The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-20 00:00:00

form a confederation, than to ;the hope, that if 'I
they can effect a separation, the Border States ,
eventually sympathise with them. Missouri, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and perhaps Maryland,
are their hope. Vast as the territory would be
south of these more important States, it would be
but a feeble power as a nation. The PRESIDENT
would deprive them of this hope. " The leaders of
the insurrection," he says, " hope that the Govern-
ment will be ultimately forced to acknowledge the
independence of some part of the disaffected region,
and that then all the Slave States north of such
parts will say—' The Union for which we have
struggled being already gone, we now choose to
go with the Southern section.' " To deprive taem of
this hope substantially ends the rebellion. The
initiation of emancipation completely deprives
them of it.

Probably late successes in the Western Border
States, and the Union feeling manifested there by
the people, have had something to do with the
PRESIDENT'S coming to the decision now before us ;
and it must be acknowledged to be an admirable
reconciliation of his determination not to interfere
with slavery unconstitutionally, and yet to use
emancipation as the means of embarrassing the
rebels. He can remark truly that his proposal
does not claim for the Federal Government a right
to interfere with slavery within the State limits,
it being left a matter of free choice with the States
to accept or reject the proposal. The Constitution
says, in explicit words, nothing about slavery; it
enforces, however, on all free States, by an inten-
tionally periphrastic clause, the rendition of slaves
—that is all, and it is bad enough. But the Con-
stitution certainly leaves the general Government
free to co-operate with any of the States in any
way it pleases for any purpose. We have no right
to complain of a President for thus keeping com-
pletely within the lit ito of the Constitution he has
sworn to defend, and from observing an oath from
which nothing but circumstanceo of absolute necessity
can liberate him. What he now proposes is perhaps
as terrible to his opponents by its political modera-
tion as by its obvious tendency. They will see that
it points to universal ultimate emancipation ; but
they will be unable to represent it as an act of
political war on the slave States. It is, as he
describes it, an "initiation" of emancipation, yet
it is not even such an interference on the
subject as was our own in the West Indies,
If the resolution be carried, it would seem
almost certain that tho slaveholders generally in
the Border States will gladly avail themselves of
it ; and even in the slave states themselves, the
possibility of a change without injury to their
pockets will soon begin to shake the prejudices of
great numbers. Mr. LINCOLN sensibly observes
in regard to slaveholders :—" In the proposition
now made, though only an offer, I ask whether the
pecuniary aid tendered would not be of more value
to the States and private persons concerned than
are the institution and property in it in the present
aspect of affairs." Surely property which can run
away at pleasure during war, and which may never
again be protected by a fugitive slave law, will be
held by thousands to be of less value than the
" pecuniary aid offered by the Government."
As to the ways and means of furnishing the
pecuniary aid, the PRESIDENT truly enough points
out that the cost could not exceed that of war. The
eventual cost would indeed be far less than a war
carried on with determination on both sides. The
sacrifice of life, health, money, and property en-
tailed on the Union by a few years of determination
on the part of the North to recover all for the
Union, and of the South to resist to the last, would
undoubtedly far surpass any expense incurred by
gradual emancipation. At the same time the poli-
tician would have the grand result before him in
the latter case of a Union free, or steadily freeing
itself, from ;what has been hitherto its disgrace
and hindrance.

We observe that a contemporary who always
leans to the South and their cause, repiesents the
proposal of the PRESIDENT as important only as a
" bid " towards putting an end to the war. It is
suggested that other bids may follow, and that the
North may gradually rise in its offers till the South
accepts its terms. But certainly there is little in
the temper of the North so far as we can under-
stand it here, to warrant such a supposition. Their
late victories in all the exultation they occasioned,
suggested amnesty indeed, and fair terms, but
unconditional return to the Union was all along
assumed as indispensable. What the Southern
politicians demand, however, and what the North
will suffer long before it concedes, is independence.
Everything else the North can offer the South could
have had from Congress at the time it seceded.
Mr.LTNCOLN himself declares war to be in dispensable
as long as there is resistance and that his proposal
is offered, not as a bid, at least not one for peace-
ful separation—but the very reverse—he tells us
himself that by depriving them of all hope of gain-
ing the Border States he shall substantially end the
rebellion ;" and " tha initiation of emancipation" be
says " completely deprives them of hope of the
Border States."

We begin to hope, therefore, that though the
President begins in the mildest and most concilia-
tory form, yet that as " the initiation of emanci-
pation" is the policy on which he relies, the result
will be only a succession of " bids" to make eman-
cipation more and more probable. At the effect of
of the Message on all parties—on senators and re-
presentatives, on Conservatives and Radicals, as de-
scribed by the New York Herald, we cannot won-
der.
Another great Federal victory would not I
have been so really important as the President's
emancipation Message.

Looking towards Warsaw through the Russian
lorgnette, all goes on there couleur de rose and
" swimmingly." It is so charming a novelty in
itself to mark how this possibly can be in the
ancient capital of Poland, that it is really worth
looking at. The latest occasion for this display of
loyalty and of willing submission on the part of
the inhabitants, we learn—still from our official in-
formant—was the recurrence but a little more
than a week ago of the ever-memorable ninth of
March, a day so delightful for the Poles to call to
their remembrance, inaugurating as it did so many
resplendant and consolatory hopes, in regard to
which of course the Polish population have never
once in any particular been even for an instant
doomed to anything like
.disappointment. The
ninth of March ! Does not every Pole's heart " the
wide world o'er," at home or in exile, thrill to re-
member it ? The anniversary of the accession to
the Imperial throne of the Autocrat of All the
Russias and their &,ponapncies, of his Majesty the
Emperor ALEXANDER 11. What abund.ut reassnns
for gratitude the inhabitants of Russian Poland have,
to be sure, whenever they call to mind that famous
ninth of March, when—in the very crisis of the
Crimean War (just after the agonies of that dreadful
winter had been passed through by the Allied armies
before Sebastopol)—another Czar ALEXANDER
ascended that awful throne of the great Northern
Autocracy, from
rules, with
which the House of ROMANOFF
an absolute authority; the destinies of
sixty millions of their
fellow creatures.
Once before there was an Emperor ALEXANDER,
who came into possession of the sceptre of PETER