The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-13 00:00:00

Mr. A. J. B. Beresford Hope, in a letter to a
contemporary, says:—
The opinion which you express, that the time is
approaching when England, in concert with France,

must offer her radiation to the fratricidal bellige-
rents, it not, also in concert with our neighbour,
recognise the Confederate States as a Power of the
earth, bas steadily been gaining strength in the

minds of thinking people in this country of every

condition. It has been my occupation for some time
past to feel the popular pulse upon the matter, and
ascertain the general sentiments of society on the

American conteet.. The result which has been forced
on me is that Englishmen and Englishwomen, if

not with perfect unanimity, at all events by a very
preponderating majority, desire to see the strife ter-
minated in the only way which justice and possi-
bility combine to indicate, namely, in the establish-
ment of the Southern Confederacy of sovereign
States as a recognised and independeutPower. Rich
and poor, High Tories and Conservatives, Whigs
and advanced Liberals, Churchmen, Dissenters,
Roman Catholics, have all expressed the same de-
sire to me in the strongest language. In the spring
of the year I was lecturing upon American matters
to several hundreds of the inhabitants of a wealthy
town of between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants,
surrounded by the leaders of the two political

parties in the place, and I found the meeting
uanimous and enthusiastic in its support of

a very outspoken argument for Southern inde
pendence. The growing distress in Lancashire
has since that period intensified public opinion,
while the endurance of the South on the one hand,
and the brutal violence on the other of such Pro-
consuls as Butler, have tended to raise what was
then a strong conviction into a foregone conclusion
that the South cannot be, and ought not to be, dra-
gooned into submission. Common sense pleads that
men who prefer to burn their crops to allowing
them to pass into the enemies' hands, are not likely
to be wooed back to Republican Union by the voice
of authority stigmatising the patriotism of their
wives and daughters as harlotry. Besides, "Union"
itself is no longer the fashionable formula among
the fiercer partisans of the war in the North. " Em-
pire" is the word, and in the name of empire it is
confessed that the conquest of the South is com-
passed. What the significance to England, to
Canada, and other North American colonies, to the
British West Indies, and to Europe at large of a
Yankee empire, starting with the old United States
as its first possession, would be, I do not pause to
inquire. I venture to assume that the bulk of the
Northern people may not have realised the whole sig-
nificance of the delusive lure thus dangled before their
eyes by the interested partisans of this well-calcu-
lated warfare. Isbell continue to trust that they have
not with their eyes open committed themselves to
principles which are intended by their advocates to
be a defiance to all residuary Christendom. There
is one thing of which 1 am certain—that all over
the North there is a party, undoubtedly and un-
happily a minority, but still a minority possessed of
a moral strength which may make itself felt in
a moment of crucial trial, which hates the war, and
which accepts (whether liking it or not) the future
independence of the South as an irreversible fact.
These are the men who still think as Mr. Everett
thought when he was the " Union party" candidate
faordtrheesVs
:te-Presidentship in 1860, and wrote in his
d
" The suggestion that the Union can be maintained by
the numerical preponderance of one section excited to co-
erce the other into submission is, in my judgment, as self-
contradictory as it is dangerous. It comes loaded with the
death smell from fields wet with brothers' blood ;"
and as Mr. Everett continued to think on February
22, 1861, four days after Mr. Jefferson Davis had
been installed Southern President, when he wrote
to the Boston Courier :-
4, To expect to hold 15 States in the Union by force is
preposterous. The idea of a civil war, accompanied as it
would be by servile insurrection (in this he was mistaken).
is too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. If our
sister States must leave us, in the name of Heaven let them
go in peace."
Of such men there are, I believe, hundreds in the
Northern States to every one Unionist in the South,
and in their silent and necessarily cautious, but
sincere co-operation, Europe must confide as a
potent auxiliary in any measure of intervention. I
pass over the impending cataclysm of Northern
finance, and the contingent disaffection of the *est,
for these are elements in the consideration which
every one can supply for himself.
Permit me here to testify ho w much it is to your