The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TEKES.—That the people of the Northern States
should be excited to an extraordinary degree of en-
thusiasm by the capture of Richmond is not surpris-
ing. The fall of that city, the possession of which
has been purchased at such enormous cost, must
seem the actual end of the great rebellion. " On to
Richmond" was the first demand of the people, and
that the seat of the Confederate Government could
resist so many attacks first opened the eyes of
the nation to the difficulty of the task it had under-
taken. Those who reckoned the existence of the
war by days saw it lengthened to months, and the
months prolonged to years, without any indication
that the last operations would prove more success-
ful than the first. Not till all the military power of
the Federation was gradually directed against Rich-
mond could the end be achieved. Three armies have
been required to do the work that was thought an
easy exploit for the one half-organised force that
began the first march southward in 1861. The last
intelligence from New York exhibits that city in all
the intoxication of triumph. It has had its occasions
of exultation before, but till the recent change in
the prospects of the war they were so often followed
by such qualifications otthe success that at last the
announcements of victory were distrusted, or even
disbelieved. Then came periods of depression, and
not a year has elapsed since it was possible for a
few advocates of peace and compromise to speak
and write in favour of both. Now, however, there is
no visible cause of doubt or misgiving. Charleston
and Richmond are again Federal cities, President
Lincoln is lodged in the house of President
Davis, and the army of Lee has retired to the
interior. The catastrophe seems complete, and in
all its accessories calculated to impress the people
with a feeling that the work is accomplished and
that the civil war is really at an end. Suppose the
whole nation impressed with that conviction, and
impulsively and at the same moment expressing
what they feel under its influence, and we
cannot be surprised at the somewhat de-
lirious forms the jubilation of New York has taken.
We shall hear similar accounts from every great city
of the Union, Baltimore perhaps excepted. It must
be recollected that the reported manifestations were
spontaneous and improvised at the moment. Nothing
was organised by committees or authorities ; the
public feeling took its own methods of declaring
itself, and the result was a display eminently charac-
teristic of the nation. The extemporised public meet-
ings, the instant appearance of a host of orators
competing with each other in extravagance of lan-
guage and sentiment, the singing hymns in the
street of the money changers, and the reading mili-
tary telegrams from the pulpits of churches, all this
reversal of the ordinary course of things does not
appear so extraordinary to Americans. When we
recollect the trifling incidents that have sufficed to
produce an amazing sensation in New York,we can-
not wonder at the outburst of feeling which has
marked such a crisis in American history. But no
violent excitement can be very enduring, and no
people more readily recover their faculty of taking a
cool and practical view of things. The transition,
indeed, from the hot fit to the cold is often exceed-
ingly rapid, and when the reaction sets in topics may
be discussed with perfect calmness which in the ac-
cess of fever would have excited a paroxysm of
wrath. We therefore merely regret the first sugges-
tion of the public orators on this occasion was that,
one war being terminated, the whole nation should
embroil itself in another—nay, in a series of wars.
But at the moment of utterance much was overlooked
that will, in a not distant future, ask very serious
consideration. We also regret that, next to the idea
of war generally, the most popular suggestion was
war with England. But we cannot regard these fiery
denunciations seriously. In a bidding for applause
there is no check to the extravagance of promise; how-
ever wild it may be, the speaker is always comfort-
ably aware that he runs little risk of being called
on to fulfil it. Passion ruled the hour, and the
orators would not have been listened to had they
not complied with the time, and spoken with the
unchecked vehemence that suited it. We are not

disposedto attach over-much importance to allusions
to the " Fenian Brotherhood." It is told off in good
round numbers, but we know enough of the appari-
tion and how it has been got up to deprive the threat
of any significance. Every generation has had some
political scooped turnip of this kind held up to it,
with assurances that it is very terrible. But that
the Americans will not countenance the imposition
beyond the point of political utility in their own
elections, we may feel assured. The much truer ex-
pression of American feeling was given, we trust, at
Washington,where the members of the Government
were summoned, as usual, on far less important oc-
casions, to address a public gathering. They spoke
under a double responsibility, as Ministers and the
representatives of the Republican party. Public
enthusiasm cannot entirely carry away men holding
such a position. They must consider something
beyond momentary applause. They must avoid
official embarrassments, and not endanger the
" party" interests. The Washington speeches, there-
fore, are pitched in a more moderate key than those
of New York. Statesmen cannot indulge in the
" Cambyses' vein," living as they do in terror of
after-explanations. Mr. Seward, therefore, did not
encourage the New York suggestions of vengeance
and war. He adopted a lighter mode of treatment
for the crisis. He very skilfully evaded the perils
of a set speech, and rather amused his audience than
stirred them. His address served the purpose. He
could not let England escape altogether, but he did
not threaten her with extermination, or to annex
Canada forthwith. He dealt in innuendo, which, as
it pleased his hearers, we have not the slightest wish
to quarrel with. There was far less bitterness in
his speech Wan in the tone of many of his despatches
written when a European intervention was really
apprehended. The Americans must now acknowledge
that the apprehension was groundless. Against the few
reproaches Mr. Seward launched at us, we set the
instances in which, by his official acts, he checked
the rashness of subordinate officers of the Govern-
ment. If such inflammatory harangues as those de-
livered at New York do not affect the policy of the
Administration, it would be unreasonable to attach
too much importance to them. Very possibly Mr.
Seward could not have spoken so temperately to the
excited thousands of New York. But we believe
the more moderate tone of the official addresses at
Washington is a more reliable index of American
policy.

HERALD.—The inspectors of factories, in his re-
port upon the fire-brickyards of South Staffordshire,
has opened up a curious view of life in England, as
it exists in the remoter districts. It is worth glanc-
ing at, principally because the details are melancholy,
and such as to challenge at least the inquiring atten-
tion of the Legislature. The Black Country is a
part of England totally distinct from the rest. It
is a region of perpetual twilight, never subdued into
total darkness, for the furnaces are incessantly
glowing, and the nights are dimly reddened by their
reflections.. It contains scarcely a single green pas-
ture ; its dark and unwholesome rivers swim no
fish ; its black and flat landscapes are relieved by
mountains of grit and cinder, smoking and steaming
engine works, gin-horses walking their weary
rounds, and ranges of roofless cottages, indicating
the neighbourhood of deserted pits, while, as across
the Dead Sea, few birds ever fly over the sterile sur-
face. We have been accustomed, moreover, to hear
of the people as rude and gross, grimy and besotted,
coarse in language, and animal in manners—the
men hidden down in the mines by day, while the
women, in male attire, drive donkeys along the roads
laden with articles for the manufactories. Yet this
region of England is important, and itsindustry is
exceedingly valuable. With regret, therefore, we
ffi
learn, upon o
cial authority, that its social condi-
tion is so low. But, after an examination of the
facts, all surprise ceases. The men, as a rule, are
in the mines or at the iron-works, the women have
their seperate occupations, the children—or a vast
number of them—are employed, promiscuously, in
the clay-yards. Boys of five, says Mr. Baker, are
broken in to toil; infants, literally, are tutored to
carry heavy weights of green bricks on their heads,
and young lads, walking 16 miles a day to and from
their place of labour, have to undergo tasks to
which the severest allotments of the treadmill,
the crank,.ll
and penal servitude, are but trifles.
Shot-dr. is as nothing in comparison with
the severities of labour thus enforced, in which
little children are the principal sufferers. They
work as did the wretches who are believed to have
reared the Pyramids ; they have to carry enormous
loads, and travel, within a narrow space, incon-
ceivable distances ; tons of weight and miles of
walking and twelve hours of unremitted duty, half-
clad, in a hot atmosphere, over heated drying-stones,
and scandalously destitute of any supervision except
that which drives them to the due fulfilment of
their average task. The Government inspector
writes, " It makes one feel for the honour. o f the
country that there should be such a condition of
human labour existing in it." Certainly we may
leave Africa and New Guinea, not to speak of the
North Pole alone, until these English deserts have
been reclaimed. Their inhabitants, to all intents and
purposes, are savages ; they do not dress decently ;
their women are hardly distinguishable,in point of
attire, from their men ; their children are outcasts
from the civilised world ; not one in twenty can
read or write ; and perhaps 5 per cent. have a dim
notion of religious responsibility. They go, perhaps,
at a very tender age to school, but are wanted at
the clay works before they have learned enough to
remember. Is it marvellous that, under the circum-
stances, in the bleak monotony of their hard-wrought
lives, they should grow up to habits of improvidence
and excess, and even when weary of, their existence,
throw themselves on the workhouse, or seek excite-
ment in strikes and quarrels with their employers ?

Yet this is not, we would hope, an irreclaimable
population. Among the truths—not many in them-
selves—which Rousseau pointed was one to the effect
that it is the condition of the labourer and not the
nature of the labour which can degrade a man. The
South Staffordshire brickmakers, the Government
inspector assures us, are full of kindly feelings, and,
although they transfer even their infants from the
school to the clay-yard, never let an orphan grow
hungry. The young, moreover, are singularly care-
ful of the aged. Thus, amid the shadows, there are
some redeeming lights thrown athwart the picture.
Upon the whole, however, the perspective is sick-
ening—a wide scene of odious and dissolute social
customs—of precocious youth, daring in its immo-
rality, of untaught vice, of ribald amusement, of
swearing, profanity, and the defiance of all those
laws which make social life, whether among the poor
or among the rich, respectable. What is the reason
why these earthy and metallic districts of a country
are almost invariably the last to feel, practically,
the influences of civilisation ? Is it that there are
certain social zones in which particular qualities of
human nature flourish or decay? The surface and
the caverns of the ocean have each their inhabitants,
embraced by the same element, yet ever strangers
to one another. We must not, however, take shelter
in these parallels, or in these suggestions of fatuous
theory. There is a race of men, women, and children,
the troglodytes or the ants of our midland; and after
accumulations of blue books and successive investi-
gations, with any amount of declared good inten-
tions calculable by philanthropy, the light is held
up, and we see them still black in body and mind,
grovelling, rude, and illiterate. How is it ? Why
these strange prejudices of the South Staffordshire
population, whether in the recesses of the earth or
at the clay-works described by the Government in-
spector, where the earth itself is wrought up into a
solid farm ? Why those men, all brawn and bulk,
who seem incapable of a thought beyond the pot of
ale before them and the pipe between their lips ?
Why those emaciated women and squalid children ?
Their occupation is not, of necessity, injurious to
life ; their earnings are not, on the average, con-
temptible ; yet after years, twenty-two years, in-
deed, of official reports, we open the book at the
same page, and hit on the miserable picture of life in
a large English district drawn by Mr. Baker—a pic-
ture of life where the people are blank in their minds,
brutal in their enjoyments, sensual, impious, and
with scarcely an active influence to foster their
moral or social energies. We can better understand
the report we, at the same time, have received
from the South Staffordshire miners. They dwell,
for the most part, below the sight of heaven. The
darkness of their work operates with wondrous
effect on their characters. They toil amid the
constant rattle of engines and roar of furnaces,
and in a dim irreligious light, with activity rest-
less and violent, in a feverish atmosphere, per-
petually. in the presence of danger, away from their
families, and earth, or air, or fire, or water, map
at any instant overwhelm them. This seems to
account for a certain recklessness discernible among
miners ; but why the brickmakers of the Black
Country should be inferior to those anywhere else
appears a fact unaccountable, although unquestion-
able, unless we admit that while eager on the sub-
ject of Arctic explorations, West African missions,
and interesting provinces of Borneo, we have ne-
glected. a great social duty at home. For even
among the almost wild people who live so near to
us, and of whom we know so little, that are de-
scribed by Mr. Baker, tourists who travel to see
human nature rather than dead scenery have told
us that they have observed indications of a faculty
for adopting and enjoying better manners—an idea
of accepting, even though unreadable, tracts from
the clergy, and listening to their exhortations ; s
fondness for neat furniture and bright ornaments,
when they can be procured—the cultivation of
flowers on the most unthankful soils, and a general
love of music and dancing. But the dark features
predominate—ignorance, brutality—the beer-shop
—every man with a bull-dog between his knees--
nostrums of opium and gin—cock-fighting and,
card-playing ; and, ;withal, ragged clothes an
half-famished families. We are glad that officio.'
attention has been directed to this wretched state
of affairs in the South Staffordshire districts, espe-
cially those where the great clay-works are chiefly
situated, because it. is not a fact honourable toa
Christian community that, after an exposure dating
22 years back, a Government inspector should go
down, and return reporting that there is no im-
provement, and that a fearful condition almost of
infant slavery, and certainly of general degrada-
tion, exists.