The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-16 00:00:00

lifeblood of its industry! And the worst part
of the business will be that all this shameless
office-hunting will be periodical, and in addition to
quite as much of it already in existence as any
country can bear. Whatever probity and zeal the
successful candidates may exhibit, and whatever
amount of experience they may acquire in their
invidious and certain-to-be unpopular calling, they
will be ruthlessly turned adrift at the expiry of Mr.
Lincoln's term by his successor in office to make
room for a new swarm with similar claims upon
their party. The whole system of official appoint-
ments was bad enough before, and did not need
this new aggravation to make it intolerable.
But the North would not consent to Southern in-
dependence, and the process of payment for the
luxury of coercion has come at its appointed time ;
and if the North be not the quietest, most loyal,
law-abiding, patient, uncomplaining people under
the sun, the process will sorely try the stability of
its institutions before the Republic be three years
older. In the meantime its foreign commerce will
be ruined by its suicidal tariff. Its Western grana-
ries will be deprived of half or all of their European
market ; for, as Lord Derby knows, there is corn
to spare in Tamboff and Odessa. Its people will be
taxed as heavily for a debt contracted in less tl-an
two years as most of the European kingdoms and
empires are taxed for debts contracted in as many
centuries, and will have nothing in the shape of
national honour, independence, or security to show
for it. The great stream of foreign immigration
that ran so steadily against its shores for the last
quarter of a century will be dried up or dwindled
to a rivulet, and there will be an end for many
years to the progress of America. Doubtless this
is all for the best, even for America itself.
The United States, until the outburst of the
civil war, were too prosperous and too insolent ;
and needed, like the Pharoahs in the plenitude of
their power and pride, to be warned of their mor-
tality. After awhile the nation will qualify itself in
sorrow and suffering, as others have done before it,
for the proper enjoyment of the right of self-go-
vernment which it has so greatly abused.
Why would it not allow the Southtoin its
departi
in
peace ? It would have been no weaker
rela-
tions to the external world than it is now, but it
would have been free, happy, and untaxed. Its
truly glorious flag would not have floated over a
single slave in all its wide expanse of territory. It
would have had no cause for or pretext of hostility
with any nation in the world. It would have had
the west and north-west to occupy as far as the
Pacific, and the great life-stream of immigration
that is still so urgently needed to fertilise and cul-
tivate the wilderness would have continued to roll
against its shores, increasing alike its power and
its wealth and the happiness of the new corners.
But all is changed ; lust of dominion has brought
ruin, and the United States have entered on a career
of debt and extravagance of which no one can fore-
see the end, but which every one can teli will be
disastrous.

All through those portions of the South that have
been oecupied by the Federal armies the ladies and
the clergy remain more obstinately " rebellious"
than the rest of the community. "Merchants,
traders, and professional men, with an eye to busi-
ness and the almighty dollar," keep as quiet as pos-
sible, and, if they do not take the oath of allegiance
to the " United States," which some say they can
do without treason to the Confederate States, which
are also united, and have as much right to the name
as the North, they prudently attend to their busi-
ness, in the cherished, but unuttered, hope of better
times. Not so the ladies and the preachers, neither
of whom attach such supreme importance to the dol-
lar as other people, and who claim the privilege of
the petticoat in the one case, and of the cloth in the
other, of speaking their minds without fear of the
consequences. A little incident that has just oc-
curred at Norfolk—a city under martial law—will
serve to show the animus of the better half of crea-
tion under circumstances that might well abate even
feminine zeal. Nothing daunted by the recent re-
verses of the South, the ladies ostentatiously carry
parasols representing the Confederate flag; and
wear upon their bosoms and in their bonnets the
colours and other symbols of their cause. In cross-
ing over to Portsmouth in the ferry boats they have
made it a practice to unfurl their parasols, and
flaunt them in the faces of the Federal Guards sta •
tioned at each side, much to the annoyance of the
men and officers on duty. Instead, however, of
mitigating the bad example of General Butler and
calling them by vile names, the officer ordered that
" the stars and stripes" should be hoisted over the
gangway, so that every lady passing from the ferry-
boat would be compelled to walk under it or return
the way she came. This so annoyed the women—
for whose unreasonableness no excuse can be offered
—that they complained to the military Governor
that they had been insulted by his soldiers. A com-
mission was immediately appointed to investigate
the charge. The result, after a good deal of bad
blood had been shown on both sides, was that the
ferry-boat itself was ordered to be decorated with
a large Union flag. Consequently, every person
who wishes to go to Portsmouth must sit or stand
under the hated emblem, or remain at home. The
ladies are exasperated, and the more so, perhaps, as
they cannot accuse the military Governor of having
exceeded his duty as a soldier, or forgotten it as a
gentleman in his management of the case.

More interesting, because more important than
this little episode of the war, is the behaviour of the
clergy of Nashville in Tennessee. In obedience to a
summons from Governor Andrew Johnson, formerly
a tailor in that State (and here let me correct an
error in one of my letters relative to Mr. Munroe,
the Mayor of Orleans, who is a stevedore and not a
tailor), the clergy of all denominations attended in
the capitol on the 18th inst. to receive a communi-
cation from the supreme military authority. They
did not positively know, but they suspected the
'
object of the summons, which had been made to
include not only the clergy, but the physicians and
the professional gentlemen generally. If they
had any doubts they were soon removed, and
their being called upon to subscribe their
signatures t 3 a printed form of the oath of alle-
giance to the United States. A scene ensued with
the acting secretary of the Governor, Mr. East, who,
to end it, called for the Governor himself, who was
waiting in an adjoining room. The Governor was
cool, and not very polite, for he broadly told one of
the clergymen, the Rev. Mr. Elliett, that he was
disloyal, that his name would never be placed on
the roll of patriots, and that expatriation would co
him good. To Dr. Hall, a physician, he was still
more uncourteous, for he said, in reply to an accu-
sation of harbouring resentment and seeking to
gratify it, that he considered Dr. Hall too con-
temptible to excite an emotion of resentment in any
one. Ultimately the Governor gave all parties con-
cerned a week to debate the matter. Before the
end of that time the Roman Catholic clergy had all
agreed to sign the oath. The Protestant clergy of
all denominations refused, and they were forthwith
consigned to the Penitentiary as prisoners of war,
with tile exception of one, the Rev. Dr. Wharton,
who was allowed a few days longer to reflect on the
subject
in consequence of a severe fit of ill-
ness. The cons
service last Sundaycence was that there was no
of the Protestant
churches or eilailein in any
o: Nashville. Yet, in face of
such facts as these t
ae ‘Tveiv York papers continue
to ircepTent of Union senti-
to gabble of the rapid
went in the South, end
the old and ex-
leaders and armies was ploded fiction that the terrorism iat
ni exercised by the
the Southern
the 5
t but unreal, hostility of tho e cause of
the apparen ,
Southern
ci shoot, hang, or banish about
people. a thousand
men in the South
,» of their principal ' "t 378 the
of Unionist, re-
cent letter a Northern 'who writes
under shelter of the Federal army, wand there will
be an end of the war e it does not enter into the
writer's mind that if his bloodthirsty advice Were
followed another thousand or ten thousand Might
he found to supply the places left vacant ; and that
the temper displayed by the clergy and the women
betoken a far deeper feeling of hate among the
masses of the people than Northern publications
care to acknowledge.
JULY 1.

All day on Sunday there was a vague feeling,
not traceable to any direct source, that the Federal
armies had suffered a signal defeat before) Rich-
mond. Late in the Mains -
a atatinnent waB