The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-24 00:00:00

support cut from under him. Precisely this fact,
however, in the case of those who think so, is one of
the strongest reasons why Europe should hesitate.
It is hardly fair for the Old World thus to take
sides, practically, with one party in the New. Sir
G. C. LEWIS must be right, internationally, when
he says, Let one side give in, or become manifestly
unequal to the continuance of the contest, before
we, as third parties, practically award to either the
palm of success. To recognise the South would be,
however, so far as we can do it, to declare that the
South has won.

Supposing, then, which we think likely, that
European recognition would speedily put an end to
the present bloodshed, we incline to the opinion of
the Secretary for War, that it would do so at the
expense of international justice. And if so, not
being Jesuits, we must not admit that the end
would justify the means. But we must confess
that we have a yet weightier reason now for object-
ing to recognition. We were more favourably in-
clined towards it before the PRESIDENT'S late pro-
clamation than we now are. Defective as that pro-
clamation is in point of principle, wanting as it does
all the nobler inspiration, content as it is to rest its
justification on its military expediency, it neverthe-
less inaugurates a new era in the war. We must
be fair to Mr. LINCOLN and his party. We may
think them wrong ; CHARLES SUMNER, with many
other distinguished Americans, think them wrong;
still they adhere strongly to their opinion, that
they ought not to diverge from the constitution
in regard to slavery, further than they are driven
by the imperative necessities of War. With Mr.
SUMNER we think this " peculiar tenderness,
whenever slavery is in question," a great folly,
and something worse. With him we, too, should
exclaim, "I am tired and disgusted at hearing
the constitution perpetually invoked for slavery."
Property, life, personal liberty, are all dealt with
unconstitutionally, because the supreme law of
national safety overrides in the emergency the
terms of the constitution ; why spare from like
dealing, the most unjustifiable property of all ?
However, at last the PRESIDENT and his friends see

that with their policy of the Union as. their Alpha
and Omega, slavery must be touched. Slavery
began secession—it has nursed secession—it has
maintained Southern families at home, while
the liberated whites were making forays into Mary-

land and Pennsylvania. Slavery has proved itself,
in fact, the sinews of Southern war; and the procla-
mation is become a necessity to hamstring those

sinews.

It would be, therefore, conspicuously unfair, now
that the North has begun to use the weapon, which
all lovers of human freedom in England told them
they ought to use from the first, if we should now
intervene, and by recognition turn aside the
stroke of Northern justice from Southern crime.
The North might justly feel, through a long
course of its future history, that England, the
avowed and sincere enemy of slavery, stayed the
hand of the North when it was uplifted to
smite the monster. History jastly censures our
ancestors for forcing slaves on American colonists.
History would as justly censure our preventing the
abolition of the evil when so fair an opportunity had
offered. We are, therefore, especially bound now
to give the North the fullest and fairest scope. Let
her work emancipation to the uttermost. Let her
try, late as it is in the war, whether she can gain
the confidence of the coloured people. Let her call
on the loyal blacks to quit the service of their dis-
loyal white oppressors, and enlist under the Federal
banner ; let the South find that, while by a system of
terrorism it has silenced all Unionism in its slave
States, it cannot silence the Union sentiment in
4,000,000 of its population, if the Union, to that
four millions, means freedom, and Secession means
slavery. Englishmen of all persons in the world
are bound to regard the black Americans not as
chattels but as persons—and, as persons to admit
their right to be heard on the subject of secession.
When, therefore, the question now comes before
the four millions in this form, " Will you be free in
the Union or slaves in Secession ?" we ought to
demand that the four millions shall have a fair
opportunity to express their opinion.

The North will now have difficult work, it is
true, to give effect to its proclamation, but the dif-
ficulties will vanish fast, if the new policy be firmly
persisted in. In the Revolutionary war no fewer
than three of our commanders adopted the emanci-
pation scheme, and found it one of their most
effective devices. JEFFERSON said that, under Lord
CORNWALLIS'S hands, Virginia lost 30,000 slaves.
The North has far better opportunities of giving
effect to its purpose than CORNWALLIS had, and we
only hope that it will pursue that purpose gene-
rously towards the loyal black, relentlessly towards
the guilty slaveholders. More signal retribution the
justice of Heaven could hardly inflict than to de-
prive them of their slaves, the wretches who have
plunged a continent into a horrible war, solely that
they might preserve slavery, and extend it far and
wide over halt North America.

One of the last parliamentary proceedings of
the Dandy Radical so long popular among the
electors of Finsbury as M.P. for that metropolitan
borough, was the inquiry instituted by him as to
the number of then reported infanticides ! The paper
moved for by the late THOMAS SLINGSBY Dux-
COMBE was in due course laid upon the table of the
Legislature. It revealed, in the shape of certain
reliable and very terrible statistics, an appalling
spread of depravity among large classes of our me-
tropolitan population. It told tales of seduction
and of child murder, of licentiousness and cruelty,
almost incredible for their frequency. It was
noticeable in the first place that the instances of
infanticide numbered up in this lamentable parlia-
mentary return, were those that had been subjected)
each in turn, at the date of its discovery, to the
scrutiny of a Coroner's Inquest. From the secrecy
that may not unreasonably be supposed to accom-
pany the perpetration of this miserable crime, the
inference naturally drawn from the above conside-
ration is—that, great though the number of
eases of infanticide brought under judicial
and medical investigation before the coroner,
countless other cases were successfully huddled out
of view, even during the same interval of time to
which Mr. DUNCOMBE'S Parliaalzennetvaerry
brreocuogrdhtrteo-
lated, were never heard of
at
light, never subjected to even a passing suspicion.
Since the date to which we are referring, the date
upon which such a startling flood of light, thanks '
to the late M.P. for Finsbury, was thrown by order
of Parliament—the crime of infanticide, so far from
diminishing, has very largely increased. The late
respected Coroner, Mr. WAKLEY (once upon a time
Mr. DGNCOMBE'S colleague in the representation of
Finsbury), though he had frequently occasion to
comment in strong terms of horror and dismay to
the recurrence of this very atrocity of child-murder,
of the strangulation, or suffocation, or mortal maim.
ing of newly-born infants—never to our recollec-
don deemed it incumbent upon him to speak in
language of such unmeasured abhorrence of this
wide-spread iniquity as his successor, Dr . LANREs•
TER, has very recently within the brief period of
his tenure of office in Middlesex. Scarcely a single
day, as he tells ua, can pass by without his receiving
a summons to preside at one or more inquests upon