The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-29 00:00:00

MR. CLAY, M,P., ON 7HE AMERICAN
WAR.

On Wednesday evening Mr. Clay, M.P. for Hull,
addressed a meeting of the Reform Association, and
in the course of a long and eloquent speech, which

was received with loud cheers, he made the follow-

ing observations upon the present war in America,
and the desirableness of an immediate effort for the
restoration of peace :

" Very much of the anxiety, and some of the dis-
cussion of Parliament, was given to the American
question. It could not well be otherwise. No dozen
men, with thoughts more serious than Doncaster
races or the last new opera, ever meet without an
interchange of opinions as to this mighty calamity.
It is difficult, indeed, to extract from it any topic of
consolution ; yet England may look with just pride
at the attitude and feeling of her people, from the
commencement of the struggle to the present day.
(Applause.) Not six men in the country will con-
tradict me when I say that, at the first news of the
rupture of the American Union, our feeling, almost
universal, was deep sorrow for the probable failure
of a great experiment, and a sincere hope—if not a
confident belief—that a speedy way might be found
to avert an unnatural war, and preserve intact
the work of Washington, whose name can scarcely
be more venerated in the country of which he
was the father, than it is by us. (Cheers.) We
were not Northerners—we were not Southerners—
we were anxiously interested in both by right of
common humanity, of special interests, and of blood.
As time wore on, it was not perhaps in human na-
ture—not even in English nature—one of the most
forgiving—to bear without some feeling of resent-
ment the systematic representation, the threats, and
the undisguised animosity of the North. The weaker
side, too, or that which appears so, has always a
prima facie claim on an Englishman's sympathy—
and it may be that not a few of us have for some
time been affected by Southern proclivities. But our
conduct as a nation has been unchanged. From first
to last a strict impartiality. We have, it is true, ad-
mitted that which we could not deny—that there
was a war—but, with this exception, we could not
have observed a stricter neutrality if that war had
been the paltry sedition which some would even yet
call it. England has borne, and still bears, her heavy
share of a calamity which is as wide as the world,
with a dignified and sorrowful patience, to which
the history of mankind can scarce furnish a parallel.
We have made no offer of mediation. The great ma-

jority of those whose opinions are most worthy of
respect, whether on this or the other side of the At-
lantic, believe that such offer would have been mis-
chievous. I make no doubt they have been right;
and I am further convinced that the present Govern-
ment, or any other Government, will seize with avi-
dity any chance which may present itself of offering
mediation, with a reasonable chance of success. The
anxious question of the day is, will these horrors last,
and I see that a statesman of the greatest ability,
Mr. Disraeli, has lately indicated an opinion that
they may last for years. Civil wars, he said, are al-
ways long wars, and he instanced the 30 years' war
and the struggle between Athens and Lacedwmon. I

venture, not without diffidence, to hold a contrary

opinion. This war cannot last much longer. Every-
thing is against its long duration. The improvement

in arts of destruction, which must make a long war

an exchangeable term for wholesale extermina-
tion—the improved feeling of the civilised world,
and the inextricable financial difficulties of the

Northern States. Why, a friend of mine, writing
to me from New York, tells me, not as a joke, but
as a fact, that, on having his hair cut, and paying a
dollar, he received in change two tickets to have his
hair cut again—six postage stamps, and two tickets
for drinks at any bar in New York. (Laughter.)
How can a war so bloody, and a finance so absurb,
be of any long duration ? In what way the end is
to come I will not venture to predict. The Presi-
dent has the name of a good and sagacious man. If
he merits this reputation, why should he not say
to his countrymen, as any one of us would probably
say, " I have striven to the utmost to preserve the
Union which is so dear to us; I have spared neither
your treasure nor your blood ; I have failed, and
cannot honestly say that I any longer expect suc-
cess. Further war is not for the Union, but for
frontier. Let war cease.' It is my belief that if
but a few men of mark in the States held this lan-
guage, the immense majority of their countrymen
would hail it with delight. (Hear, hear.) ls there
dishonour in such a course ? The duellist only
would say so, while all Christian men would agree
that the greatest honour was with that man who
first said, Peace. Again I say this war cannot last.
If there were no other reason, it is impossible that
men, having our blood in their veins, can long sub-
mit to the loss of the liberty of the press, freedom
of speech, and all that is dear to freemen."

MR. .ROEBUCK'S GENTLEMEN.

(From-the New York Evening Post.)

Mr. Roebuck, that extremely polished personage,
told the people of England the other day that
Southern rebels were gentlemen of the good old
English sort, and that the men of the North were
the refuse and scum of Europe. If Mr. Roebuck
were only a little better bred man himself, he
would not compromise his character for honour
and veracity by echoing a stale boast which
historians and readers have laughed at for
nearly a century. Virginia was principally
settled by convicts—by the cut-purses and
strumpets of London—by men and women of
whom the Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack of De
Foe are excellent types. That State, as all the
world knows, was for years a penal colony of Great
Britain, which Massachusetts never was, because
Massachusetts would never submit to the indignity.
So, at a late period, John Wesley found Georgia so
full of blackguards that, although he earnestly
desired to remain and preach the gospel, he was
forced to return to England. As a general rule,
the emigrant scamps, who left their country for
their country's good, went to the Southern colonies.
The Puritans of New England, the sober and honest
Dutch of New York, the Quakers of Pennsylvania,
kept a sharp look-out for incoming vagabonds, and
sent them away again as soon as possible. So much
for history ; let us look at the present.
If a man who systematically defrauds his
labourers of their hire—who is coarse of speech and
sensual in all his habits—who is at the best but
half-educated—who sells his own children—who is
always ready upon the slightest provocation to
assassinate his antagonist—who debauches all his
maid-servants who happen to be good-looking--
who, being thoroughly idle, finds his amusement in
drinking and duelling, in lynching and lascivious.
ness, in bar-room brawls and pot-house politics—
who, in the isolation of his plantation, lives in a
sort of semi-ignorance of all that is going on in the
world—who pays his debts when he pleases, and
very often does not please to pay his debts—the
petty, bullying, blustering autocrat of his neigh-
bourhood—if this man be also a gentleman, then
Mr. Roebuck is right—then the Russian lords, in
the time of Peter the Great, were gentlemen, when
they consumed their days in flogging serfs and
their nights in swilling brandy. Noah Webster,
in one of his now forgotten essays, describes a
specimen of these Virginian gentlemen tersely and
picturesquely. "I was once present," he says, "at
an entertainment given by a young planter in Vir-
ginia who had much land and many slaves. He
arose at two o'clock next morning, pawned his knee
buckles and some other articles, gave his landlord
a note for 60 dols., and rode off without paying his
hairdresser." There is one of Mr. Roebuck's
" gentlemen" for you!
We suppose that Mr. Roebuck's ideal of a gentle-
man is to be found in the Squire Western of Field-
ing, the roaming, bullying, fox-bunting,beer-
drink-
ing lord of a little domain. But even squire Wes-
tern, in the very tempest, torrent, and whirlwind
of his passion, would hardly have tied up one of his
buxom English maids, would hardly have flogged
her until she hung a bleeding and insensible object,
with all womanhood crushed out of her for ever,
The Squire Westerns were fond of field sports, but
they hunted foxes and not men. They disposed of
fat cattle at the fairs, but they did not offer in the
market their miserable fellow-creatures. They had
too many illegitimate children, but they did not
sell them as merchandise. They but it sometimes bran-
* dished a horsewhip' Was always over maseu-