The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-20 00:00:00

SEWARD..

Have we arrived at such a state that no one
must find fault with any action or omission of the
Government or any member of it, without having
treason imputed to him ? Cannot you, Sir ? Can-
not 1 ? I, for example, have the misfortune to think
that Mr. Seward, our present Secretary of State, is
not as fit, as a statesman, to index the papers of the
late Silas Wright. However little be may be affected
by my thoughts, I do think his want of sense—sober
ghing-stock of Euz ope.
sense—has made him the hushing-stock
I think he is a small ward and county politician,
who writes like a sophomore and acts like a stock
jobber. Every time he speaks about what will hap-
pen in 60 days, in 90 days, he puts me in mind of a
kerb-stone broker, chattering over the approaching
maturity of a dubious note ! I think such men have
been advanced to important places in this countri
about as often as they will be, and cannot help re-
joicing to think that Mr. Seward will probab/9 be
the last of the Lilliputians.'
" AN ILLUSTRATION---SEWARD AND 5U211421L
4,
'Again, I do not worship Mr. Bawler'l can-
not admire a person who is so simples), to think it

a finer thing to pretend to be a fanatic than to .be
a dull but honest man. There is a fine old Gerrqtai
%nu calle.L' The Adventures of Reynard thrjextai'
in the illustrations of which animals of differerir
countries are represented in the attitudes and with
the expressions of men. The illustrations Are very
good, and from the well-known fact that men often
resemble certain animals in a most curious and troac-
countable manner, their effect is highly smusil ig.
It is particulaily so, if you happen by any chailoe
a
to be reminded by them of any particular persoll
Now, must I suffer death if I say that I never'
looked at those pictures without thinking of Mr.
Seward and of Mr. Sumner ?—and that I never
hear the names of Mr. Seward or of Mr. Sumner
without thinking of the picture of the Pox and of
the picture of the Gander ?'
" SICK OF THE IMBECILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT.
" And what if I am frank enough to Bay that I
am sick of the swaggering imbecility with which
the Government have managed this war of life and.
death ? Is that treasonable ? Shall my Govern-
ment—that is to say. my servant, my mature—
waate my money, and even let it he stolen, and
stop my paper, and interrupt my business, and
violate my constitution, and starve and kill my
soldiers out of pure neglect, and gain only disaster
and defeat for me by all this folly ? And shall I
say nothing ? If I am to put up with this and
more, and say nothing, or else be shut up by order
of W. H. Seward, I want to know seriously and
calmly, what shall I fight Jeff. Davis for ? What
shall I fight Jeff. Davis for ? What worse can he do
to me than Seward or Stanton have done already ?
What, indeed—when their want of sense and want
of energy have made him everything that he is !
Lost money may be regained, lost armies may be
replaced out of our swarms of men, but who shall
give us back the time we have fooled away' before
the dirt heaps of Manassas ? Expose a cup
of clear water to the frost. Observe if, and
even when the cold begins to fill its trans-
parent substance with beautiful spicula of ica,
if you agitate the mass it will not immediately
freeze. But give it in that condition a very
short period of rest and it becomes a rock, hardly
yielding to the energies of gunpowder and fire ?
So have we found the South. They were once un-
decided. Time and the stupidity of Government
have consolidated a hesitating into a hostile people.
Yet Mr. Gordon is a traitor if he calls a fool a fool!'
" A PICTURE OF A NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY.
"'New England to-day is covered with societies,
in which the best of men and women conscientiously,
but reluctantly, and the worst of men and women,
eagerly, and with a devilish delight, perform the
part of spies and informers upon each other. To
say that such a gigantic system of mutual espionage
does not tend to degrade character is simply to say
that eavesdropping and tale-bearing are not low
and mean occupations, Under its influence, nothing
is known of a man's real character or disposition.
Habitual watchfulness upon the one side awakens
habitual hypocrisy on the other. And it le only
when the little saint of Boston expands into the
gigantic villain of New Orleans or San Francisco
that you can tell how vast a benefit you derived front
his emigration. The wickedness looked little here,
because we saw but little of it. The enormous pres-
sure of universal listening and peeping had driven
it deep into the innermost fibres of our society. So
pressed, it produces Smelling Committees—it elects
Hiss Legislatures ; it brings such men as Deacon
Palmer to associate, out of fear, with men like
Mr. Washburn, whom they receive into their
cellars, and dismiss through back doors. Nobody
will deny the fact, or its application here, who is
not prepared to deny the existence of the Rev. Mr.
Kalloch or his church member, Mr. Hayes, who
peeked after him, and black mailed him and then
exposed him. It is Mr. Hayes's turn to-day. It
may be Mr. Kalloch's turn to-morrow. It is Mr-
Washburn's now. It may be the Gordons' turn by'
and by. But be the turn whose it may, the system
of a barbarous age and people applied to the con-
trol of a civilised mankind awakens the fiercest re-
sentment. Men have put up with the savagest
taskmasters. They have endured the bloodiest
tyrants without resistance for many yews. They
have submitted to the Kings of Prussia, to the Czars,
to the House of Austria, and even to the Turks,
But a government of meddling philanthropists they
cannot bear. It resembles the government of ver-
min more than any human despotism—individually
vile and odious, but quite insignificant ; when col-
lected, they they are all-pervading, all-devouring,
appalling, loathsome to every sense, and intoler-
able to the strongest body and the firmest mind!"