The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

is exactly a generation, or the third of
a century, since the actual arrival of a mysterious
disease called the CholeraMorbus. Its slow approach
had been heard of for many months, as it lighted, or
was wafted, or was carried, here and there, from one
town to another, or singled out a district for destruc-
tion. If we remember aright, there had been a pre-
diction nearly two years before that it would work
its way even to the West of Europe. But, with the
long disappearance of the Plague, we had come to
disbelieve in these marches of death, and, indeed, in
pestilences altogether. They belonged to the age of
barbaric conquests or mediaeval dirt. The very hor-
rors with which our Oriental friends invested the
" Asiatic Cholera" made men incredulous as to its
presence in this favoured and enlightened region.
It was, they thought, possible:among Tartars, Hin-
doos, or barbarians living nobody knew how. There
it was probably a terrestrial influence of some sort,
and would not cross the Straits. However, it landed
all at once in the north-eastern ports of this island,
in ships from the North of Europe, and there could
be no doubt that for once the sea had not saved us
from a terrible invasion. Even.then people fondly
hoped that the cholera would find enough to do in
dirty ports, near the mud of tidal harbours, in
closely-packed lodging-houses, and among ill-living
sailors, and the people that gather to them. But the
fate of Sunderland and a sea-shore suburb of Edin-
burgh warned London to take care of itself, and
we had proclamations and quarantine, and appeared
in possession not only of the " Pool" and the port of
London, but of inland towns and villages in Essex
and Kent. From that time it went whither it listed.
Showing no distinction of towns, it attacked Oxford,
spared Birmingham, reaped a deadly harvest at
Dublin, raged at Paris, and desolated villages with or
without, though generally not without, reason. The
single instances were the most terrible. Distinguished
personages were at parties one day, and dead the
next. Men of business made appointments for the
afternoon, and did not not live to keep them. Strong
and healthy young men were of a fishing party or a
pic-nic on Friday, and by Sunday morning were no
more. Housefuls of poor rotted like sheep. Panic
systems of diet were adopted. It happened to be
the finest fruit season ever known ; but all fruit
was forbidden. Market-gardeners brought their
fragrant waggon-loads to the market in vain. The
rash and self-indulgent revelled on unaccustomed
luxuries. Peaches, nectarines, apricots, and grapes
were, in market phrase, " a drug." The curate had
the entire crop of the vicarage figtree, the best in the
county. The confectioners had a bad season ; for ice,
except for application to cholera patients in some
queer empirical fashion, was strictly prohibited.
Even potatoes were suspected. Meat and bread,
bread and meat, became the almost universal diet.
Frightened ladies ran from one place to another to
escape the cholera, and met it, if they did not bring
it with them. Nervous people thought every place
and every air unwholesome, and at least one
frightened gentleman proposed to live in a balloon.
On the whole the devastation justified previous
terrors. For some weeks the mortality in the me-
tropolis was terrible. What is more, the disease
was naturalized ; it has come out since in full force.
We have also since that had a more frightful, if not
more devastating novelty, in the form of diphtheria.
Thus far we know little beyond the information
published in another column as to the true nature
and actual devastation of the new Russian pest. It
has been reported to come from the Ural Mountains,
or rather through them, for Siberia is spoken of as
its home. We were then told that its victims
amounted to hundreds a day, whether in the city of
St. Petersburg or the whole region affected is not
clear ; but the number of deaths in the city alone
has been since put at thousands. It is now said to
to have shown itself in Prussia and ports of the
Baltic. The symptoms, a cramp in the back of the
neck, rapidly extending to thewhole frame, indicate
affinities with the cholera on the one hand, and
typhus on the other, and a disease probably arising
from the same causes and perhaps amenable to the
same treatment as those two. This disorder, how-
ever, is said to have proved obstinate hitherto, as
used to be said of the cholera, and is still said of the
real typhus. If the disease be indeed new, we
must not be surprised at such novelties, for many
such are recorded in history. The merest atmo-
spheric accident may create a new type of an old
disease. The official organ at St. Petersburg says
that the deaths have been exaggerated, that no
addition has had to be made to the accommodation
of the hospitals, that the ordinary staff has been
found sufficient, and that, in fact, there is
nothing unusual. Englishmen, however, put little
faith in Imperial bulletins, and ask for in-
formation through more trustworthy channels.
The Foreign-office has accordingly telegraphed
questions to our Ambassadors at St. Petersburg
and Berlin, and to our Consuls in the Baltic ports.
From these we have received brief but more definite
information, which we publish elsewhere. We may,
however, venture to ask whether it would not be
advisable to send to the infected districts competent
medical officers to make their own observations on
the disease. However difficult the prevention or the
remedy, the earlier information we have on these
points the better. All will remember the wild va-
rieties of treatment hazarded for the Cholera, not
one of which succeeded in proving a decided supe-
riority to the rest. There is no little diversity of
opinions as to the best treatment of typhus, though
we have it always with us. But it would be more
satisfactory to know what remedies have been tried
with this new visitation, and with what success.
The first ascertained or suspected case, if the disease
reaches us, will give encouragement to all sorts of
medical eccentricities and vagaries. As there must
be controversy it had better not commence at the
bedside of the patient, where, as we are told, an hour
or two makes all the difference between recovery
and death. In these days of universal instantaneous
information it would be nothing less than criminal
to be taken by surprise after the note of alarm has
been so long sounded. The only real prophylactics
we put any faith in are the usual conditions of good
health. A healthy person passes unscathed through
malaria charged with unseen poisons fatal to the
weak, the ill-fed, ill-clothed, unwashed, and uncared-
for. No doubt he may be struck and struck again,
and if caught at a moment of failing strength he
may succumb. But it is much easier to believe that
nobody takes thorough care of himself in all things,
at all times, and under all circumstances, than that
no care whatever will secure him from epidemic of
even the most malignant kind. The proofs, as far
as they go, are in favour of health and strength
against the worst foes. There is hardly a village
in this country which is not occasionally visited by
fever, and great is the surprise and perplexity of
the village authorities to find families thinned or
half destroyed in airy, open situations, and in
cottages, not quite what they ought to be, but yet
hitherto swarming with healthy, happy faces. Here
are the conditions of health, and yet Fever has
its way, unprevented, unchecked, till it has filled
the long roll of death. But even in the most
deplorable and most inscrutable of such instances it
will seldom be found that the principal farmhouses,
the mansion, the parsonage, the publichouse, or the
houses of the well-to-do tradesmen have been visited.
Even in their case—that is, when they are common
sufferers—there is generally found little difficulty in
discovering some special cause, some neglected drain
or other nuisance. The great preponderance of ob-
servation and argument is in favour of extending as

ar as possible- all the conditions of health and
strength. We are doing what we can with London,
and it is a comfort to think that at this very juncture
we have completed a large portion of the Herculean
task at which all London was standing aghast ten
years ago. There is much more to be done in this
as in some other respects ; and perhaps this new
and mysterious messenger of Death fulfils a benefi-
cent mission in calling upon us once more to set our
houses in order, not that we may die, but that we
may prolong the life of man.
POST.—The truthful historian of the American
war will do justice to the impartiality with which
the European Powers discharged their duties as
neutrals. But although those Powers need not fear
the verdict of a dispassionate posterity, it is impos-
sible to blink the fact that the present generation of
Americans view their conduct in a different light.
With the exception of the principal maritime States,
none were called upon to adopt any specific line of
action, and England and France were those on
which was almost exclusively thrown the duty of
prescribing the nature of the relationship which
should subsist between the spectators and the parties
to the conflict. The policy of these two great Powers
was identical, but nevertheless it was not similarly
inquire
into by the belligerents. It is needless to
into the causes of the antipathy with which Ameri-
cans of all shades of political opinions have regarded
this country; but never, perhaps, has that antipathy
been more strongly marked than during the present
war. The North has made no secret of the hatred
which it entertains towards us, and the South looks
on us with no friendly eyes for our persistent refusal
to recognise its independence. It is proverbial that
those who endeavour to please all parties fail in
pleasing any, and we may consequently console
ourselves with the reflection that our ill success is
simply attributable to our inability to achieve the
impossible. The course, however, which we pre-
scribed for ourselves, and which was equally adopted
by France, was perfectly clear; and consistently
with a strict observance of the obligations of neu-
trality no other could have been pursued. As re-
garded the belligerents our policy was one of com-
plete non-intervention, and to both we afforded the
same status and the same facility of action in any
intercourse which might unavoidably spring up be-
tween us. To the Confederates we accorded the
position of a belligerent Power with all the rights

and obligations thereto pertaining. In doing so we
virtually had no alternative. According to the law
of nations any vessel employed for hostile purposes
on the high seas, unless sailing under the flag of
some particular State, or of some community claim-
ing to be considered as an independent State, en-
gaged in warfare with some other, is regarded as
a pirate which it is the duty of every nation to
capture or destroy. Now, unless we had acknow-
ledged the belligerent character of the South, we
must not only have been compelled to refuse to its
cruisers the rights which we accord to those of the
Northern Republic of entering our ports, but we
would have been bound to assist in destroying them
as enemies of the entire family of nations. Had we
denied to the South the character of belligerents we
would justly have exposed ourselves to the charge
of acting with partiality towards the North, and,
whilst employing our navy for the destruction of
Southern cruisers, we could scarcely claim to be dis-
charging the obligation incidental to a strict neutra-
lity. However much it might think proper to censure
the action adopted by the English Government in
this respect, the North could not, without ex-
posing itself to the charge of inconsistency, quarrel
with us for following an example set by itself.
The Federal Cabinet and the Federal press might
vapour as they pleased about the rebellion which
they were engaged in suppressing, but the whole-
some fear of retaliation compelled them to accord
to those whom they captured in battle the rights
of prisoners of war. In a word; the North treated
the South as a belligerent. Nit during the past
few weeks circumstances have arisen which to the
Cabinet of Washington seem to justify a requisi-
tion upon its part that the neutral Powers should
modify their existing policy and withhold from the
Confederacy that recognition of its belligerent cha-
racter which has hitherto been accorded to it. The
Southern ports, which have until lately been merely
blockaded by Federal cruisers, have now passed into
the possessson of the established Government, and
for all practical purposes it is contended that the
South has ceased to be a maritime Power. Without
a seaboard, it is urged that the Confederates cannot
possess a -navy, and that consequently vessels pre-
tending to sail under its flag are not in a position
to justify their pretensions, and are, therefore, dis-
qualified from claiming those privileges? which a
neutral State is bound to accord to the ships of war
of a belligerent Power. The Federal Government
seek, in fact, to engage us to close our ports to all
vessels sailing under the Confederate flag, on the
ground that, there being no Confederate ports, no
ships can have cleared from them, and consequently
no Confederate navy can be said to exist. However
difficult it may be in many cases to determine the
proper course prescribed by international law, it is
satisfactory to feel that, in the present instance, no
diversity of opinion can exist as to the line of action
dictated both by a sense of duty and a fitting regard
for the national honour. The principle has neither
been acknowledged nor acted upon during the pre-
sent war, that actual presence in and departure
from a Confederate port were necessary to entitle a
cruiser, bearing the flag of the Confederacy, to
claim the rights and privileges incidental to the
character of a vessel of war. The Alabama, for
example, though built in England, was admitted to
be for every purpose the cruiser of a belligerent
State as soon as a duly accredited officer of the Con-
federate Government read his commission on board
and hoisted the flag of the republic in whose service
she was to be employed. The objections taken at
the time by the Federal press, that the Alabama
had never been in Confederate waters, were easily
and summarily disposed of, and it was shown
that presence in a Southern port was not indis-
pensable to qualify a ship for the naval service
of the Confederacy. If, however, the views
entertained on this point by her Majesty's Govern-
ment were correct, it is evident that the capture of
the Southern seaboard by the Federals does not dis-
qualify the Confederacy for the possession of a navY,
and that Confederate cruisers must continue to be
regarded as the vessels of a belligerent Power. But,
independently of this consideration, the conquest--
for all the world knows to the contrary, may
be only 'temporary—of the seaboard of a belligerent
State does not deprive it of its maritime character ;
and if it be conceded that the South, with seaports
in its possession, could legally employ cruisers which
had never dipped their keels in its waters, it can de
the same thing when those ports, though in the hands
of the enemy, may still be recaptured. We deny,
however, that the South has lost its seaboard ; and
at the present moment nothing would be easier than
for a Confederate cruiser, built in a foreign port, to
approach within cannon shot of some portion of that
vast extent of coast which reaches from the Gulf of
Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, and thus qualify, if it
were necessary, as a Confederate ship of war.
Neither the facts nor the law are in favour of the
requisition of the Northern Government, and it is
therefore needless to say that it will not be complied -
with.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

SALISBURY.-TUESDAY.

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At to-day's market there was only a short supply of
wheat offered, with comparatively very little of really good
quality. The advance on malting and seed barley was not
maintained to-day. For oats there was a fair demand, and
previous rates remained unaltered. Beans and peas were
quito as dear as a week ago. Flour steady at 26s to 325
per sack. Wheat, 36s to 428 ; barley, 23s to 29s ; malting,
30s to 35s ; oats, 19s to 28s ; beans, 40s to 46s ; and peas;
34s to 36s per qr.