The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-04 00:00:00

We all remember how thunderstruck was Man-
chester with the defection of Mr. WILSON from
Manchester free-trade doctrines. When be got to
India as her Finance Minister there was one thing
which must be done. He must make ends meet.
He urged the Government to cut down every pos-
sible expense, but after all he could not frame an
estimate which did not leave him with a large de-
ficit. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to
make every export and import, that would do it,
yield revenue. Even Manchester could not be
exempted; not less than ten per cent. was ruth-
lessly clapped on to her piece goods as an import
duty, by the great free-trade man of figures. But
the worst was that the late editor of the Economist
seemed to have forgotten his principles. India had
herself a cotton spinning and weaving interest.
There was not only the vast native weaving in-
dustry in numberless cottages and villages, with
bamboo looms making piece goods of hand-spun
cotton, but manufactories like those of Manches-
ter herself were beginning to rise, and here,
therefore, was the unparalleled case of a free-trader
imposing a duty on the foreign article while the
domestic one escaped the tax. It was a clear 10
per cent. of protection.
Mr. LAING has been able somewhat to better the
case. He reduced the duty to five per cent. Still
Manchester is all at ease. She forms, therefore, an
association, one not quite so formidable as the Old
League, to abolish the Indian Cotton Laws. They
are clearly, to the extent to which they go, as
opposed to Free-trade principles as the Corn-laws
themselves. Mr. LAING confesses that Bombay
is a manufacturing rival not to be despised.
Hardly anything but the price of coals is against
her. At Bombay, notwithstanding the rise in
wages, the current wage for the month does not
exceed a week's wages in Manchester. Bombay
saves also the double freight of sending the raw
material to Liverpool, and bringing the manu-
factured goods thence. India feels the disadvan-
tage of having few trained hands, compared with
an old seat of the manufacture, like Manchester,
but that is a disadvantage lessened by the erection
of every new mill. Thus, the Lancashire manu-
facturers are threatened with the creation of rival
which, like those of Massachusetts, will
in great part created by a hostile duty,
shfauacilteocribeieense:nitself to give a fair profit.
LAING, however, could give Manches-
had,
Indiaa to
a
Even
terMr-
statesman, gentlemen
only
lsym
acnoenhseosltaetri .
butHe
all
ust now, could not dispense with
think of, an d India,]half a million from the cotton
be followed by the loss of the
the duty. The loss of
duties might have to
duties on other imports, since the manufacturers of
hardware and other goods could hardly be per-
suaded to regard cotton as having a better claim to
exemption than their own manufactures. Thus
• the only the whole customs revenue of two millions might
be at stake. Now, direct taxation,
pos-
sible substitute, is—and how justly !_—so obnoxious
to the natives, that the Government cannot venture
to take any step which will lessen its Power to ful-
fil its promise, and to drop the present low income
tax, at the end of three years. The Indians are
quite right. They prefer a customs duty, hardly
felt, to an inquisitive, oppressive tax, which mulcts
the most unequal incomes with equal, or rather
with inverse, severity. It is, too, in practice, the
most extravagant of taxes. But for its existence,
we should never have been saddled with au extra
ten millions a year on that purely unproductive
outlay, the army and navy. We should have been
spared official panics, and got more out of twenty

millions than we now do for fifty. The income tax

is the grand temptation of a " national-greatness"
minister—of a minister who thinks more of Shoe-
buryness, Spithead forts, and iron sides, than of the
prosperity of the middle classes. We hope India
will teach both Mr. GLADSTONE and Lord PAL-
MERSTON a lesson, for which every clerk on a
hundred a-year and upwards will warmly thank
them.

Manchester reminded Mr. LAING of the cost of

the Indian army. It is now 70,000 men. Would
not 60,000 do P—a million a year might be thus
saved. Not just yet, says Mr. LAING. For some
time to come the generation which has seen the
mutiny ought to see that an insurrection is perfectly
hopeless. There are still unquiet spirits who ought
to be exposed to no temptation. He thought Eng-
land ought, in fairness, to bear more of the charge
of the Home Depot of the Indian Army, but then
they should be met by the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer with the POPE'S non possumus. The only
thing he could think of was an English endorse-
ment of the Indian guarantee on the railway
capital, by which they might enable India to obtain
capital at 4 per cent., which now costs it 5 percent.
The risk he considered nothing, and the capital was
all English. He did not press this scheme ; neither
did he seem very sure that cotton could be regarded
as an exceptional case, but he knew of no other.
We fear there is little hope for the Lancashire
gentlemen. They will be handicapped with a five
per cent, probably yet fur some time in the race
with Bombay. We have little doubt that they
will, nevertheless, win. What is wanted, is for
them to become such purchasers of the raw material
in India itself as shall put them and the Indian
factories on a fairer level. The two freights, and
even the lower wages of less efficient hands, they
easily meet by their energy and skill.

The fuller details of battles generally clear up
but slowly the schemes of the generals. We get
some conception of individual charges, repulses, and
struggles, but seldom any precise notion of the
arrangements. ARNOLD tells us that he never
understood a battle, ancient or modern, from de-
seriptinn merely; and a far better authority, the
Iron Duke himself, confesses the almost impossi-
bility of giving an intelligible account of all the
movements in a great battle to another. What
between the reader's ignorance of the locality, and
the many things ordered on the field itself which
formed no part of the original conception, even the
General in chief command would find it difficult to
make a stranger comprehend the course of the
fight.
The greater part of the more serious American
battles, and not least those just fought, illustrate
these remarks but too well. Some Of our contem-
poraries have written as if they thought they folly
comprehended these battles ; but if so, we fail to
comprehend their descriptions; and, when we turn
to the American documents whence they drew
their information, we do not believe that the writers
of these documents themselves were masters of the
battle as a whole. The main results are what we
must be content with; while it is still interesting
to peruse the accounts of some of the separate feats
of arms. We can see plainly enough that the Con-
federates were so vigorously handled on the Sunday
by the Federals, that they thought it better to
choose fresh fighting ground nearer the Potomac,
whence, if not successful, they could more easily
recross the river. They had done this by the Wed-
nesday. Meantime M'CLELLAN had followed them
and got into the best position he could, as the pur-
suer. On the Wednesday, the 17th, the decisive
conflict, as it proved to be, therefore came off. The
Confederates made the bravest and most resolute
efforts to drive back the Federals, but they were
met with equal, at least, and successful bravery.
At one point in the struggle, the balance vibrated
much more evenly than the Confederates were pro-
bably aware of, since M'CLELLAN himself sent word
to BURNSIDE that the day depended on his holding
his position, and that all was lost if he could not.
While IlumaisiDE, on the other hand, did not be-
lieve he could hold it without support. The retreat
of the Confederates at four p.m., it would seem,
alone saved BURNSIDE from being overpowered.

So nearly were things balanced that M'CLELLAN a

the close of the day, like the Confederates at Bull's
Run, did not know whether he had gained a victory.
A victory, however, it unquestionably was, and
a great one. The defeated side had to ask permis-
sion to bury their dead ; and, what was of far more
consequence, had to commence their retreat at once
into Virginia. It is unfair to depreciate the achieve.
meats of M'CLELLAN the very first time in
which he fairly took the field against such
able generals, and against soldiers not only as
brave as his own, but flushed with recent
triumphs. We are sorry to notice in the corres-
pondence of Dr. RUSSELL'S successor such a total
want of that independence, fairness, and generous
appreciation of high qualities on both sides,
which characterised his impartial predecessor. An
honourable partisan of the slaveholders and their
generals would not desire to elevate his clients by
depreciating their antagonists. The Confederate
invasion of Maryland has proved to be both a poli-
tical and a military failure. They found the Mary-
landers, if not actively hostile, yet anything but
friendly. They did not want their soil to be in-

vaded in the name of Secessia, or of liberation ; and,

for the first time, M'CLELLAN hail the advantage
enjoyed by the Confederates in Virginia, of the
best information. The military failure was also
eomplete. The capture of a large number of
troops at Harper's Ferry was far outbalanced
by the much heavier loss of killed, wounded,
prisoners, and stores ; and by the recapture of the
strong positions of Harper's Ferry and Mazyland
Heights. This time the Confederates were in-
vaders, and this time, therefore, as we are disposed
to think, the Confederates were fairly beaten.
What the the two parties will now do, we have,
as yet, no intimation. M'CLELLAN, it is said,
threatened to advance again into Virginia, along
the Shenandoah Valley, from Harper's Ferry. If
he does, his probable reason will be to deprive his
enemies of the supplies of provisions they would find
there. Probably, however, both sides are too much
exhausted, now, to attempt much more at present.

The Confederates are, by all accounts, both of
friend and foe, in such a half-starved, ragged, shoeless
condition, that the Union soldiers wondered how
men, in such a condition, could fight at all, much
less as
they did. The normal condition of the
" mean whites," however, who form the rank and
file of the Confederate army, is pretty much this.
They are used to such hardships as the better fed
and better clothed North would never endure ; and
it is not
improbable that the struggle will become
increasingly one of
aided well-fed and comfortably-pro-
with the desperation of rags and
for troops
hunger.

the
As grave as
judges werea Philosophersnd
Flom,sectionofthe
h
yes-
terday, down at Cambridge,
while discussing, in
°l°
Section D of the British Association—the
devoted to the themes of the
Fauna
gY—theth
Monkey.diffcr-
habitable globe, Botany and Z
ences discernible between the Zan
and
A discussion, of course, this was, espec
suggested
by that highest specimen of the ape species, the
grotesque and formidable Gorilla.
In this grave debate, among philosophers as dis.
tinguished as Professors OWEN, HUXLEY, and Rot,
LESTON, a sense of the ludicrous, to say nothing
of the indecorous, never once appears to have passed
across the imagination of these men of science. It
was seemingly, to them, as sober and rational an in-
quiry, in its way, as any upon which the various sec.
tions of the Scientific Association now carrying on
their labours industriously and intelligently from day
to day could by possibility adventure. Months and

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THE SUN.
LONDON, SATURDAY, OCT. 4, 1862.