The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Among the characteristics of the mind
of Lord Palmerston none is more striking than his
marked preference for the solid over the showy ; he
was accustomed to deal with the realities of things ;
his illustrations were familiar even to homeliness,and
drawn from subjects in which all his hearers could
sympathise with him ; there was nothing of exclusion
or hauter about him ; when challenged to the en-
counter he was always ready for his antagonist, and
never sought to shelter himself for an instant behind
his rank and his position. Descended from a very
ancient family, and having had for more than eight
years at his disposal the patronage and the honours
of the State, he has been sparing and thrifty in their
distribution to others, and has taken for himself
nothing except that which befitted his rank and
position—the Order of the Garter, and even that
only a few years ago. He has received from his
country nothing for the arduous services of 50 years,
except the dearly-earned salary of offices to which
he gave his whole talent and his whole energy with
unsparing and unflinching devotion. He was not,
so faras we can judge by his actions and declarations,
an ambitious man ; on speaking on such subjects he
was wont to take a tone which, coming from one of
his frank and open temperament, almost amounted
to cynicism. " Merit," he said on one occasion, " is,
after all, nothing but the opinion which one man
entertains of another ;" and when posthumous fame
was mentioned before him as a motive to exertion,
he disposed of it by the pithy remark that " the
reputation of Caesar or of Alexander did not belong
to the man, but only to his name." The German
editor who, the other day, refused to believe that
Lord Palmerston was ill, and said that his un-
wonted seclusion was owing to his anger at the
refusal of the title of Marquis, could not have more
exactly described the contrary of the person of
whom he was writing. Lord Palmerston was con-
tent with the title which he inherited from his
ancestors, honoured and made illustrious by his
own actions, but not advanced a single step in the
Peerage. He lived and died a member of the Lower
House, and never, as far as has transpired to the
public, looked forward for a moment to the time
when he might become a member of the English
Peerage. In strict accordance with these feelings
and ideas, Lord Palmerston declined for himself on
his death that show and ostentation for which he
seems to have had so little taste during his life. He
requested that he might be interred near his favourite
residence at Romsey, and had prepared a vault for
the reception of his remains. He has now nothing
left in this world but that opinion of others of which
he spoke with such scanty reverence, and that post-
humous renown which he ridiculed as among our
grossest delusions. It is vain to argue what is right
on such a subject, but of this we are sure—that,
whatever the value of the tribute which a surviving
generation may pay to the memory of a great man
may be, it is the duty of the Government and the
people of this country to pay it ; it is honourable to
us not to forget our friends and benefactors ; and
we at least are not so constituted as to be able to
separate all idea of happiness from the spectacle of
a man dying in a good old age amid the respect and
regret of the nation, which on this subject knows
no party or sectional difference. We therefore most
sincerely rejoice that the bones of our illustrious
Statesman are not to rest in the obscure place which
he destined for their repose, and that the man who
was the foremost among us during his life, who
formed at once the head of our political and social
system, is to receive in his interment the highest
honour that a nation can bestow. We rejoice that
the Queen has seen At to make it her particular re-
quest that Lord Palmerston should be laid in that
august temple where the bones of so many Sove-
reigns, statesmen, warriors, and philosophers repose
in peace and reconciliation. It must be a matter
of regret to any one who peruses the monuments
in Westminster Abbey to think how carelessly
and how profusely the niches in this our national
temple of fame have been filled up. As in
life, so in death, the mighty and illustrious are
jostled and crowded by obscure and ignoble multi-
tudes. Fifth-rate actors, forgotten poets, ladies
who pricked their fingers when sewing on Sunday
and bled to death, gentlemen of good estate, but
of no other claim to notice, lie side by side, and
often overshadow by their monuments the stones
that tell of the resting place of the mightier spirits
of the earth. We have often to lament that men
deserving of every honour from their country can-
not, for want of space, be interred in the place which
would keep their fame the' brightest and their me-
mory the longest. The more rare the occasion on
which we open Westminster Abbey to receive a new
tenant, the higher is the distinction, the more signal
the honour. Within a few short years that ancient
fane has received within its vaults the illustrious
Macaulay, the chivalrous 0 utram, the veteran Clyde,
and the conscientious Canning. Onlylast summer it
sheltered a duke merely because his family vault lay
there, and it is now opened again to lay beside the
worthies whom we have mentioned a man still more
widely known, still more active and influential in
his day, who has acted more history than the apolo-
gist of William 111. has written. We may be par-
doned for expressing, in passing, the wish that the
dust of one of the most illustrious contemporaries of
Lord Palmerston had been allowed to mingle with
his beneath the pavement of this our English Val-
halla. But a narrow bigotry denied to one of our
noblest poets that resting place which alone befitted
the author of " Childe Harold" and the "Corsair."
The honour that is paid to Lord Palmerston has
been shared by many; but we anticipate that very
few, if any, of his predecessors have been borne to
the grave with a more unanimous feeling of regret,
admiration, and gratitude than will attend upon
the honoured remains of him who but a week ago
was the first man in this great Empire. Nor are we
merely paying our tribute to the memory of de-
parted greatness ; we all feel that in showing reve-
rence for the memory of Lord Palmerston we
are indirectly honouring our country and ourselves.
He was not one of those who are as a star and
dwell apart, one of those sublime geniuses who are
sent from time to time to elevate our idea of our
own species and depress our estimation of ourselves
by showing what wonderful powers may lie hid
under the frail and fleeting garment of humanity.
He was essentially one of us, and his superiority
arose mainly from his possessing in greater perfec-
tion and in larger degree the good qualities that the
best of us possess. Such as he was he was formed by
our country, our age, our institutions ; his mind
was trained in the struggles of Parliament, and its
manly and energetic tone was acquired in the hard
but bracing school of our public life. He had our
pursuits, our feelings, our habits, and our pleasures.
We honour Lord Palmerston, not only for himself,
but as the best type of our age and country, and
long will it be before the portals of Westminster
Abbey open again to receive one so justly entitled
to the gratitude of every rank and section of his
countrymen. _ _ _

POST.—The intimation given by Mr. Johnson to
a deputation which presented a petition in favour of
Mr. Davis, to the effect that the Government did
not desire bloodshed, may be considered tantamount
to a promise that the life of the ex-President will
be spared. For this recent events have prepared us.
By the last mail we received tidings that Vice-Pre-
sident Stephens and other leading Confederates had
been pardoned, and the inference which we then
drew, that the Chief Magistrate of the Southern
States would share in the amnesty extended to them,
seems now on the point of realisation. No good
purpose would be served by making Mr. Davis a
State prisoner for life, and any punishment of a
degrading nature would reflect discredit on the
Government which imposed it. If, as we ob-
served on a previous occasion, the American Go-
vernment seriously intended to put Mr. Davis on
his trial, they would have done so long since,
and it is therefore probable that the indictment
presented by the grand jury of Columbia will
never be formally preferred either before a civil
or a military tribunal. It is invariably difficult
to deal with those who have been the chiefs of
subverted Governments, and it is now generally
admitted that it was an oversight on the part of
the authorities at Washington to capture the
fugitive President. Having made him their
prisoner, however, no other course was open to them
if they desired to be merciful, than that which they
have pursued. The cry for his blood was almost
universal when he was first lodged in Fort Warren,
and, had he then been arraigned and convicted, no
punishment save that of death might have satisfied
the popular clamour. Since then the angry passions
of the conquerors have had time to cool, and we
doubt if there are any who would now desire to see
the unfortunate ex-President perish on a scaffold.
If, however, he is not to be executed—and any
other punishment would be either embarrassing to
those inflicting it, or inadequate to the magnitude
of the offence with which he stands charged—it may
not unreasonably be assumed that Mr. Davis will
receive that pardon which has been extended to his
colleagues, or at worst be required to pass. the re-
mainder of his days in exile. And certainly, amongst
the many remarkable men whom the great American
civil war brought prominently before the notice of
the world, Jefferson Davis was the foremost. Suc-
cess was all that was wanting to place him by the
side of Washington, not in the estimation of those
who were his fellow-citizens, for in their eyes failure
has assuredly not lessened his fame, but in the esti-
mation of strangers, and of posterity, who almost

invariably accept success as the test of merit, and
who but rarely retain in their recollection those who
have had the misfortune to fail. In choosing Mr.
Davis as their chief magistrate, the seceding States
had the rare good fortune to select, perhaps, the
very best man who could have been found in the
entire Confederacy to fill the post assigned to
him. Already conversant with the routine of
official life, he was enabled to place at the
service of his fellow-citizens an administrative
genius of the very highest order. Nothing
in the annals of history is more marvel-
lous than the rapid development of the Southern
States into a perfectly organised and well governed
republic, defended by armies more numerous than
any the world had ever seen before, and at least as
well appointed as those with which they were called
upon to cope. The credit of having made the South
what it was during the four years which intervened
between the accession of Mr. Lincoln and his assas-
sination, is, however, in a great degree owing to the
sagacity with which its President detected the best
means of developing its resources, and the adminis-
trative ability which he manifested in economising
to the utmost the comparatively slender means
placed at his disposal for the maintenance of the
mighty struggle in which he was engaged. Having
established the seat of Government in Richmond,
within 150 miles of Washington, he retained posses-
sion of that town until the Confederacy and its
capital simultaneously fell, and with only a few fol-
lowers he was compelled to seek safety in flight.
But it was not alone by the skill with which Mr.
Davis directed the domestic policy of the Confede-
racy that he contributed to the brilliant but transi-
tory success with which for a time it battled for its
independence. He made the Confederation not only
powerful, but also respected. The moderation with
which he conducted his informal negotiations with
neutral States, the dignity with which in his ad-
dresses to Congress he acknowledged the reverses
which from time to time the Confederacy sustained,
and the modesty with which he congratulated the
Southern people on the brilliant successes of their
armies, all tended to secure for the Confederacy the
admiration and sympathy of neutral States. Com-
parisons are proverbially odious, but Europe could
not avoid being favourably struck with the contrast
which the Confederate Government furnished
when compared with that of the Northern States,
both in respect to the .attitude which it assumed
towards its opponents and towards the rest of the
world. The Confederates had what they considered,
and what many intelligent men on this side of the
Atlantic considered, to be good grounds for feeling
aggrieved at the refusal of neutral Powers to recog-
nise their independence, but it is to the credit of
their President that they never gave expression to
their feelings in the language of undignified com-
plaint. Now that the Southern States have been once
more restored to the Union, the population of the
Northern section of the Republic are proud of the
prowess of their former foes, and derive a feeling of
gratification from the fact that it cost so much time,
so much money, and so much human life to reduce
them to subjection. The American mind is always
taken with immensity, and the fact of having run
up a debt of 500 millions in what is now termed " a
family quarrel" is regarded with infinite compla-
cency. No other nation in the world could have wit-
nessed a civil war on the same scale, and that alone
furnishes some consolation for the evils which it
occasioned. And now that the revengeful feelings
which a few months since demanded the sacrifice
of the arch-traitor who directed the councils of the
rebels have ceased to operate, we doubt not that the
Northerners have even brought themselves to admire
the greatness of the man who conducted the mighty
rebellion. If they are proud of the war, and proud
of their debt, it would not be surprising if they were
also proud of the individual who, by his personal
ability, contributed in no slight degree to protract
that war and to amass that debt. We could not
expect that the Republicans would select as their re-
presentative a political opponent ; but, if the Demo-
crats were once more in a majority, we dare say
Jefferson Davis would perhaps stand a better chance
than any one else of being placed in the Presidential
chair. For the present, however, it is gratifying to
find that the established Government have resolved
in not marring the good effects of the conciliatory
policy they have hitherto pursued towards the South
by an act of vengeance against which the entire
civilised world would protest.

LONDON GAZETTE—Last Evening,
LORD CIIAMBERLAIN'S-OFFICE, OCT. 21.

Notice is hereby given that the State '
apartments at
Windsor Castle will be closed on and after Tuesday next,
the 24th inst., until further orders.
INDIA-OFFICE, Oar. 24.
Her Majesty has been pleased to approve of the follow-
ing promotions, alterations of rank, and resignations
amongst the officers of her Majesty's Indian Military
Forces, and in the Staff Corps :
BREVET.
The undermentioned officer havingcompleted five years'
service as Captain and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and as
Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, to be Colonel in the
Army, under operation of clause 8 of the Royal Warrant of
31st January, 1859 :
Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Daly,
C. 8., Bombay Staff Corps.
Major. John Augustus Wood, V.C., Bombay Staff Corps,
to be Lieutenant-Colonel; Captain Thos. Sweet, Madras
Infantry, to be Major, in succession to Lieutenant-General
11. Ros, Madras Infantry, deceased.
Major Octavius Hamilton, Bengal Staff Corps, to be
Lieutenant-Colonel ; Captain William Clarke Francis
Gosling, Royal (Madras) Artillery, to be Major, in suc-
cession to Lieutenant-General Dun, Madras Infantry, de-
ceased.
Major Octavius Edward Rothney, Bengal Staff Corps,
to be Lieutenant-Colonel ,• Captain Charles Douglas
Waddell, Royal (Madras) Artillery, to be Major, in suc-
cession to Lieutenant-General G. Sandys, Madras Cavalry,
deceased.
Major William Joseph Fitz-Maurice Stafford, Bengal
Staff Corps, to be Lieutenant-Colonel ; Captain Alexander
Stewart, Royal (Madras) Artillery, to be Major, in suc-
cession to Lieutenant-General M. C. Paul, Bengal Infan-
try, deceased.
Major Charles Terrington Aitchison, Bombay Staff
Corps, to be Lieutenant-Colonel ; Captain Robert Caul-
field, Madras Cavalry, to be Major, in succession to Lieu-
tenant-General R. Powney, Bengal Artillery, deceased.