The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-28 00:00:00

When the Lowlantiers rushed to battle with the cry,
" Gott defend the right I" the Highlanders, as they pulled
their bonnets tighter on their brows, raised the slogan,
" God defend the M.Gregors, whether they be right or
wrong !" The Grecian ruler declared that be should scorn
to be as just to an enemy as to a friend. When the farmer
stated that his bull had gored the lawyer's cow, the latter
demanded payment of damages. Bat when it turned out
that it was the lawyer's bull that had gored the farmer's
cow, the former changed his law and said, " Oh, that alters
the case." As reason, with lofty integrity, raises its serene
head above the chopping surge of prejudice and passion—as
intelligence and reflection maintain their loyalty to and
veneration for inexorable law and even-handed justice—as
divine philosophy reigns supreme in the statutes of inflexi-
ble moral principle, and'proclahns and enforces the univer-
sal rule of right just in the measure of that serene judicial
temper does a people become humanised and righteousness
exalteth a nation, " Oh, Liberty I" exclaimed Madame Ro-
land, "what deeds are done in thy name I" Protestants and
Catholics burned each other—Churchmen and Dissenters
were equally persecutors and bigots. Episcopacy banished
Presbytery to New England ; and scarce had the latter
settled in the New World when it drove Independency to
the woods, where the latter in its turn condemned Quakers
to execution. The love of liberty and of country is glorious
in Hampden or Wallace in England and Scotland, but
utterly iniquitous in India. Whigamores are heroes at
Bothwell Brig, and their Covenant crotchet is sacred; but
Pandies have no right to have a religion. The superstition
that testifies at the Grassmarket is glorious; while self-
sacrifice for an ancient faith at Delhi is worthy only of
being blown from guns or "hung like fun."
Because the Fodoraliats arc Republicans, and the Con-
federates slave-owners, we have been expected to belie
every fundamental political principle with which this paper
has from its first number been identified, Hard cases, it is
said, make bad law—respect of persons and of parties makes
politicians palter with principles and trifle with their con-
victions. "Disloyalty, allegiance, insurrection, traitors,
rebels, oaths of fealty, swearing to the Constitution, sedi-
tious assemblies," are words and expedients as glib in the
mouth of Seward, the Republican demagogue, as of Bomba
or Francis Joseph. His Generals and their proclamations
are as like Kirke and Claverhouse as two peas of one pod.
The putting of test oaths to suspected persons, or prisoners,
is the very expedient by which Dalzell's dragoons, or
Graham's Life Guards, detected Covenanters by asking
them to renounce the Covenant. " New presbyter is but
old priest writ large." Why are we to read our political
creed backwards on the other side of the Atlantic? Why
does democracy abet tyrants because they are the rulers of
a Republic in place of a monarchy ? Read Wendell
Phillips's own account of the pass to which the Union
has come, not muttered in a corner, but proclaimed in the
largest hall to the greatest and most distinguished assembly
of New York—himself an Abolitionist and Federalist—
every assertion avouched by the unanimous assent of his
audience :—" There is," said he, "not an element
of good in this war—nothing we might not have gotten
better, fuller, and more perfectly in other paths
You know we never shall go out of this war without a debt
of at least 2,000 millions of dollars—we pay Jeff Davis's debts
as well as our own—debt, the fatal disease of Republics—
the first thing, the mightiest to undermine Government
and corrupt the people. When we go out of this war we
go out with an immense disbanded army—an immense
military spirit, embodied in two-thirds of a million of sol-
diers, the inevitable source of fresh wars and new debts—
things enough to make the most sanguine friends of free
institutions tremble for the future. You know the writ of
habeas corpus has been suspended, the right of free meeting
and of free press are annihilated in every square mile of the
Republic. We live to-day, every one of us, under martial
law or mob law. The Secretary of State puts into his bas-
tile, with a warrant as irresponsible as that of Louis, any
man he pleases. And you know that neither press nor lips
may venture to arraign the Government without being
silenced. It is a mere question whether you prefer the de-
spotism of Washington or that of Richmond. We are tend-
ing toward that strong Government which frightened Jef-
ferson, toward that unlimited debt, that endless army. We
have already alien and sedition laws. We have passports
which even Louis Napoleon pronounces odious. Govern-
ment spies frequent our great cities. It is the same posi-
tion that England held when Holcroft, Tooke, Frost, and
Hardy went into dungeons, and the laws that Pitt exe-
crated, Burke praised. There is no single right that Go-
vernment is scrupulous to protect except the right of a man
to his slaves. Every other bulwark has fallen before the
necessities of the hour." The people acquiesce in the dic-
tatorship, actually foltity and do homage to the despotism;
they hate their seceding fellow-citizens so much more than
they love liberty or prizo their Constitution, that they ape
every vice of Bourbon absolutism, and defy every maxim
of popular institutions. At last Mr. Seward proves
that he not only disregards, but not so much as even
knows, the least doubtful of -moral obligations, and in
a formal despatch avows that the Republic recognises
no law but its own interest and convenience; that thestolen
goods of which he became the receiver, the prisoners kid-
napped by Wilkes, are given up, not on account of the law-
lessness of the theft, but of the worthlessness of the booty;
and that, if the fancied exigencies of the Union required the
perpetration of a wrong, it would be his right and duty to
commit it. _ _

Our earliest convictions were only too prophetic. For the
fantastic idea of the federation of a whole continent, the
North seeks to save the Union at the price of the destruc-
tion of the Constitution, and to preserve a republic by the
expedients of a despotism. The position of the South is
perfectly inexpugnable. It is the will and interest of eleven
distinct Governments, Legislatures, and peoples, each hav-
ing its own laws and constitution, to secede from the rest,
and to form a separate confederacy. Can any friend of Hun-
gary, of Poland, of Italy, deny their right ? They have
never parted, as Scotland and Ireland have, with their sepa -
rate legislative and administrative functions; they have
always been separate Governments, and asserted State
rights. They were never conquered, or merged by dynastic
inheritance under one common reigning Sovereign. Pure
popular vote made the treaty of Federation. The same power
can recal it. But even if there were no such power, self-
government inheres in the very genius of republicanism.
Parma and Modena disclaimed their dukes—why are eleven
States to be denied a right springing up in the very economy
of political society—why are they traitors and rebels because
they prefer Jeff. Davis to Aby Lincoln ?
Has not the time arrived when we must " conquer a
peace ?" Four millions of our people directly draw their
very life from the produce of the South—indirectly, the
want of cotton effects two millions more of us. An
awful future is before us if we are bereft of the staple
of America before we can supply the deficit elsewhere.
Are we bound, are we entitled, to stand by and see half
the nation ruined and starving because the North
chooses to order us not to deal—not, mark, with itself,
but with the South, with other States ready and willing to
serve us ? The North has actually, by the votes of only half
the representatives of the original Union, virtually excluded
our goods from its markets;and now cuts off the exports of
the South from our manufacturers. On what principle of
politiCal ethics aro we bound to submit to this double in-
jury ? Why are we " grossly to gape on" while civiliza-
tion is outraged by the destruction of Southern ports,made
by the Creator for the service of the whole human race ?
In mercy to these suicidal madmen save them from them-
selves. Religion, reason, policy, right, cry out against the
fratricides. To compel a reunion is to perpetuate slavery,
and deteriorate the condition of the slave. To help Seces-
sion is to render emancipation certain, by making every
Northerner an abolitionist and repealing the Fugitive Slave
Law in the Free States. If ever the South can be brought
back to the Union it can only be by suffering it to go peace-
ably out of it ; an unwilling and compulsory reunion would
be forcing the Trojan horse full of treachery and antipathy
into. the very citedel,to plot with every discontented faction,
and conspire with every disaffected State, foi the overthrow
of the conquerors. What is to become of the half million
of Southern troops? What of the monster hordes of the
North, or the fearful debt foreshadowed by Mr. Phillips ?
Is there to be an army of occupation ? Where is the in-
dependence of the States—where of the Imperial Legisla-
ture, cooked up out of forced elections overawed by martial
law, and corrupted by vast patronage of armies, navies,ord-
nance, civil service, the monopoly of the victors.
What is the _object of the North ? Is it to realise the
Munroe doctrine of universal dominion ? The more ex-
tended the Federation the weaker would be the Government ;
besides the menace the policy holds out to England and
other States. Is it to preserve power ? How can antipathy,
disaffection,and revolution, suffused through every vein and
artery of a distracted Republic, compass that ? If the
South be conquered, how are four millions of slaves to be
dealt with? How can it be held without an army of

occupation, suppression of freedom of election, military
law, and the destruction of the very genius of self-govern-
ment? The commonwealth is destroyed,- the constitution
trampled under foot by the very measures resorted to as
necessary to preserve them. " Oh, mother I " exclaimed
Coriolanus, " you have saved Rome, but lost your son I "
May we not say that should M'Clellan be triumphant, he
has only saved the Union to lose the Republic I Seward,
who eagerly asseverates it is not in a state of war, asserts
the right to search neutral ships for political offenders; and
men who claim sympathy for their cause as that of eman-
cipation, represent free states, some of which prohibit any
person of colour from so much as setting foot upon their soil.
It is right it should be known that a large party of the
House of Commons will, whenever Parliament meets, in-
sist upon breaking the blockade and recognising the Confe-
derates. They refuse to sacrifice our revenue, our trade,
the subsistence of many millions of our people, to the fine
feelings of Abolitionism. They can prove that 600 Federal
merchantmen hav9 mu the blockade unchallenged, and