The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-28 00:00:00

not still in the remembrance of us all, how, some six-
teen ot -se:fienteen years ago, munificent contri-
butions were sent in from all parts of the world
to swell the funds collected for the alleviation
of the sufferers from the Irish famine and pesti-
lence, among the contributors to those funds being
princes as alien to each other as the POPE at Rome
and the SULTAN at Constantinople ? And as for
home assistance to our own people,portions of whom.
may be borne down for awhile by passing afflictions,
have we not had that but very recently and re-
splendently signalised by the rapid collection of
£70,000 sterling in aid of the orphans and widows
at the Hartley Colliery pit ?

We English have a pretty direct interest in this
great American quarrel—we watch with solicitude
the arrival of naval and military news ; but slavery,
cotton, and Canada are all at stake in the conduct
and results of this war. Even England's greatest
enemies cannot deny her the honour of having made
the cause of slavery her own ; France boasts of
being the only country "to go to war for an idea,',
but all the world knows that England has spent
almost the cost of a war in abolishing slavery and
struggling with the slave trade. Abolition of these
twin monsters is the cause of all Englishmen.
We cannot deny, then, and do not wish, that
the war has done more for the suppression of the
slave trade in America than has been done since
1812, the last American war with England. The
veteran Lord BROUGHAM was able in the House of
Lords to congratulate the Government on the treaty
which it had just signed, and which, we learn with
pleasure, was proposed first by Mr. SEWARD him-
self to Lord LYONS. On this subject Mr. LINCOLN
has been thoroughly consistent. It was an act of
high moral daring, for which we desire to award
him nturalified praise, to hang the first slaver cap-
tain—one of the very worst of his class—and thus
carry out the law of the United States, whose ter-
rors had been perfectly idle during the presidencies
of BUCHANAN and his still feebler predecessors. To
hang, too, in the teeth of petitions and remon-
strances, which, to their everlasting disgrace, the
merchants and moneyed men of New York
sent up to save him. On this tollows
the treaty, which nothing but the most
thorough good faith on °the subject could have
drawn from an American Cabinet. To concede the
mutual right of search, although limited to the
waters in which the slave trade is carried on, was
a really magnanimous act for an American Minis-
ter ; and, often as we have had to censure Mr.
SEWARD, we have so much the more pleasure in
recording that on a subject on which the American
mind is filled with the strongest prejudice, he yet
rose superior to it himself, and did not truckle to a
vulgar popular feeling in this great object. The
possibility of landing slaves at Porto Rico, and
thence transferring them to Cuba, is evidently one
that had not struck either of the diplomatists, and
will doubtless be well guarded against, as soon as it
is mentioned at Washington.
Even slavery itself has received already some
severe strokes, and is likely to receive more. It is
but fair to acxnowledge the constitutional and other
complications of the case with which Mr. LINCOLN
had to deal ; still it can be but regretted that the
worst difficulty of all is the Northern aversion to
negroes. The North cannot endure the idea of a
large number of free blacks living amongst them in
a condition of civil equality. They term it amal-
gamation, and pronounce it impossible. Still every
Northerner of whatever party knows that slavery
is the origin of this costly and fatal war. He re-
members that, while nothing more was proposed
than to exclude it from the territories, and thus to
consecrate all the increase of the Republic to
freedom, this roused the ire of the South, was the
cause of their repudiation of LINCOLN and of the
war. The South went to war for the power to
extend slavery. The North resisted for the right
to limit slavery. The South founded a Confede-
ration explicitly recognising the Divine Right of
slavery, avowedly making it the corner stone of
the Confederation. The North would allow it to
be only a municipal, a State institution. Adhering
to that view, the North has still contrived to deal
some severe blows at slavery itself. It has abo-
lished it in the Federal Government's own
municipality, the district of Columbia, and thus
branded it with Federal reprobation; and it has
proffered to aid the Border States, and others too,
to purchase the emancipation of their slaves.
Both acts proclaimed that the evil was one which
the Government felt itself justified in removing at a
heavy cost. If the Border States dislike, at pre-
sent, the offer, this leaves the intention of the
Government the same, and does not make it less
likely that eventually the fortunes of war may
make them but too glad to accept it.
The war has of course had its own peculiar effect
on the institution. The Generals have had rather
different inclinations in the matter, some caring
most to deprive the rebels of the help of their slaves,
others being most concerned about not depriving
loyal Southerners of their property. Gradually,
however, the fact has become apparent that but
few who owned this Species of property were loyal
to the Federal Government. Indeed, the wonder
is how slaveholders ever worked at all in a Fede-

ral Government with States entirely composed of

freemen. The very air breathed by the two seems
so different that instead of wondering at the pre-
sent explosion, we may well wonder that it did
not come sooner. The Generals, therefore, find,

as might be expected, in the genuine slave

States, that such a thing as a loyal master is

hardly known. One after another they have be-

come practical abolitionists within the circum-
ference of their military control, at the numerous
places they have captured on the Atlantic coast.
They ficd the slaves remarkably attached to the
locality in which they live ; staying behind when
their masters have fled, willing to work indus-
triously for wages, and what is most interesting
and striking of all, very eager to learn to read,
and as apt to learn as white children. School-
masters have had to be sent for, and they report
that the ardour of the poor creatures for instruction
is quite touching, that it quite grieved them to
witness the hitter disappointment of those for whom
they had not primers sufficient, and that they will
devote any amount of time and effort to acquiring
the power to read. Surely a race so industrious, .
and so eager to improve that the hearts of Northern

schoolmasters aro deeply touched with the sight,
can hardly need to be colonised out of the country,

They cannot, after all, be so unfit for freedom, and

must be valuable unskilled labourers. The last

device of the General is that martial law and

shlaavvienrgy
parrot incompatible.ainied ni a rtGin e
South
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ur at
hl HUNTER,
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iallaSwo
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t andre Florida,t
ateno
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ever
also declaredfere. al
Mayhe
l slavesso soon
h
be able to give effect to his proclamation.
To cotton and Canada we must advert on another
occasion. But the cff..ct of the war, so far as
slavery and the slave trade is concerned, has hap-
pily been, if not all we could wish, yet strongly in
the direction in Which all England feels interested.
A blow has been struck at the slave-trade, in the best
temper on the part of America, for which but for
the war we might have waited many years ; while
slavery itself is gradually giving way
before mili-
tary necessities And the better knowledge of the