The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-04 00:00:00

7 THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY '4, 1862.

How are we to interpret the sending of General
PHELPS to Ship Island with two regiments, and
the proclamation he has seen fit to publish P On
the coast of the State of Mississippi, and within
easy reach of Mobile and Pensacola, and also of
New Orleans, the General sends to the mainland a
proclamation, one would have supposed, too grand
and rhetorical for slaves to understand, yet one
which mainly concerns them. It is an expose
of the "motives and principles by which his
command will be governed." These are, that
every State admitted as a slave state since
the adeption of the constitution has been
admitted in defiance of it—next, that the States in
which slavery existed at the time of the
Union, are bound in honour and morality to abo-
lish it !

Not, however, content with this out and out an-
nouncement, he says, "It is our conviction that mono-
polies are destructive as competition is conservative
of the principles and vitalities of republican govern-
ment; that slave labour is a monopoly which
excludes free labour and competition; that slaves
are kept in comparative idleness and ease in a
fertile half of our arable national terri-
tory, while free white labourers, constantly
augmenting in numbers from Europe, are
confined to the other half, and are often dis-
tresssed by want ; that the free labour of the North
has more need of expansion into the Southern
States, from which it is virtually excluded, than
slavery had into Texas in 1846 ; that free labour is
essential to free institutions ; that these institutions
ere naturally better adapted and more congenial to
the Anglo-Saxon than are the despotic tendencies of
slavery ; and finally, that the dominant political
principle of this North American continent, so long
as the Caucasian race continues to flow in upon us
from Europe, must needs be that of free institutions
and free 'government. Any obstructions to the
progress of that form of government in the United
States must inevitably be attended with discord and
war." He goes on to sho w that the constitution was
made for freemen, not for slaves; that slavery might
be endured awhile as a social evil,but is unbearable as a
political institution, and that, " It could exist under
a free Government only where the people, in a
period of unreasoning extravagance, had permitted
popular clamour to overcome public reason, and
had attempted the impossibility of setting up
permanently, as a political institution, a
social evil which is opposed to moral law."
He presents, indeed, to the South an attractive
picture of what they would be without the institu-
tion which their Vice-President terms the corner-
stone of the Confederation. Instead of the whole
building tumbling about their ears, we feel
assured," he says, " that the moment.; slavery is
abolished, from that moment our Southern brethren
—every ten of whom have probably seven
relatives in the North—would begin. to emerge
from a hateful delirium. Front that mo-
ment, relieved from imaginary terrors, their days
become happy, and their
Lights peaceable, and
free from alarm ; the aggregate amount of labour
under the new stimulus of fair competition becomes
greater day by day; property rises in. value; in-
vigorating influences succeed to stagnation, dege-
neracy, and decay ; and union, harmony, and peace,
to which we have so long been strangers, become
restored, and bind us again in the bonds of friend-
ship and amity, as when we first began war national
career under our glorious goverment of 1789."

The South has hitherto sneered at the North as a
nation of manufacturers, tradesmen, and. artificers.
With the pride of an aristocracy, all white man
there scout labour. " But," says General PHELPS,
" it is the conviction of my command as a part
of the national forces of the United States,
that labour—manual labour—is inherently noble;
that it cannot be systematically degraded by
any nation without ruining its peace, happiness,
and power ; that free labour is the granite bass
on which free institutions must rest; that it is the
right, the capital, the inheritance, the hope of the
poor man everywhere ; that it is especially- the right
of 5,000,000 of our fellow.countrymen in. the slave
States, as well as of the 4,000,000 of Africans there;
and all our efforts, therefore, however small or great
—whether directed against the interference of

Governments from abroad or against zebellious
combinations at home—shall be for free
labour. Our motto and our stane.:ard here
and everywhere, and on all amcasions—
' Free Labour and Working-men's Rights.' It
is on this basis, and on this basis alone, that our
munificent government, the asylum of nations, can
be perpetuated and preserved."

We wait of course to see how this (Teed in the
Gulf of Mexico will be dealt with at Washington.
As a proclamation, it far transcends in. abolition
principles that of General FREMONT.
PHELPS be recalled, or his proclamation dis-
allowed ? Or is he really sent to the South
to make use of the last weapon, and to try what
the fear of emancipation would effect. We must
confess ourselvessuncertain of the most lik.fely inter-
pretation. We know, on the one hand, c.-.:hat Ame-
rican captains and generals act with wonderful
independence of the central authority. We know
on the other that the central Government is hard
pushed indeed with the ill success of the war—
nanus abolition. Time only will interpret.

The Queen Continues to have good niglitF, and is

The Duchess of Athole has arrived at the St.
George's Hotel from Osborne,

The Earl of Norbury has arrived at Fzrranee's
Hotel from Ira Hence, Kent.

The Countess of Hardwick° comes to 'town on
Tuesday next from Wimpcle Hall, Cambridges'aire.
DEATH OF THE COUNTESS (DOWAGER) OF MAC-
CLESFIELD.—Wo have to announce the demises of Eliza,
Dowager Countess of Macclesfield, who died at. :,Eynsham
Hall, at the advanced ago of a years.

' could be in every respect more suitable. But—
besides this, we perceive that the chief
among the adulators of the Court are now seriously
beginning to propose that something in the way of
a far grander memorial should be raised, not at
Kensington Gore, within view of the site of the ever
memorable Crystal Palaeein Hyde Park—but down
in that hole-in-the•corner at South Kensington!
About the very worst spot within the immediate
neighbourhood of the metropolis that could possibly
have been selected for anything whatever of the
kind. It is seriously proposed then, that there
down at South Kensington those absurd and most
ridiculous, ugly, and expensive outhouses, dubbed
long since in derision, but very accurately, The
Brompton Boilers, shall, at the cost of somewhere
about an additional quarter of a million sterling
be expanded and perpetuated for the wonder of
future times, under the title of the Albert Museum!
Now we cannot but very earnestly hope that
nothing of the kind will be attempted. Because of
our profound respect and admiration for the
memory of his late Royal Highness we are re-
joiced at the notion of the Memorial and Statue
about to be erected in the Gardens of the Royal
Horticultural Society at Kensington Gore. But—
for precisely the same reason—we do quite as sin-
cerely trust that we may hear nothing more about
the Albert Museum at South Kensington.