The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—It is very much to be regretted that the
American Government, having successfully brought
to conclusion the great -war in which it has been
engaged, and having decided on a policy with re-
gard to the South full of magnanimity and concilia-
tion, and calculated, if anything can, to heal the
wounds left behind it by the late fearful struggle,
should not have buried the hatchet altogether. On
her west the Great Republic is still engaged in a
fearful conflict with the Indians, and on the east
her Minister is directed to stir up fresh elements of
strife, and revive controversies which it can serve
no good purpose to renew. Opinion has been
divided in this country on the merits of the Ameri-
can quarrel ; but we are all unanimous in wishing
every success to the new order of things, and in de-
siring to see the United States, since they are to
form a single Confederacy, linked together in the
bonds of sincere friendship and goodwill among
each other, and living on the best of terms with the
remainder of the world. had this country been ac-
tuated by a hundredth part of the animosity of which
American papers continually accuse her, she would
have taken a very different course from that which
she has adopted. Instead of 'the consistent and
dignified refusal of Parliament to discuss the Ame-
rican question, we should have had inflammatory
debates, calculated to encourage one or, perhaps,
both sides to a continuance of the conflict ; and it
may well be that a very little of the spirit by which
America pretends to believe that we were animated
would have brought the Civil War to a termination
exactly the contrary of that which has occurred.
The South, at any rate, are bitterly disappointed
in us ; they expected that our prejudices and our
necessities would have induced us to come for-
ward to save them from the utter destruction of
their existing system of industry. It is hard that
when we have so entirely offended one party we
should be so very far from pleasing the other.
This, however, is the case, and we have only to
examine what claim of justice America can throw
over the correspondence on which she has en-
tered. The effect of that correspondence may be
stated in very few words. Mr. Adams demands on
the part of the United States indemnity for the in-
juries sustained by their commerce by the ravages
of the Shenandoah, Alabama, and other Confede-
rate vessels fitted out in British harbours, and offers
to refer the question to arbitration. Lord Russell
refuses the claim, declines to refer the matter to
arbitration, but offers to submit to a Commission
any matter upon which the two Governments are
agreed. The effect of this correspondence is, there-
fore, a distinct and final refusal on the part of the
British Government to enter into the question of
any compensation for these losses ; a declaration
that they are not the fit subject for arbitration ;
and an offer, which is of very little importance or
significance, to refer to arbitration any matters of a
similar kind upon which the two Governments may
hereafter be agreed. It is difficult to say so of any
thing in so complicated and wide a subject as inter-
national law, but we believe that such a claim as
Mr. Adams has made, supported on such grounds
as he puts forward, was never before preferred by
one civilised Government to another. After all the
attention we have been able to give the subject we
find it next to impossible to discover what is the
precise fault that the American Government has to
find with us. First, it seems to be that we have
become neutrals when we had no right to be neutrals
at all ; and, secondly, that having become neutrals
we did not adhere to the duties of neutrality. The
only ground on which the first claim can be sup-
ported would be the assertion that there has been
no war at all in America during the last four years,
that no belligerent rights have ever existed, and
consequently that we had no right by the law of
nations to place ourselves in a position of impar-
tiality between the two contending parties. If there
was a war there were neutrals, and neutrals cannot
exist without a recognition of the belligerent rights
of the two contending parties. The Minister of
the United States feels this difficulty, and shrinks
from an assertion so monstrously absurd as that no
war has ever existed ; he only says that we were
in too great a hurry to recognise these belligerent
rights which, we must, it would seem, have recog-
nised sooner or later ; and on this ground he bases,
in the first place, his claim for compensation. He
affords, however, no answer to the statement that
the North itself was beforehand with us in this
matter, and by declaring the blockade proclaimed
that very state of war which we only followed her in
recognising. We think it results from his own
letters that at some time or other during this gigan-
tic struggle England had the right to clothe herself
with the character of a neutral. Mr. Adams does
not dispute that she acted in good faith, and we
maintain it would be utterly unheard-of and un-
exampled if we should be called upon to account for
exercising a right we undoubtedly possessed in good
faith and without any evil intention, at a moment
displeasing to one of the parties whom it affected.
That a nation became a neutral at the wrong time,
and by so doing prejudicially affected the interest of
one of the combatants, is a charge so entirely novel
and unprecedented that we cannot help feeling sur-
prised that the American Minister should have been
instructed to bring it forward. The next charge
really seems to amount to this—that after we had
avowed ourselves in the capacity of neutrals we en-
deavoured to sustain the character, and to maintain
a position entirely impartial between both parties.
Mr. Adams's charge against us seems to be, not that
we violated our neutrality, but that we observed it
only too faithfully. In this instance, as in the other,
he fully and repeatedly admits our good faith ; he
does not accuse our Government of making its
avowed neutrality a cloak to conceal a real hostility ;
but his charge is that, our municipal law being in a
very imperfect state on the subject, we acted only
so far as that law permitted us, and did not attempt
during the war to amend it or make it more
perfect ; that is to say, that, having undertaken
to be neutral between North and South, we did
not attempt during the war to reform that law in
a sense advantageous to the North and disadvan-
tageous to the South. As well might the South
accuse us that, having no law which prevented -us
from selling arms to the North, and finding that
liberty to the North very injurious to the South, we
did not in the course of the war enact such a law in
order to prevent the armies of the North from being
armed with weapons supplied by English manufac-
turers. The truth is, had we altered this law during
the war we should have been notoriously and
flagrantly guilty of that very breach of neutrality
of which we are accused. We regret that English
shipbuilders should for their own gain have em-
barked in a trade which has given our enemies on
the other side of the Atlantic even the opportunity
of raising an outcry against us ; but w e cannot
admit that breaches of neutrality by individual
subjects of the Queen entail liability on the
Queen's
Government, unless they have taken place with its
permission or by its connivance. We regret ex-
ceedingly that the Government of America has
thought fit to bring forward these claims, but we
think there cannot be for a moment a doubt as to
the answer they should receive. To yield to such
demands would be to saddle neutrals in all future
wars with new and undefined liabilities, against
which no prudence and no good intentions can gua-
rantee them. If such demands as these are to be
the ordinary results of the conclusion of a war
between two powerful States, it will probably be
thought better by those against whom they are sure
to be made rather to take sides at once, and ally
themselves to one party or the other, than to place
themselves in a situation so humiliating as that which
a neutral would henceforth fill. We cannot, of
course, tell in what spirit the Government of the
United States are disposed to receive the final and
deliberate refusal of the British Government to en-
tertain in any shape the claims they put forward.
We can only say, on our part, that we are Tao
sure our Government may depend upon the support
of the nation in maintaining the position it has
taken up. If the American Government is deter•
mined to seek a quarrel with us, as well this demand
as any other. We cannot have one on which our
right is clearer and our position more unquestion-
able. If it is not, we shall have saved ourselves, by
the firm stand we are now making, from a great
degradation, and vindicated for the benefit of all
mankind that neutral position so seldom occupied by
Great Britain in the wars of the past, and so often,
we trust, to be hers in the wars of the future.
POST.—We have become now so habituated to
unfavourable intelligence from New Zealand that it
is perhaps with a sense of relief that some will dis-
cover that this month's budget brings no worse tid-
ings than that there has been a quarrel between the
Governor and the Commander-in-Chief, terminat-
ing in the resignation of the latter, and that some
two or three English officers and about a dozen
privates have lost their lives in the most recent ope-
rations undertaken against the insurgents. Of
course we all know very well, notwithstanding the
assurance given to the contrary a few months since,
that the war in New Zealand is not over, and we
must therefore reconcile ourselves as best we may
to the lists of killed and wounded which now inva-
riably accompany our despatches from that colony.
And even for serious differences of opinion between
high officials, the experience of what passes
ine
tliemother country, at the best
in the
times, must naturally
prepare us. But there is the history of th
cir-
cumstances which led to the resignation of General
Cameron not only much to occasion surprise, but
also to induce very curious
i reflections on the nature
and the object of the war in which we are now en-
gaged against the insurgent Maoris. That the go-
vernor of a colony should differ in opinion from the
commander of the forces there stationed, in respect
to the tactics to be employed in reducing a savage
race to submission, or in regard to the scale on