The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-12 00:00:00

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LONDON, TaußsDAy,
JAN. 12, 1865.
The prospects and position of the rival
combat-
ants, in the greatest civil war of modern times,
naturally engage so much attention, that an article
recently published in a Southernjourni
hal will be read
with very great interest.
The itll
e-
y into the r
mond Whig of
the 22d of December enters very fu
sources of the Confederacy, and gives an elaborate
calculation, based on the census tables, showing the
number of men capable of bearing arms still left to
the South. It is very possible that these computa-
tions are not infallible; the premiSes may bo; iu
correct ; the conclusions inaccurate ; too much
margin may have been allowed on some points, and
too little scope given on others, but the main fea-
tures of it ean.hardly fail to be genuine, and as such
very unacceptable to the enemies of the Confederacy.
The writer begins by remarking on the current
report that the resources of the South in point of
-nigh exhausted, and the
population are well
Yankees have naturally enough fomented this to
the utmost. The idea that the depopulation with

which they threaten the rebel States should be fore-
stalled by the accidents of war and the operation of
disease, leaving the fertile fields and plains of the
South ready for them to step in and take possession,
is too acceptable to be doubted. It is also a very
welcome suggestion that the recruits of the Con-
federacy will soon be exhausted, so that the weary
and costly struggle which many in the North itself

This are beginning to think is h s, may terminate
from sheer inanition. This n, so exhilarating

to the North, and so injurious in its effects from

encouraging them to the further prosecution of the
war, is also prejudicial in the South, where it fosters
any lingering traces of despondency or discontent,
and seems to diminish that firmness of pur-

pose and unanimity of spirit which are the
most powerful weapons of the Confederacy. Yet
although many both North and South have yielded
to this impression, it is altogether a mistaken one.
" No proposition," says the writer we have been
referring to, "is more erroneous than that the Con-
federacy is exhausted, or even nearly exhausted, of
its arm-bearing population." To prove this, he
examines carefully the statistics of the whole popu-
lation of the Southern States, with the exclusion of
Missouri and Kentucky, as. given by the United
States census of 1860. At that date the total num-
ber of white men in the 11 States now composing
the Confederacy was 2,799,818. He then proceeds
to calculate the number between the ages of 17 and
50,. adding those that have arrived within those
limits during the last four years, and deducting the
amount of the natural average mortality of that
time. The aggregate remainder leaves nearly a
million and a half, which number, however, has to be
put thro4h several more processes before the final
estimate is arrived at. Allowance has to be made
for those killed in battle, dead from the exceptional
diseases of the campaigns, or permanently disabled
by wounds. It is very difficult to make this com-
putation, since there are no actual figures to go
upon, but the calculation does not proceed without
some foundation to go upon. He says, first, that
the casualties of General LEE'S army during the
last campaign have not amounted to 85,000 ; there-
fore, if he takes that number as an estimate, he will
be certainly over rather than under the mark. Of
these 85,000 he allows 5,000 to have been killed
and 5,000 permanently disabled ; and reckoning the
same for the army of Tennessee, and for the other
forces , of the South collectively, he arrives at an
estimate of 30,000. To this he adds 45,000
for the losses by exceptional diseases of
war, allowing for them at the rate of 50 per
cent. above the ordinary standard. But this is only
the loss of one year, and there remains to be added
the casualties of the previous years. He reckons
these on a different scale, as at first the losses were
comparatively trifling, and in 1862 and 1863 they
were much less than in 1864. For those four years,
then, he allows respectively 30,000, 50,000, 60,000,
and 75,000, so that the losses from the casualties of
war stand at 225,000. But these are not the only
deductions to be made from the numerical strength
of the Confederacy. There remain deductions for
50,000 prisoners of war now in the hands of the
North; for exemptions from disability and other
causes, and for the population belonging to Southern
States under the control of the enemy, which, in
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia, he reckons at
one-half of the white population of those States, and
in Tennessee at two-thirds. He is still not satisfied
with these reductions, but reckons 5 per cent. as
having left the country, a ratio which, he observes,
is much too high. The result of all these calcula-
tions, which can scarcely be objected to as being too
favourable to the Confederacy, leaves to the South
a force of about 700,000 fighting men. Allowing
two-thirds of these for active service, the Southern
armies in the field should consist of more than
460,000 men, a larger number than any force which
they have yet had under arms. The labour of these
calculations must have been amply repaid to the
ingenious Southerners who undertook the task by
the gratification of being able to publish such a fact
to his countrymen. It is to be hoped that it will
not be unheeded in the li-orth, but that Washing-
ton and New York may pause to consider the pos-
sibility of subduing an army of nearly half
a million, animated by a fervid patriotism
and an uncompromising hostility to .the invaders,
and the expediency of prosecuting such an endea-
vour with a national debt already amounting to
hundreds of millions. Europe, too, may read a
lesson from these figures. In the first place, the
estimated amount of losses during these four years
must strike the most unreflecting. Nearly a quar-
ter of a million on one side alone to be reckoned as
a reasonable computation of the destruction of
human life and health within that brief period. The
Thirty Years' War, which remains the terror of
modern history, was said to have cost the lives of a
million of men, but, according to a calculation
based on estimated probabilities, these four years
have cost the young Republic of the West already
half that number. No country can stand such a
rate of depopulation, no exchequer can endure the
maintenance of such a war. Heavy taxes press more
and more upon the people, the necessaries of life
grow more and more costly to the rich, more and
more inaccessible to the poor. The rate of pre-
mium on gold, looked for so eagerly in the American
mercantile news, represents but feebly the sufferings
of the people, while of domestic and individual
misery these four years of warfare have been fertile
enough to supply a thousand tragedians. Half a
million deaths and hopeless invalids represent an
amount of mourning in families terrible to contem-
plate ; and when we add to this the misery inse-
parable from civil war, the feuds, the dissensions, the
bitter separation between friends and relatives, the suf -
f erings of prisoners, and in the South the wretchedness
caused by burning houses and devastated property,
we shall shudder at the result. How much of all
this was preventible,
and preventible by the inter-
vention of Europe, is a question which conscien -
well ask themselves. Had England
tious men may
agreed to the
proposal of France two years ago—
had she recognised the Confederacy even a twelve-
month since, many a brave man now wept over in
vain might be alive to serve his country in some
better cause—many a vigorous frame now help-
lessly maimed and crippled might still rejoice in its
strength—many a broken heart might have been
spared its affliction. These considerations, of
course, cannot always be allowed to prevail. There
are times when the sword must be unsheathed at
whatever cost : when nations are called upon to
make such sacrifices and to shrink from them, is
that moral cowardice which is the worst of evils.
But the question now is, to what purpose is all this
misery ? Are we called upon to stand by and
watch the struggle until both combatants pause
from exhaustion—until the fair and flourishing na-
tion We were proud to call our descendants, shrink
hitt)
Our Physical and financial collapse ? We boast of
neutrality,
but even granting it to be genuine,
we can hardly
applaud the strong man who stands
by and sees two frenzied
will not lift his a 8 of
the death, and boast
we have quoted prove thtot stay
weaker brothers fighting to
he his love of peace, because
surely, th6n, after
them. The figures
The latest news we have etsheervi:
in the Confederacy to preserve a resolute stand.
eeis life enough left
skill and courage. received testifies to their
continued warfare, whose only reult 'l7 conclusion,
four years of

according to the leaders of both sides, must be the
exhaustion of one of the combatants, it is time for
England to step boldly forward and carry out in
her policy that principle which is older than any
modern theory of non-intervention—the recogni-
tion of the right possessed by every free and intelli-
gent people to choose their own ruler and their own
form of Government.

At the eleventh hour Mr. AYRTON has addressed
his constituents, and it certainly would have been
a pity if they had lost his sensible and sound speech,
which entered so fully into many important subjects,
and embraced so many topics in its discursive
range. The hon. member made some very sugges-
tive allusions in regard to many local matters, and
among other domestic questions permted out the
most unsatisfactory state of the poor in this country.
He truly styled it a national disgrace that there
should be so many " chargeable poor, and at such a
tremendous cost of maintenance." Perhaps one of
the best explanations of this state of things was
given by Mr. AYRTON, when he attributed it mainly
to the prevalent practice of infant labour. The
report of the commission of infant labom: showed
that " mere infants were kept at work for ten,
twelve, and fourteen hours a day." When we find
that children of five years of age are thus employed
it is only wonderful that greater evils and more
grievous results do not follow as the natural
sequence of such an anomalous course of action.
Those who think that business must be attended to
whatever else happens, will do well to ponder upon
the passage in this speech, in which such
bartering of health and strength are compared
to the traffic in slavery, so repugnant to
English ears, and so revolting to English prin-
ciple. " Slavery, whether of adults or children,
was a moral pest, which brought in its train
ignorance, poverty, and crime." That the deadly
harvest of such a poisonous seed is being reaped
in this country at present many could now attest ;
and surely it is the duty of all to endeavour to
mitigate the extent and lessen the evils of this
practice of children's labour. As Mr. AYRTON
remarked, those young ones thus treated in their
turn reared a generation like themselves, and
hence no end or limit could be found for the evil.
There is no doubt that the numerous cases that
meet the eye, in workhouses and other institutions
and asylums of deformity, imperfect intellect, and
confirmed afflictions of a painful nature, originate
in a great degree from the pressure of work; of
so hard a description, at a tender age. In the
course of his remarks, Mr. AYRTON touched upon
the education grant, and declared his belief that the
sums were not properly applied, like many others.
He stated that Mr. LOWE had not been well used
by the Government, for he had done good service
in the cause, in many instances and in various ways.
It is to be regretted that the hon. member did not
show the same discernment in his remarks on foreign
affairs as he did in his discussion of home questions.
There is never any use in attempting to make the
best of things when facts are too stubborn to be
controverted, and the arguments too tough to bear
any moulding into a convenient form and suitable
shape. Thus expressions of dissent were made in a
decided form when Mr. AYRTON said that the United
States had not made more sacrifice of life and pro-
perty than had this country at the time of the
Crimean War, " considering the number of the
armies fighting on both sides." Such an exposition
is quite irrelevant, and not at all to the purpose. It
is a relief to find, at the conclusion of this speech, a
home thrust at head quarters, when the hon.
member said that Reform had been placed in the
background by those who had actually been placed
in office under the supposition that they were its
best friends. When he said that "it was the duty
of a Government to lead, and not to lag behind, and

that he for one should not respond to the cry of
PALMERSTON for ever,' while all reforms were
shelved and shirked," he gave utterance to
opinions that many entertain who have not the
honesty to make them known, or are wanting in the
spirit to do so.

The banquet to the Recorder and Bar 01
Southampton was a very successful entertainment
and the speeches delivered on the occasion possess
more than the average interest of those generally
made at such affairs. The Rev. Dr. BRADSHAW, in
his short address, made some effective allusions to
the duties of those in a responsible position ; and,
although speaking at a festive gathering, he endea-
voured to improve the occasion by a word in season,
and to draw the attention of his hearers to elevated
subjects and improving contemplations. After
remarking that the many who had passed away
from that place to their long home led to serious
reflections, he appropriately added that wherever
they looked at arts and sciences, at the works man's
mind had composed, or even at a tree or plant,
God.was in them all. "It was by teaching such as
this that men might be led forth to love nature, and
say all these beauties are mine, because he could
raise an unpresumptuous eye to heaven, arid, smiling
say, 'My Father made them all.'" Certainly a
discourse like this is not often read at a public
entertainment, but it is not unsuitable that occa-
' sionally a higher tone should be infused into such
assemblies, and the mind led to dwell upon loftier
themes than the politics of the time and the fancies
of the hour. The Rev. J. ADKINS also spoke in a
suitable style, and expressed his satisfaction that no
exclusiveness had been shown in the manner in
which the toast of the day had been proposed, for
although differences of opinion were sure to exist
hatred need not accompany them. Major ROSE, in
returning thanks for the volunteers, contrived to
make this hacknied theme more stirring by his• apt
representation of the chief circumstances of the case.
Thus, he said that, by the Volunteer movement, it
had been well exemplified that they all recognised
and also appreciated their blessings and advantages
in living in this free country, and truly declared
that the chief advantage of the Volunteer movement
would be to put a stop to the " panics" that ever
and anon were wont to come when any great con-
vulsion perplexed foreign affairs. The Sheriff, in
proposing the health of the Recorder, was enabled
to make the usual complimentary address without
having recourse to flattery to aid him in his course,
.and stimulate his flow of eloquence, for the subject
of his discourse well merited all the encomiums
passed upon him, and in his brilliant career had
given satisfactory proof of his zeal and ability. In
testimony of the very comprehensive form in which
his duties were fulfilled, the Sheriff said that, when
Lord Chief-Justice COCKBURN was their Recorder,
his decisions " never gave more satisfaction than
those of the present occupier of that office." Mr.
MONTAGUE BERE, the Recorder, made a brief but
very effective speech, in which he said that speaking
was his trade, and so he would not avoid it on the
present occasion ; and he then, as most men do with
a grave subject before them, made a jesting allu-
sion to his duties in that place, by saying that he
would not be looked upon as merely a
" criminal lawyer, " whose province it was
to take orders at certain times for the
administration of justice, but as one who took a
deep interest in the welfare and interests of the
place. Mr. Alderman ROSE, in his discourse, ap-
propriately brought in the interesting circumstance
which had distinguished his mayoralty—namely,