The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—A second time has an expedition set sail
from English shores to bind together in closer com-
munion than ever the two great nations of English-
speaking men. The Great Eastern, with the Atlantic
Telegraph cable on board, passed the Downs on
Sunday, was yesterday off Falmouth, and, if all be
well, will be off Valentia this evening. Thence she
will sail on her great enterprise to link America with
England, and not only with England, but with all
the nations of the New World. Once before the at-
tempt was made, and nearly succeeded. How much
has happened since that time it is scarcely necessary
to recall. Mr: Buchanan was then the honoured
chief magistrate of a united people, whose differences
were counted as no more than the natural accom-
paniments of an energetic political life. Now he
shrouds himself in the deepest seclusion, neglected
and despised by the party he too faithfully served,
and hated by those who have succeeded him in power
as the man whose treacherous complicity with rebels
made'rebellion possible. The people over whom he
bore rule have been turned one against another in
fiercest strife, and a civil war has raged among them
which was almost without a parallel for the magnitude
of its operations and the animosity of the combatants.
If we have been spared such a calamity, we have
not been without our private griefs. The workmen
of Lancashire have been struck as with famine, and
from every part of the Empire help has come to
them in their distress. Now, when peace has once
more returned to America, and plenty has revisited
our own populations, an effort is fitly made to take
up the task once before attempted and abandoned
in failure. There is a fair promise that the reunion
of England and America will this time be achieved.
The difficulty is purely mechanical, the points of
departure and arrival are given, and, thanks to the
deep-sea soundings, the path between them is as
carefully mapped out as if it had been triangulated
by the Royal Engineers. When the way is thus
known the problem may be considered as half solved.
A long time may elapse before our machinery is
sufficiently perfect to let us succeed in the under-
taking of sending a message across the Atlantic,
but it is clear that the feat can be done. We know
that a mechanical action at the one end of a wire
can be repeated at the other, and we know the•line
along which our wire must be laid. If it be worth
while to persevere in successive experiments, we
must in the end secure success. But there is a good
warrant for believing that we shall be successful on
this occasion. Our former trial showed us the
errors to be avoided, and the points at which the
machinery was likely to break down. Every effort
has been made to prevent a repetition of former
mistakes. The:cable has been manufactured with
the utmost care, and has been severely tested.
Every inch of . it has been the subject of minute
examination. It may be almost pronounced flawless.
It has been stowed away in the great ship which
carries it in such a manner that it may be uncoiled
without slipping and without a hitch. Some of the
best mechanicians of England are on board the
ship, and they are aided by the counsel of men
who have made electrical science their especial
study. The vessel sails at a time of the year which
gives the fairest prospect of weather suited for the
great design. We cannot command success, and
it is even possible that, with all our efforts, we do
not yet deserve it ; but we may express our hope
that our labour may not be in vain, and that in the
course of a few days words will pass from shore to
to shore of the Atlantic, and an electric communi-
cation be established never more to be severed.
The mechanical triumph of uniting the two con-
tinents together, whenever it is accomplished, will
justly be deemed enormous, but it is, perhaps, pos-
sible to overrate the importance of the feat as a step
in the progress of civilisation. At best the means
of commanication is of less importance than the
thing communicated. We have established a tele-
graph between England and India, and a day suf-
fices to convey a message from London to the East.
The most important news yet transmitted has,
however, been the price of cotton and the collapse
of mercantile houses at Bombay. We might, per-
haps, have waited a little longer for this intelligence.
But independent of the consideration that we shall
not be necessarily wiser because we can converse
with greater rapidity, it must always be remembered
that telegraphic despatches are, at the best, hasty
and imperfect. Our information comes more quickly,
but it is less complete. This is of slight import-
ance when the intelligence only serves to excite
our curiosity, but there are occasions when the
transmission of imperfect telegrams might produce
serious embarrassment. Some hasty thinkers
have regretted that the Atlantic cable was not laid
and in working order at the time of the affair of
the Trent. They have thought that the ground of
offence would have been immediately removed
could the two nations have communicated directly
with one another. This is very doubtful.' It seems
more probable that the exultation of the Ameri-
can public at the capture of the obnoxious commis-
sioners would have been known in England, and
the resentment. of our own people at the want of
n respect to the ational flag would have been known
in America, long before the voice of reason could
have been heard, and the exasperation of both na-
tions would have been increased. The rulers would
have found it impossible to control the passions of
the ruled, and the happy settlement of the dispute
which did take place would have been impossible. It
is unnecessary to multiply instances, which are only
too apparent, of the dangers of half-knowledge.
Every one will hope that we may escape such dan-
gers, but we can only do so by remembering the
imperfections of telegraphic news, and by withhold-
ing our judgment in the exercise of a large charity
until we are furnished with ample details. The
establishment of telegraphic communication with
America will not be without its drawbacks, but, on
the whole, it cannot fail to prove of advantage to
the two nations. The advice,
" Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring,"
is discarded in education, and may be put aside in
politics. A little knowledge is better than none,
and if we only remember that our knowledge is
little we cannot go wrong. The civil war which has
wasted America has had this among other good
effects—that it has made Englishmen know very
much more than they formerly did of Americans.
At the commencement of the struggle the ignorance
even of those among us reputed well informed was
portentous. We now know almost as much of the
politics of the United States as of our own country,
and are so far prepared for the reception of tele-
graphic despatches from the other side of the At-
lantic. The daily scraps will reach us like intelli-
gence from another province of the same nation,
and it is through the constant interchange of news
which may often, perhaps, appear insignificant
that communities are drawn most closely to one
another. When the communities have the same
origin, boast the same blood, use the same tongue,
inherit the same literature, pursue the same aim
of reconciling order with liberty and justice with
freedom, each should be strengthened, animated,
and encouraged by closer intercourse with the other,
and it is because we believe this of England and
America that we say " God speed the Atlantic Tele-
graph."
POST.—The intelligence from America informs
us that the persons found guilty of being concerned
in the assassination of President Lincoln have been
sentenced to undergo various penalties, ranging be-
tween death on the scaffold and imprisonment for a
term of years. Payne, Harrold, Atzerott, and Mrs.
Surratt were sentenced to be hanged ; Mudd,
Arnold, and O'Laughlin to be imprisoned for life,
and Spangler to six years in the penitentiary. The
sentence of death, as we now learn, has been carried
out. Assuming that the accused have had a fair
trial, and have been legally and properly convicted,
it is impossible not to admit that they have been
concerned in one of the foulest crimes recorded in
history. There is one overpowering reason which
instinctively dominates all rightly constitutedminds,
without the necessity of being formulated, and
which, by a primary intuition, forces us to condemn
assassination, whatever plausible form it may take,
and whatever ancient precedents may be adduced
in its justification. That reason is, that it utterly
sets aside the great principle that no man should be
judge in his own cause, much less judge and execu-
tioner. It ignores and traverses the principle that
to unite the characters of party and judge is one
practical illustration of the height of absurdity and
folly. But tyrannicide, to take the most specious
and plausible form of political assassination, goes
much further even than this. The whole affair is
ex pante from beginning to end. The .witness for
the accusation, the counsel for the prosecution, the
judge who passes sentence, are all one and the same
party. They hear nothing that can be urged on
the other side. Indeed, they are incapable of hear-
ing and appreciating anything that could be urged
on the other side. They are utterly disqualified
from discharging the functions of jury or judge.
They have made up their minds long ago, or rather
they were always of one way of thinking, or, to
speak more accurately, of feeling without ever
having considered the merits of the case at all ;
and, when they proceed to action, all they care
about is the gratification of a sanguinary passion,
the slaking of their unquenchable thirst for blind
unreasoning vengeance. Of course they can quote,
or misquote, as a certain personage is said to do, the
Scriptures for their own ends. But no pretence,
however plausible, will overcome the detestation
which all normally constituted minds must feel for
political assassination. It is intuitively and instinc-
tively condemned, and reflection and reasoning serve
but to confirm, by logical processes, the sentence of
feeling and sentiment. The assassination of Prest-
dent Lincoln was as prejudicial to the South as to
the North ; indeed it was more so. If the conspira-
tors were Southern sympathisers
they were of that

irrational class which constitutes a standing proof
that a friend may often be the worst of enemies.
Having regard to the time at which the crime was
committed there was nothing which the worst enemy
of the South could do so calculated to injure it as the
assassination of President Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln
was known to be a moderate and placable man. He
appears never to have made a personal enemy, and
he himself appears to have been the personal enemy
of no man. He was for a conciliatory and amicable
policy. He was ready to forget the past and let
bygones be bygones. He was chief magistrate of the
North, and he did what he believed was his duty in
the prosecution of the war, but he did it without tem-
per and without revenge. There is reason to believe
that whatever he could have done to lighten the bur-
dens and diminish the humiliation of the South he
would have done. All this the leaders of the Con-
federacy knew full well, and this fact is sufficient to
acquit them of any participation in the conspiracy
to murder him. For his successor, in case of death
before the expiry of his term of office, he had a man
who was believed to be of a very-different cast of cha-
racter. Vice-President Johnson was a man who
from the force of circumstances—we would state the
case as moderately as possible—had come to be a
bitter enemy of the South. Whether he or the South
was at fault will not alter the fact. He was be-
lieved to have injuries real or supposed to redress, and
vengeance of no mild order to wreak and to gratify.
We do not concern ourselves here with ascertaining
and deciding how far this impression was true.
That is not to the purpose in the present discussion.
It is sufficient that this was the prevalent belief.
And it is quite impossible that in the face of this
fact the Southern chiefs, who have proved them-
selves so eminently sagacious in other things, should
have committed so enormous a blunder—a blunder
involving so heinous a crime as to compass and in-
stigate the assassination of a man who was practi-
cally a friend, to place in his office a man who was
believed to be a deadly enemy. If the assassination
of the Northern President had taken place earlier
in the war, while the issue was yet doubtful, the
case would have been somewhat different. But
nothing short of blind infatuation and unreasoning
1 violence could have dreamed of such a thing at the
time when this great crime was actually accom-
plished: The South, at this extreme crisis of her
fortunes, was helpless and prostrate at the feet of
the North, and it might not unreasonably have been
expected, in the case of so impulsive and so pas-
sionate a people, that the Federals would take a
terrible revenge for the murder of their chief ma-
gistrate. No leading man of the South could, upon
any known theory of human nature and human
motives, have sanctioned such an act at such a time.
If President Johnson has, since he has attained to
power, creditably belied his former reputation, and
adopted wise, conciliatory, and moderate counsels,
it is in spite of the provocation which was given in
the murder of his predecessor. If he continue the
policy of Mr. Lincoln it is fortunate for the South,
and diametrically opposed to the course of action
which the conspiracy to murder the chief members
of the Federal Government was calculated to pro-
voke. The policy which the new President has
followed hitherto may be an illustration of how the
conduct of men is determined by the force and
pressure of circumstances. The Vice-Presidency
of the American Union is an office which is much
higher in rank than in practical importance. Most
functionaries in America have a habit of free speech.
They say whatever comes uppermost in their minds
and is most likely to please their hearers. But this
is peculiarly the case with the Vice-President. He
has little or no power, and is therefore virtually ir-
responsible. Mr. Johnson, when he was Vice-Pre-
sident, appears freely to have uttered his sentiments
about the South and the war. But when he became
President he had not only to talk buttto act. It is
but fair to say that since his accession to power he
has acted with much more discretion than he for-
merly talked. The responsibilities of office act as a
useful restraint even upon the most impulsive
natures. But even if President Johnson should
prove as temperate and reasonable as his predeces-
sor, it will be no thanks to the conspirators who
entered into a plot for accomplishing one of the
foulest crimes in history. Those conspirators must
have been persons of headlong impulsive character,
utterly incapable of reasoning, or of foreseeing and
appreciating consequences. In seeking to inflict an
injury upon the North, which could not be effected
by the crime they perpetrated, they ran the risk of
bringing irremediable ruin upon the South. So in-
fatuated were they that they could hot see what was
palpable to all the world ; but the crime they have
expiated affords yet another proof of the inutility,
the wickedness, and the folly of political assassina-
tion.