The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-30 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 30, 1862.

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MR. HORSMAN, M.P., ON OUR FOREIGN

RELATIONS.

On Saturday evening, the annual dinner of the Stroud
Volunteer Rifle Corps took place in the Subscription-rooms
in that town, the principal guest being the Right Hon. E.

Horsman, M.P., one of the members for the borough, who

had that afternoon given a Whitworth Rifle for competition,
In acknowledging the toast of his health,
Mr. HORSMAN, after some remarks upon the rise and pro-
gress of the volunteer movement, said, now that the move-
ment had attained its present dimensions, and that out of
their own pockets the volunteers have expended between

one and two millions sterling, and that the commission had
stated that they are a powerful auxiliary force to the British
army, constituting a body of nearly 170,000 men, he thought
we should be disappointed if oneof the very first steps taken
in the ensuing session was not to give some assistance to the
force upon those points upon which they can give assistance

without destroying the character of volunteers. The volun-
teers have given that time which is of money value, that

zeal which no money can buy, and if the occasion should
come they were ready to give those lives which no money
could purchase or restore. It was not right, therefore,
that a magnanimous or generous nation should treat the

volunteers as if the defence of the'nation was their sole con•

cern, and as if the rest of the nation were to reap the ad-
vantage and not to bear any part of the burden. Every

sensible man is a friend of economy. We know that eco-

nomy is in reality only synonymous with efficiency, as par-
simony is the sure mother of waste. But this feeling has
been so prevalent, and has been given such effect to, that we
have in this country at least two comforts with regard to
our expenditure. First, there is no country in the world of
which the taxation, in proportion to its requirements, is so
small as it is in England ; and next, that there is no coun-

try in which taxpayers get money's worth for their money
—that is to say, in which so large a proportion of the revenue
is devoted to public purposes, or so little diverted. While

we are all desirous to promote economy to the utmost, and
reduce our expenditure to the utmost, no one who looks
at the state of the world at present could say that we ought
to impair our efficiency or relax our exertions. As long as
Italy is unsettled (continued the hon. gentleman) there can
be no security for the peace of the world. The French
army is at Rome, where it has no business to be ; and the
French Emperor cannot retain it there without public
scandal, and does not know how to remove it. Many people
foresee that storms which may in the end destroy his dynasty
may arise from the state of Italy,'with which he is trifling
too long. French writers already see this. One of the many
French writers who are supposed to derive their ins?ira-
lion from the Emperor has stated, within the last few days,
that Italy ought to be dismembered in the interests of the
peace of Europe ; and the public journals have been assert-
ing that if there should come public troubles in France, the
best diversion of them would be a foreign war. Then look
at Greece, where there has been a revolution. An offer of
the crown of Greece was made to an English prince, and
European powers expected we should grasp at the prize;
but we have rejected it. The lonian Islands have always
been a reproach to us as seeking our own aggrandise-
ment, and we have offered to cede them to Greece,
but the other European nations will not have it so, The
Eastern question is still a question of intrigue' and
difficulty, and England is to be compelled to maintain
this protectorate because if she gave it to Greece it would

Forward some of these combinations and intrigues in which

the lonian Islands are supposed to be a peril to the peace
of Europe. Then look across the Atlant o. Within the
last few days you have had published despatches by the
United States Foreign Minister. He tells Lord Russell that
a war with America would instantly unite both North and
South, and some of the newspapers recommend Mr. Lincoln
and his Cabinet to send an army to India and to invade
Canada, in order to punish England, the perfidious aristo-
crat, and to restore the Union. There is no man knows
what the Foreign Minister, in his present position, may
not resort to ; but with such menaces sown broadcast,
I for one think that the course of economy still is on
the side of safety, and I would rather have large armaments
unemployed, because other States know we are in a defen-
sible condition, than small armaments and in danger of
going to war, because our weakness may promote attack.
(Hear, hear.) The present moment, above all others, would
convert a man to the principle and practice of economy,
even if he were not so disposed, because the circumstances
of England at this moment are such as must indispose any
man to add one feather to the burdens which the Northern
population have voluntarily taken to themselves. "We have
a spectacle now going on which is without a parallel in the
history of the world. (Hear, hear.) You have bad sud-
denly cut off the supply of the raw material by which nearly
four millions of our population were sustained in their em-
ployment, and which also enters largely into the arrange-
ments, commercial and financial, of every class of the com-
munity, and upon which even the stability and solvency of
our revenue are dependent. You have had the supply cut
off in a moment, and a crisis brought upon England such as
no man six months ago could have contemplated without
alarm. England, the most powerful maritime nation in the
world, had only to say the word, and the blockade would
have ceased. It was a blockade, on the testimony of our

highest legal authorities, so ineffective as to be illegal, and
was not entitled to the respect of foreign powers. We had
therefore nothing to do but to take the course so constantly
advocated, and break the blockade, which we could have

done without illegality. But from one end of England to
the other there was one unanimous and instinctive feeling
that the fact of our interest being involved, and our supply

of cotton being shut in by the blockade, should make us
more scrupulously determine to construe the law against
ourselves, and not to take the Northern States at a disad-

vantage when their hands were already full, though we
could have raised the blockade with safety. That has been
the course the Government has pursued with the consent
of the nation. Has there been any complaint on the
part of our operatives? Has there been any approach
to a murmur ? Quite the contrary. There has been among
the whole operative class of this country one unanimous
feeling of complete acquiescence in the course of our Go-
vernment adopted, although that course has, in appearance,
been so fatal to ourselves. And amongst all classes of the
community it has been the same. There have been in no
quarters any of those complaints which in former times
would have been so rife from one end of the country to the
other. Well, now, foreigners are inquiring from what
causes does this proceed. We have been accustomed to
say that our operative classes were composed of the dan-
gerous classes, and that the moment there was anything
like suffering amongst them the Government would have
difficulty. It proceeds, to a great degree, from the extent
to which education has advanced amongst them, and which
enables them now more accurately and more truly to esti-
mate the causes of any such occurrences as arise. For-
merly they would have complained of their masters and of
Government, and looked in every quarter for some solution
of what was to them an insoluble problem. Now they have
intelligence enough to investigate and judge of the conduct
of their masters. There has been no complaint against
them, and the men have been intelligent enough to examine
the policy of the Government, and so far from engaging, as
they would a few years ago, in tumultuous proceedings and
riots, we now find that all classes have been united. Vir.
tue has been exhibited by the sufferers, and there has been
a display of zeal, sympathy, and every Christian effort on
the part of the classes above them; and England in this
way has presented such an example and spectacle as has
never been before exhibitcd to the world. (Cheers.) Then
if I am asked how long is this to continue ?—how long is
this wicked war in America to be permitted ?—when are
you to rccogniso the Southern States ?—when is European
intervention of some kind to take place?--all I can say is
that when that is to be done, and how it is to be done, is the
most difficult question tfiat any Government can have to deal
with. I for (no am not anxious to precipitate their move-
ment inany direction. This I am most anxious for, that what-
ever the Government may d ) they may do it at a time when
the nation will exhibit the same unanimity that it has
hitherto exhibited in support of all the policy that the Go-
vernment has pursued ; and that whatever is dune shall
come with all the power and all the responsibility of a Go-
vernment that has hitherto been moderate, and in its mode-
ration supported by the national sentiment. I am one of
those who feel that the position we occupy at the present
moment, while it increases our power, also increases our
responsibility. We are at this moment happily at peace
with all the world ; but I believe we owe that peace, not to

our weakness, but to our strength—not to any concis-ions
we have made, but to the courage we have exhibited in the
support of a just, and moderate, and wise policy. (Hear.)
And what is the result ? Are we weaker abroad ? Are we
less popular ? Are we less respected ? Why, at this moment
I believe all the world is looking to England in a manner
in which the eyes of Europe never were so turned before.
Italy, deceived, or at least disappointed in that monarch
who went there as the champion of emancipation, now turns
to England for her sympathy and support, and England, as
a strong man armed, taking a foremost place amongst the
nations of Europe, in remonstrating against the policy of
France, thwarted and clucked that policy; and Italy, with
the support of England, in a day when opinions are more
powerful than armies, is now marching slowly but surely to
the realisation of her dearest hopes. (Cheers.) Greece, torn
by revolution, looking shout for comfort and peace, turns to
England, and asks for an English prince. She wants a con-
stitutional monarch, born of a good stock, and nurtured in
the principles of freedom. (k beers.) So again America,
notwithstanding the language of the most licentious press
that civilisation has ever known—notwithstanding the con-
duct of a Government which I am anxious to separate from
the people, and not to take as the representative of the peo-
ple—the population and public of America, suffering them-
selves from their Government and rebuking their press, have
sent their munificent contributions to the operatives of
England suffering from the war which has torn their own
country, telling us they wish us to receive it as a
tribute of brotherhood and peace. Such is our condition
abroad, and what is it home ? England will not soon
forget, and Europe will not soon forget, the spectacle. All
classes have been tried by a crisis such as we never went
through before, and the result has been to unite all classes
in bonds of sympathy, making the poor feel that they have
friends in the rich, and the rich feel that the poor, instead
of being, as formerit*„ll dangerous class, are now the
strength and security on which the nation can ever rely.
(Cheers.) While such is the strength of our position, such
is its responsibility; and I think we have at this moment
great reason to feel proud at the spectacle we have pre-
sented to the world; but at the same time our pride, just
and proper as it is, has cause to be checked, because we
have felt as a nation how suddenly trials have fallen upon

After a few further remarks, the right hon. gentleman
resumed his seat amidst loud applause.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—We have strangely changed sides with
America. Twice within 10 years she has been the
quiet and self-complacent spectator of struggles

which she believed to be the death-throes of our

European influence and our Indian Empire. On

these occasions she thanked Heaven that she was

not as other nations, even as England. She grew
corn and cotton ; she pushed her way into the wil-
derness; she covered the sea with ships and a con-

tinent with railways ; by the end of the century
she would be a hundred million strong, and in a
condition to lay down the law to her neighbours.
Her enormous resources, her ever-doubling crops,

her overwhelming exports, her diminishing debt,

almost taxed the power of arithmetic. All this
was the reward of high principle, a generous
independence, a just regard for natural rights, and
a righteous abhorrence of tyranny and monopoly
in all their hateful forms. Of course, we looked
very smal; in the contrast ; indeed, what State of
the Old World did not look small as it was invited
to creep under the legs of the American Colossus P
All our figures went the other way deep into the
abyss of unprofitable expenditure. It took a very
long plummet-line to fathom the deep sea of our
Crimean or our Indian expenditure. When the
waves became calm enough for financial sounding,
and it appeared that we had thrown the nice round
sum of a hundred millions into the Black Sea,
and scattered not much less on the sands of
India, then America returned with renewed zest
to her more agreeable though not less monstrous
calculations. A new style of eloquence was invented
for the due display of American greatness, and
the British reader, wearied with the feats of enu-
meration necessary for sums of ten or a dozen figures,
began to long for the harmless platitudes of his own
country, generally constructed on a plan to save
mental toil. All this was but the other day. The
calculations of corn, cotton, and tobacco, of acres,
sstlhiipel of human beings, pig's, cattle,
umber our table. It really was
saroanmidlwewashyaatst not,i'safanc ition to think that if our own stupid
jealousy or ambition should ruin us past hope
there was a land of plenty not far off only too glad
to receive us. The tables are turned, England has
reason enough to be humble, and therefore it is
needless to dwell on the fact that in her own little
way her revenue, and even her trade, is improving.
There is a most cheering Revenue return to come
out for the quarter to-morrow night. But that is
not the point we select for our contrast. The two
opposites that present themselves to us just now are
the stupendous, indefinite,
conjectural, untrustwor-
thy estimates of the actual debt and future expen-
diture in the Federal Budget on the one side, and
on the other the quiet, exact, nicely calculated little
tale of destitution and relief given by our own Mr.
Chase to a set of holvday folks in a concert-room
at Chester. Mr. Gladstone has applied himself with
his wonted diligence to get up all the figures of the
Lancashire and Cheshire distress. As for the veri-

table Mr. Chase, who is pouring a Niagara of paper
money over the Northern States, we are happily
relieved from the necessity of exactness in that side
of the contrast. There are people who undertake
to tell us how many gallons of water fall over Nia-
gara in a year, a day, or a minute ; and we can

conceive some difference of estimate between them.
There is quite as much difference between all the
estimates of Federal expenditure. Whether it be
already £250,000,000, of British money, or

£400,000,000 ; how much has be en borrowed, how
much issued in paper, how much is owing to con-
tractors, and what prospect there is of eventual re-
payment, in any possible period, at any percentage,
are all points on which a man has only to make a
statement, and he is sure of an immediate contradic-
tion. If the telegraph says one thing the letters
say another; if Mr. Chase commits himself, the
American papers tell him he has made a mistake,
and he confesses to an oversight. It is, however,
all but certain that long before the quarrel is made
up the debts of the two belligerents will amount to
our own national debt. That is a burden which
has become light to us, for under it we have mote
than doubled our tax-bearing power. The expe-
rience of half a century shows that we can increase,
and multiply, and thrive, and acquire power and
empire under what once was thought a crushing
w ei g h t
N,
01 lutEn
financier glan dis c
ou
ld peculiarly
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ea adapted acpotue f
country
tro taxa-
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yr
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o re
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within the gripe of almost any financial system,
whether bearing chiefly on consumption, on expen-
diture, on home produce, or on imports. There is
no escaping the tax-gatherer here. But the United
States, for the very reason that it is the most open,
the most undeveloped, more expansive, and by na-
ture the freest country in the world, so it can most
easily evade the tax gatherer. However the war
may be settled, another thunder-cloud hangs over
the country, in the arrangement of the debt and the
extraction of taxes from a race taught to regard
taxes as a badge of Old World slavery.
And now for our own share of this great misery
and perplexity-,-the Budget .of Charity, as epito-
mised by Mr. Gladstone. The figures are not small,
but they don't run into the infinite and impossible.
The story is limited to a space, a populaticn, and a
time, and a small margin comprises what is less
known or less certain. The number of the persons
employed in cotton manufacture is about 400,000
half are unemployed, an eighth are fully employed,
three-eighths on half time. The loss of weekly wages
is put at £150,000 a week, or nearly £8,000,000 a
year. The 27 Unions charged by law with the miti-
gation of this calamity contain rather more than
two millions of people and property estimated for the
rates at above £5,500,000 a year. On the face of
the figures, therefore, the property itself is not un-
equal to the burden, supposing it not to last so long
as to render the property unproductive and worth-
' less. However, England has not left the matter to
the relieving officer and the rate collector. While
about 250,000 persons are receiving relief from the
rates, about 190,000 are relieved only from chari-

table funds. iThe business is now conducted in such
a way as to inspire confidence in everybody con-
cerned, both the givers and the receivers. But at first
the relief was very scanty, only about is. ld. a
head each week. The reason, Mr. Gladstone tells
us, was threefold—there was no adequate machi-
nery ; the poor people were shy and independent ;
there was not money enough to justify a sufficient
expenditure. The average rate of outdoor relief
under the Poor-law is now Is. 6d. a head, and from
local rates and national charity together the ave-
rage weekly relief to each recipient is nearly 2-..
amounting to £43,547 in the 27 unions in one week.
The Executive Committee is now expending £25,000
a week, but receiving £35,000. The public and
general subscriptions have amounted to £1,200,000,
and will probably reach £1,500,000, while the sum
actually expended is less than half that actually
raised. There is now good reason to hope that we
have seen the worst, that the tide has turned, and

:hat in two or three months manufactures will re-

vive enough to find employment for most of these
people. The future, however, is still dark, and, as
another appeal might not be so well responded to,
there is no reason at present to caution the public

against excessive liberality. When we shall see a
return of the prosperity lately witnessed in the cot-
ton districts is be) ond the power of conjecture. In

comparison with such calamities as we see elsewhere
we may be thankful for something less than prospe-
rity. That doubt bounds our vision, and is the
worst cloud ahead of us at present.

Meanwhile, and for:the next two or three months,
Mr. Gladstone has given as clear and satisfactory
and succinct a budget as any that the lady secre-
tary of a Dorcas Society ever presented to her chari•
table neighbours. It is our balance-sheet of the
American civil war. The surplus of its curses, Mr.
Gladstone says, has fallen on us, and here is its
pecuniary estimate. By comparison with the Ame-
rican's own share we may indeed be thankful ours
is not more.

DAILY NEWS.—The spirit of liberty and national
independence which has triumphantly withstood
the fiery ordeal of near a century in Poland appears
unconquerable. Yet it does not follow that the
Poles may not, if properly treated, be loyal subjects
of their King, even though Emperor of Russia.
For many ages Hungary was in that predicament,
and yet devoted to Austria. Experience proves that
it is absurd to attempt to convert the Poles into
Russians. And yet not only have the Poles been
converted into Russians by ukase in the greatest
part of ancient Poland under Russian sway, but
they are also made liable to the penalties of treason
every time that they presume to express, though in
a legal form and to their Sovereign, a respectful
wish to resume their ancient name and their ancient
laws. In October last, the nobility of Podolia, at
a meeting which they held in accordance with annual
custom, and with the sanction of the Crown, for
the discussion of the local interests of the province,
expressed by the organ of their marshals a wish to
that effect, in a most humble and respectful petition
addressed to their Sovereign, whom they might,
though they did not, remind of the fact that
they were only soliciting what, in nearly the same
terms, had been repeatedly and solemnly pro.
mised to them by Alexander I. The policy of
granting or refusing the request is a question quite
distinct from its legality, and, even in assuming
that point as doubtful, a great distance separates
an illegal from a treasonable act. All those who
signed the petition have, nevertheless, been ar-
rested and conveyed to the damp and pestilential
dungeons of the fortress of St. Petersburg, where
they will have time to rot before they are brought
to a mysterious trial for treason before the Senate
—a tribunal before which they will have no coun-
sel, where they will be obliged to criminate them-
selves by answering captious interrogatories, and to
which the public are not admitted. But, the trial
over, some grossly garbled account of it will appear
in print, which nobody will believe to be a full and
fair and honest narrative, except perhaps the Em-
peror himself, who is the most grossly deceived man
in his dominions. Incidents like this explain,
though they by no means justify, the sanguinary
attempts which the youth of Warsaw in their des-
peration are every now and then making, to their
own ultimate punishment, but we regret to add
also, to the no trifling damage of the cause of their
country.

MORNING HERALD.—It would be interesting to
know when Lord Russell informed the French Mi-
nister that the time had not yet come to offer a
joint mediation in American affairs, which was the
probable conjuncture of events that shaped them-
selves to his mind as those that would render me-
diation warrantable. If he had formed any definite
idea of such a time—if the phrase were not a mere
verbal evasion of the disagreeable duty then pressed
home upon him to make up his mind—he must re-
cognise, in the present position of the American war,
the advent of that very period when he admitted it
might be the duty of the Great Powers of Europe
to interfere and assuage the deluge of blood. The
hopelessness of Federal victory, which has been long
apparent on this side of the Atlantic, must now
have forced itself upon the dullest politician in the
Northern States. We will say nothing now of the
dreams of conquest in which the Republicans in-
dulged; their wild anticipations of a triumphant
march over the prostrate South—their wicked re-
vellings in the prospect of parcelling out the Con-
federate lands among the licentious Federal soldiery.
We will not ask what has become now of the arro-
gant proclamation of President Lincoln, who unde-
took, by a stroke of his pen, to annihilate the pro-
perty and free the slaves of men who, whatever
their other faults may be, have manhood enough to

beat back the would-be emancipators in every
encounter. We confine ourselves now to the more
moderate policy of the Republican party, who have
made it an integral part of their party platform
that the North shall capture Richmond and rest
content with the moral effects of that victory. Cap-
ture Richmond ! It is easy to say, and, looked at
from a distance, it appears easy of accomplishment.
Bat look at the results. Since the beginning of the
war there have been four different attempts made
to capture Richmond, and each has signally and
disastrously failed_ The North has made the at-

tempt in every possible manner and from every I
quarter of the compass. By land and by sea, from
the north, the south, the east, and the west, the assail-
ants have been met,and fought and beaten, and thrown
back in disorder, or chased in shameful rout under
the guns of their capital; and Washington has
again and again been placed in more imminent
danger than Richmond was ever threatened with.
The last of this series of disasters, though the most
creditable to the Federal arms, is perhaps the most
calamitous of them all. With a courage which they
had not before shown, the Federals charged up to
the very muzzles of the Confederate guns, and fell
in heaps in front of the impregnable lines; with a
skill which contrasts strangely with the blundering
rashness that led him to fight in such a situation at
all, General Burnside is said to have performed the
perilous feat of recrossing a broad river, under the
very guns of a victorious enemy, without the loss of
a man. But not the less the right arm of his force
is broken. It is in no condition to deliver another
stroke. Greatly reduced in numbers and still more
shaken in prestige, shattered and demoralised, it is
now admitted it must retire into winter quarters
and recruit its strength, and recover its confidence
in itself and in its leaders, without which an army
is a mere mob of cravens. But where are the re-
cruits to come from ? To every former defeat Pre-
sident Lincoln was wont to reply by calling for a
fresh supply of volunteers. Will he have recourse
to his old expedient now ? It is as needful as it ever
was ; for we suspect the numbers of the killed and
wounded, startling as they are, bear but a small
proportion to the deserters. But where are his
volunteers ? It is plain that volunteering has
reached its limits. The drafting so often threatened,