong, that if the two Powers had
chosen to take that view, they would have
been justified in scouting doubtful inter-
national law, and using their fleets to maintain
a perfectly open trade in cotton, indeed in every-
thing, at the southern ports. We have suffered,
however, the Federals now to seize those ports, and
so have complicated what would otherwise have
been a very simple matter. As therefore, neither
Government probably contemplates action as well
as persuasion, surely it were better that the power
to which alone the North would listen should be the
responsible mediator.

Meantime the important consideration is, what is
to be considered fair time for Europe, so greatly to
its own injury, to allow the North to indulge in
civil war. Important as the trade of the South is
to two large and several minor European
States, even the North cannot pretend that we are
quite out of court. It is becoming probable that
India cannot be stimulated to supply us with cotton
in sufficient time to save us millions of money, great
and permanent injury to the trade, and worst of
all, to save from deep distress hundreds of
thousands of men, both here and on the continent,
who, in justice ought not to suffer thus to please
the Northern States. Even if they can succeed,
after years of fighting and ill blood, in subju-
gating the vast South, we are not surely
required to see ail the cotton manufactories of
Europe closed and ruined for such an object ; but,
when it is doubtful whether conquest of the South
be even possible—and, if possible, of any use to the
conquerors—it may well be denied that we are re-
quired by international law to prolong indefinitely
toleration of the murderous and ruinous ambition
of the North.

As to the question of slavery, we are pleased, of
',Be, to see the concessions to personal liberty to
hit% necessity has driven the Northern Repub-
-1
„ i ican.. _ •
a out the North itself has compelled us to
hope but little from its triumph. It dreads the
abolition of slavery.
as it can. It lt repudiates negroes as far
treats a race, willing above all races
to be led, governed,wit4iatandboemployed, as a burden and
of
educating the negro to intelli-
South
gent industry, the
South
labour, and the North
Poor negro
its social
presence. Both repre2a ti,„
drives makes him an animal for
Woul be
negro ; and,
though he might fare better in
Mr. LINCOLN'S
hands than in those of JEFF n
—Ay's, it .5
1 almost
probable that an independent
driven to abolish slavery, as that the North Would
drive the South to do it.
According to the French press, which hardly
dare write thus without authority, the appeal to

England by the French Government is fully de-
cided on. Count PERSIGNY, the old confidential
friend of the'EMPEROR, is to convey to our Govern-
ment the private sentiments of the EMPEROR, to
ascertain whether the views of the two Govern-
ments accord sufficiently to permit of an arrange-
ment which can be carried out in common. To-
night Mr.HOPWOOD IS to cateeh:se our Government,
and to ask, "Whether her MAJEsIY's Govorn-
mett and the Government of France had any in-

tention of offering their friendly mediation between
the Northern and Southern States of America, and
if so, whether in the event of their friendly offices
being declined, they would be prepared to recognise
the Southern Confederacy ?"

We shall therefore probably have some intima-
tion from our Government of the course they intend
to take, It will be, we doubt not, to persist in our
present policy. We deliberately adopted non-inter-
vention; the cost of non-intervention, if attempted
effectually, would surpass the cost of maintaining
our operatives in part for years; and, as we have
already observed, the Yankee temper would never
endure friendly advice from the mother country.
We trust our Government will, therefore, be found
willing to support any representations which
France may be disposed to make, but not to take a
prominent, nor even en equal part in offering coml.
• sel quite certain to be rejected.

Whatever the duration of the Cotton Dearth in
our manufacturing districts, it has already taught
us a lesson, from which, it is to be hoped, that the
nation will profit, and that betimes. It is a lesson
we have long been learning. We had caught a
notion of the alphabet of it a considerable while
before the dearth alluded to had set in. But—bet-
ter than all the knowledge inculcated theoretically
—experirnentia doret. Now the veriest tyro and
smatterer as a political economist can appreciate,
to a certain extent at least, the force of the truth
upon which the profounder students in that science,
the more advanced disciples in the philosophy of
ADAM SMITH, have been for some years past so
very earnestly and energetically insisting. That
truth now so legibly glares upon our recognition
from the wall that he who runs may read it. It
can no longer be gainsaid. It is demonstrated
with the clearness and dittinctness of a syllogism
in every cotton mill that is either closed altogether,
or merely half-worked, yonder in the North of
England. Provision must, sooner or later, coute
qui coute, for our obtaining this, at least, if no
other, of the raw material essential to the working
of our gigantie and densely peopled factories from
within the compass of our possession. Whatever
else may be done, or left undone, henceforth as a
sequel to the outbreak of this disastrous civil
war in North America—this good result, at
any rate we must take care to win from it securely
and permanently—the emancipation of our cotton
manufacturers here in England from any further
dependence to so alarmingly heavy an extent as at
present upon the cotton growers of the Southern
States of the Confederation.
As things have been standing with us hitherto
in this matter, the great bulk of that one raw-
material of cotton has been imported from that very
group of States beyond the Atlantic, from those
Confederated States of America. Hence, when the
ports dotted all along that seaboard were rigidly
closed by the Federal Blockade at the commence-
ment of the war, still raging between the Federals
and Confederates—the ill consequences looming in
the future for ourselves here in England became
speedily enough recognisable. The coming gloom
could be readily anticipated. At the outset the
cloud was no bigger than a man's hand—Mr. LIN-
COLN'S—that is, when in the name of the Federal
Government, or rather, we should say, in the name
of the United States of America, he signed the man-
date for the closing of those ports in the South, the
ports of the Confederates. Darkly, however, that
small cloud has laboured up from the west,
until even across the wide Atlantic —it
overshadows us. Debarred from access to
the emporium of our principal supplies of
that raw material of cotton, our manufacturers
first of all, our trade afterwards, has already suf-
fered, is still unhappily suffering, and has appa-
rently a long while yet to tuffer very considerably.
Recognising all which—as who can fail to recog-
nise it nowadays P—the thought comes back to
us with redoubled force as to the possibility
of England rendering herself, in regard to her
future Cotton supplies, independent of the cotton
growing States of America! It is more than the
thought that thus comes back to us—it is the
hope, it is the resolve, the full and fixed deter-
mination. To rely, henceforth, in this matter as
we have rashly done hitherto upon the cotton-
supplying capabilities of America, would be visibly
and undeniably now to lean upon a broken reed.
The question then arises immediately as to which
may be the quarter, or rather as to which may
be the quarters, that could most reasonably be
looked to for the cultivation, hereafter, of the
cotton plant systematically and by wholesale.
Here, happily, we have a choice of territory—to
the south, to the west, to the east, and in both
hemispheres. Our own dominions are so wide
spread that of course,a considerable proportion
of the lands spoken of as suitable regions for the
cultivation of cotton crops are our own. Our
wish would be obviously to obtain as much of
the cotton we require as might be from our own
colonial possessions, no matter where situated. But
equally, of course, it would be to our advantage
that the cultivation of the cotton plant should,
as much as possible, and as sedulously, be culti-
vated elsewhere. More than one string to his
bow were as reasonable a wish on the part of
the modern Viking JOHN BULL, as on that of
the ancient Sea Hero, the old Homeric Odysseus.
Naturally, therefore, we are beginning to look
seriously about us now for the selection of the
most suitable regions in which to encourage, by
all the means at our command, the cultivation of
the cotton plant upon as vast a scale as possible.
And there is certainly choice enough before us
—towards the solving of this selection judi-
ciously, Whither soever we look almost,
there at once may we recognise very
readily, almost at the first superficial
glance a country in which the cultivation of the
cotton plant is not only possible but most desirable.
Upon a rapid survey, taken in a manner hap-
hazard, as we turn a terrestrial globe upon its
axis casually at the touch of a finger—eight dif-
ferent directions may at once be indicated.

Firstly, of course, there is Ilindostan. There, all
along the sea coast of Madras and Bengal, are low
lying tracts of land of very considerable dimen-
sions, in same respects about the most desirable
that could well be for the cotton planter. Further
inland, again, there are still larger tracts, upon a
higher level, that in this particular present a still
more notable attraction to the cotton speculator.

Secondly, there is the east coast at any rate (if
no other) of the noble island of Ceylon. There we
learn upon reliable authority that the swamp and
the jungle might be readily reclaimed to this end
by the drainage of the lagoons.
Thirdly, there are the coasts of Guiana and Cay-
of
enne, where the cotton already grown is only
scanty by reason of the lack of labourers ; and hard
by there is also our own beautiful island of Jamaica,
where the uplands are known to admit very easily
reproductive irrigation.
Fourthly, there are these alluring Italian coasts
on the side not so much of the Adriatic as of the
Mediterranean,
tchheur
behor;dearnsd—klneossn attractive until
wvery
recentlyonly
during the last thousand years as those of
the States of the
by the side of those to the cotton planter—the sea
coast nearly reaching to Trieste upon the skirts of
the Venetian territory.

Fifthly, there is a largo extent of country, with

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1862.