The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.-If anything could mitigate the distress
of the American people in their present affliction, it
might surely be the sympathy which is expressed by
the people of this country. We are not using the
language of hyperbole in describing the manifesta-
tion of feeling as unexampled. Nothing like it has
been witnessed in our generation, for we accept of
course those domestic visitations in which the afflic-
tion of a Sovereign is naturally the affliction of the
nation. But President Lincoln was only the chief of
a foreign State, and of a state with which we were
not unfrequently in diplomatic or political collision.
He might have been regarded as not much more to us
than the head of any friendly Government, and yet
his end has already stirred the feelings of the public
to their uttermost depths. It has been said that the
Papal Aggression created a more universal excite-
ment among us than had been produced by any
political event even for a whole generation, but that
excitement was of gradual and tardy growth. At
first the news fell fiat upon the public mind, and was
treated with unconcern. It was not till later in the
day that the resentment of the nation found a voice.
But now a space of 24 hours has sufficed not only
to fill the country with grief and indignation, but to
evoke almost unprecedented expressions of feeling
from constituted bodies. It was but on Wednesday
that the intelligence of the murder reached us, and
on Thursday the House of Lords and Commons,
the Corporation of the city of London, and the
people of our chief manufacturing towns in public
meetings assembled, had recorded their sentiments
or expressed their views. In the House of Lords
the absence of precedent for such a manifesta-
tion was actually made the subject of remark.
That much of this extraordinary feeling is due to
the tragical character of the event and the horror
with which the crime is regarded is doubtless true,
nor need we dissemble the fact that the loss which
the Americans have sustained is also thought our
own loss in so far as one valuable guarantee for the
amity of the two nations may have been thus re-
moved. But, upon the whole, it is neither the pos-
sible embarrassment of international relations nor
the infamous wickedness of the act itself which has
determined public feeling. The preponderating sen-
timent is sincere and genuine sympathy—sorrow for
the chief of a great people struck down by an assas-
sin, and sympathy for that people in the trouble
which at a crisis of their destinies such a catastrophe
must bring. Abraham Lincoln was as little of a
tyrant as any man who ever lived. He could have
been a tyrant had he pleased, but he never uttered
so much as an ill-natured speech. The Civil War was
attended by all war's own horrors in too many in-
stances, but there was no cruelty at Washington or
New York—hardly any prolonged or unaccountable
severity. In the whole of this sanguinary strife,
notwithstanding the exasperation of popular feel-
ing, there has been no political bloodthirstiness.
Fanatical speakers have given vent to their passions
on the platform, but violence never went beyond
words. If the people of the Seceding States were
rebels, as the people of the North chose to consider
them, never was rebellion, except on the field of
battle, more gently handled. The North put forth
its whole strength and exerted its whole energies to
conquer the insurrection and subdue the insurgents,
but, on the single condition of reunion, it would
promptly have made peace with them again. At
first, the South might have had almost its will even
in the matter of slavery, and to the very last, even
up to the meeting of President Lincoln with the
Southern Commissioners in Hampton Roads, he was
ready with amnesty, oblivion, and liberal considera-
tion for incidental difficulties. At any moment the
rebellion itself and all its terrible cost would have
been forgiven, and the South might have had its ven-
ture for independence at no charge but that of the
war itself. A melancholy interest will now attach
to the ceremony of inauguration on the Gth of last
March, and those who incline superstitiously to the
notion of prognostics or coincidences will probably
think with some emotion of the brief and even
mournful speech in which the re-elected President
characterised the occasion. The grave and despon-
dent tone of his short address was so strongly con-
trasted with the usual oratory of his countrymen as
to create remark at the time, and it seemed as if
some insight into the future impressed him with
misgivings unknown to others. Except, indeed, for
such forecast or presentiment, there was nothing to
suggest distrust. The dreadful storm by which the
eve of the inauguration had been signalised, and
which frightened the members of Congress from
their seats in the dim grey of the dawn, had given
way to fairer weather, and a streak of ight in the
sky enlivened the day. We read now, with a strange
kind of sensation, of the popularity and security
which the President enjoyed, and which en-
abled him to drive unprotected and in an open
carriage through the streets of the capital At
' the time the fact seemed hardly worth recording,
but we were reminded that four years before it had
not been so, and that when in 1861 Abraham Lin-
coln first took office his appearance in public was
thought not unattended with risk. With still deeper
interest may we observe that on this last occasion,
when all around the President seemed so hopeful,
' and yet he himself seemed so depressed, his life did,
perhaps, hang by a thread. It appears not impro-
bable that the.crime just perpetrated was originally
plotted for the day of inauguration. The mail of
that time informed us that a man was actually
arrested at Washington on suspicion of such a
design, and it is now said that papers belonging
to the assassin show that before the 4th of
March the conspiracy had really been matured.
In all America there was, perhaps, not one man
who less deserved to be the victim of this revolu-
tion than he who has just fallen. He did nothing
to aggravate the quarrel ; short of conceding the
independence demanded by the South, he did every-
thing to prevent or abbreviate it. He recognised it as
his onegreat duty to preserve the Union, and what-
ever opinions may be entertained in this country
about the war and its policy, nobody can say that
such a principle was otherwise than becoming in the
President of the Republic. He was doubtless glad at
last to see slavery perish, but his personal opinions
on that subject were not permitted to influence the
policy of the Government while there was a chance
of escaping the extremities of strife. Homely
kindness of feeling, his plain sense, and his in-
stinctive aversion from violence combined to keep
him in 'a course of clemency and to incline him to
conciliation whenever it might be practicable. He
was hardly a representative Republican so much
as a representative American. He did not express
the extreme opinions even of his own party. He
did worship the Union, but next to that he put peace.
These are the feelings which have prompted our
present manifestations, and if the Americans set as
much store by our English opinions as they are said
to do, they may console themselves with the assur-
ance that no incident in the history of a foreign
State could have excited more universal or more ge-
nuine sensation. The addresses which they will re-
ceive from us are expressions of sincere and unaffected
sympathy. In its political aspect the event is mo-
mentous enough, but of that at the moment we do
not desire to take heed. We trust that the counsels
of the Republic may be guided by a spirit like that
of its late chief, but by our present proceedings we
design only to put on record and communicate to
Americans a feeling which can differ only in intensity
from that of Americans themselves.
lIEIIALD.-It is true that our experience of the
last four years in America has not done much to pre-
possess us in favour of the Federal form of govern-
ment. It is not the less obvious that in presence of
the anarchy which prevails in the formerly United
States of North America, the general break-up of
whose unstable system is likely to be precipitated by
the crime committed in that Washington Theatre
on Good Friday, it is eminently desirable that
everything should be done which can be done, and
that quickly, to consolidate and establish on the
firmest foundation our British colonial empire be-
yond the Atlantic. The area of these provinces,
which extend from the Lakes to the Pole, is at
least equal to that of the late United States. The

country is, however, in great part a desert, and
not capable of maintaining so dense a population
as that which is settled to the south of the 49th

parallel. The people of the British provinces are

increasing rapidly in numbers in spite of the
severities of the climate and the sterility of the
soil with which they have had to contend over a
large portion of the area inhabited by them. The
race is healthier and hardier, and partakes more
closely of the nature of its British sires than the
mixed and more degenerate people of the lower
latitudes. If well sclisposed and well governed the
people of British America have a future before them.
The development of political events beyond their
boundary bids fair to leave the game in their hands
at no distant period. A few more years of this de-
structive civil war in the States may leave British
America, Acadia, or whatever we call it, the domi-
nant nation on the great North American continent.
The three and a half millions may have the better
of the thirty millions when the latter are split up
into ten or a dozen discordant and counteracting
parts. But in order that she may take her place
as a nation beside any possible section or develop-
ment of the American Union, in order that she
may present a strong front against any aggression
or ambition from beyond the border, it does seem
necessary first that the 10 or 12 independent provinces
should be united under some central Government,
bound together by some closer tie than their depen-
dence on England. We are not surprised that the
idea of a confederation of the provinces has for some

Mr. EVANS seconded the amendment, and said he believed
it would be verY. imprudent to adopt the report without
due consideration, as it was impossible to say what expen-
diture it might entail upon the board.
Mr. DOULTON, M.P., said he had no objection to the
matter standing over for a week; but he wished it to go
forth to the public that the adoption of the report would
not involve the ratepayers in a large outlay in purchasing
the rights of lords of manors.
Mr. CARPMAEL trusted that the board would not take
upon itself the responsibility of purchasing the rights of
lords of manors, or doing anything of the kind.
The amendment was then put and agreed to.
PROPOSED PURCHASE OF METROPOLITAN BRIDGES.

The CHAIRMAN brought under the notice of the boardthe
bill brought into Parliament by Mr. Alderman Salomons for
purchasing the present toll-paying bridges and throwing
them open free. He said the purchase of those bridges
might involve the ratepayers in a very serious expendi-
ture. As the board had taken no active part in the promo-
tion of this bill, he thought that the subject should be re-
ferred to a committee.

Mr. M'DONNELL moved that the subject should be re-
ferred to the Streets Committee, and that they be em-
powered, if they should see fit, to take steps to oppose the
Bill.

The motion was put and agreed to.
UTILIZATION OF TILE SEWAGE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE
RIVER.
The CHAIRMAN submitted that, as the plan for the utili-
zation of the sewage on the North side of the river was now
settled, the Board should take steps in reference to the
south, and that tenders should be advertised for.
This was embodied in a motion, which was put and
agreed to.

The other business was disposed of, and the Board ad-
journed.