The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-21 00:00:00

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THE SUN.

14"D"li, FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1862.

All anti-slavery
as Englishmen are, the Message
of the PR-Ram-EN;
, 'which we published yesterday,
must have been scanned by thousands with intense
interest. They vouidbeanxious to detect in Mr.
LINCOLN'S peculiar
style clear indication that
negro emancipation Was a 1
length decided on as indispensableto that greater
object, as he deems it, the
r,eteuction of the
Union. In this they would soon be disappointed.
They woul_i see that the widest expression
they could fasten was the "initiation of which
emancipa-
tion," and that the direct object was to deptiv,l
original seceding States of any hope or securing the
ultimate secession of the };order States, should th©
former be able to secure first their own indepen_ I
dente. The hope of the Gulf States lay at first in
foreign help, and in the co-operation of the Border
States, these last being far more powerful than
themselves. The South now sees that there is not
the slightest ground to expect aid, nor, indeed, even
comfort" or sympathy, from Europe. Their only
v
roainiiiig. trust was the Border States. In these
States, though the slaves were in proportion to the
whites, but few
as compared with the planting
States, yet as the eholders were the more
wealthy and influeuti 1 a portion of the community,

:he biaofpower in Kentucky, and still more in

Virginia, would be towards the Southern eause.

The PRESIDENT'S Message is designed to change
that bias. While the war lasts, and perhaps for
some time after it is concluded, the slaves must be
of uncertain, certainly of much smaller value ;
and a wealthy slaveholder would naturally
begin to think it were better for him to have
the means of hiring free labour, under

a strong Government, than to risk all in war, or in

unsettled relations between a Northern and a

Southern federation. To produce this effect is the
immediate object of the PRESIDENT'S Message.
The small band of pro slavery writers and
speakers in England are already beginning to re-
duce to a minimum the proposals of the PRESIDENT,

but they are not vie wed in the same way in America
itself. Making every allowance for the "sensation"
style of American papers, they regard the message
as, substantially, the commencement of a new public
policy. And we think they are right. The great
point gained is that emancipation, at a heavy cost,
is deemed better than destruction of the Union. In
this country we have felt no interest in its
reconstruction, if slavery was to be, as before,
its pervading element. If the Slave States
were to be so numerously represented both in the
Senate and the Lower House that they were at least

a veto power in the federation ; and, if they were
to pervade the North with a Fugitive Slave Law,
we in England, with our strong anti-slavery convic-
tions, all felt with Lord STIAFTESBURY that such a

reunion was no concern of ours. The PRESIDENT'S

Message aims at directly the reverse of this. I

it does not suggest emancipation in the Gulf
States, which we think it probable he does not
yet wish, it suggests emancipation in such a num-
ber of the most powerful Slave States—that is,
the Border States—as would give the entire pre-
ponderance in a reconstructed Union to the Free
States. Were the great Border States to accept

the emancipation of their slaves for a fair
compensation, the slave power in a new
Union would be subdued for ever. It would
be both politically and militarily insignificant,
and the Government of the States must hence-
forth be administered solely in the interest of free-
dom. Under these circumstances even the Southern
plantations would soon begin to feel the influence
of the greater power, and the remaining Slave
States would become gradually Free States also.
Far as such a policy may fall below what we
might demand as ardent abolitionists, it would be
uncandid to deny that it is a prodigious step in
advance. There has been nothing like it hitherto
In America. It is but a few years since slave-
holders kept out of Congress oven a petition
on the subject of slavery—fewer still since
they forced the Fugitive Slave Law on negroes ;
and now we have a President coming
forward to propose the abolition, by purchase, of
slavery, in several of the most important States of
the Union ! Such an advance marks the effect of
—the rebellion on the most impervious class of minds
those of the Administration itself—as being greater
I
than probably they themselves are aware of. It
shows that they now perceive that without deal-
ing with slavery the Union can never have again a
" stable equilibrium.' The PRESIDENT, venerating
as a lawyer the constitution and legal modes of
procedure, and having, besides, the less refractory
1 States to deal with, proposes the mildest measures,
avoids [collisions with State rights, and offers to
make a sacrifice as heavy as the cost of war. But
the principle which indicates all this is that the
Free States must be secured in their predominance.
All the Border States but 'Virginia are now in the
hands of the North. Their allegiance might be flue- i
tuating or divided if they were left as Slave States,
and now the offer is—not to bribe them by compro•
miser in favour of slavery, but by an offer to make
the slaves freemen! Never had the Slave States such
an offer before. All Las been quite in the other direc-
tion. Territory south of a certain line—a fugitive
slave law—legal decisions of increasing severity
against the slaves, and in favour of the most abso-
lute power on the part of his master—these have
been the " bids" and " compromises" offered by the
North to the South. Co-operation to convert it
at a heavy cost into Free-soil, proposed by the head
of the Executive—disguise and qualify how one
will—marks the most stupendous change of policy
which we can well conceive. It may not, indeed,
be carried out in its present form, but it is the sub-
stance, not the form, which inaugurates a new era 'l,
is the North.
At present it seems superfluous to discuss the
question of cost and funds. Notwithstanding the
1 pecuniary difficulties of the North, every American
must understand that no pecuniary investment
could be a better one for the future peace, unity,
and therefore prosperity of his country, than the
fair purchase money of emancipation. The will
. once created, the way would assuredly soon be
created too. It would pay far better to incur
national debt to free their own country, than to
purchase new territory from Mexico. There are
many considerations to reduce the fair value of
slaves much below what was the price when there
was no doubt of their profitable employment. But
that point we shall advert to on another occasion.
The great fact now stands forth before all America
and the world that the PRESIDENT of the United
States has proposed to "initiate emancipation."

Hopes are again reviving in regard to the Atlan-
tic Telegraph. And common sense assures us that
these hopes now are, to a great extent, reasonable.
At the last ordinary meeting of the still existing
and, we rejoice to think, not yet by any means
moribund Company, arguments were adduced in
favour of the re-commencement ab initio of this
long, and as it at one time seemed, permanently
abandoned enterprise. Since the submergence of
the electric cable, now lying trailed along the bed
of the Atlantic Ocean, from Europe to America,
from Ireland to Newfoundland, there is not a
moment's doubt as to the fact that immense prac-
tical improvements have been made in every de-
II
partment of electro-telegraphic cable manufactur-
ing, The mere profundity of the water under which
the electric cable has anywhere w be sunk, has
by this time been proved to be a matter of com-
paratively no importance whatever. Depth of
water—mere depth of water is no appreciable ob-
stacle in itself to the successful completion of any
undertaking of the kind. If conclusive evidence of
this were required it would be found with the greatest
facility ready to hand in the instance of the telegraphic
line now connecting Toulon with Algeria. That
telegraphic cable is, in its extreme length, 600
miles from shore to shore—making allowance, that
is, foe its slackness here and there, and for its occa-
sional divergence from a straight line in the sub-
marine course taken by it from France to Africa.
Yet there it is firmly secured—there it remains
to this moment, in good working order, at a depth
bleesis°wb: threhe
surface of the Mediterranean Sea only
hundred fathoms than the depth
traversed by
the other cable below the surface of
the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaking in ,0„,,a
numbers, the cable
running across the bed
of the Mediter-
ranean from Toulon to Algeria,
has required to
be submerged to a depth of 1,800 fathoms
altogether. Speaking still in round numbers the

marine cable required to traverse the bed of the
Atlantic ocean from Valentia to Newfoundland has
already only required a submersion just three
hundred fathoms lower still—the profoundest pant
of the course already marked out between Ireland
and Newfoundland indicating an extreme submer-
gence of the plummet at 2,100 fathoms. And in
writing thus upon this one important particular,
we are writing simply upon what has actually
been done—not upon what has merely been pro-
jected as possible, but upon what has literally
been already accomplished. The submarine
telegraph from Toulon to Algeria, connecting thus,
at a distance of 600 miles and at a depth of 1,800
fathoms, the opposite shores of the Mediterranean,
is, in point of fact, the last achievement of this
kind, brought to a happy issue by the united skill
and enterprise of Messrs. GLASS and Co. What we
know for an absolute fact certainly to have been
done there, we may reasonably count upon being
as readily and as securely accomplished elsewhere.
The calculations, in a revised form, have, in
point of fact, been made afresh under the super-
vision of the Company—a Company, it should be re-
membered at this moment, wholly free from any
liabilities. They are the rational estimates, there-
fore, of a perfectly solvent association. And they
bring to us results all the more reliable from their
being the result of knowledge purchased through
the anguish of a bitter and costly experience. The
Atlantic Company, wiser by its experience, is still
sanguine of effecting its design in good substantial
earnest—heartened to this conviction, of course,
upon the twofold and very reasonable proviso that
it should be aided in carrying out its enterprize by
the hearty co-operation of the public and of the
Government.

The short, pithy speech of Lord OVERSTONE
last night, in the fresh debate raised by the un-
ceasing Bishop of OXFORD on the New Code,
just said in the House of Lords what every prac-
tical Englishman is saying in his counting house
or his parlour. Examination, though not gene-
ral examination, is everything. The noble lord
had had personal experience on the subject, and
from that, as well as from the nature of the case,
he expressed his " fervent hope" that the people
of England would understand the value of exa-
mination as the test of a school efficiency.
"In the public school which he had attended
an imperfect system of examination prevailed ; but
he passed thence under the hands of the late Bishop
of LONDON, to whom he owed a dEep debt of grati-
tude for having first taught him the full value of
examinations, and the necessity of continuing them
in every form as the only means of rendering a
man's reading really efficient." What the Bishop
of LONDON had impressed on the mind of his lord-
ship, through the personal benefit he derived from it,
is, in fact, but what we are doing in other depart-
ments of life daily. If we have a house to build we
expect the builder to be subject to the examina-
tion of our architect at any time whatever. If we
contract for the performance of any work, we
require that the results shall accord with the
specifications we have furnished. And in such
work as school instruction, especially when the
great majority of the parents have no means of
testing the teachers work, competent examination
is the only means of ascertaining whether the
nation, which pays, has had money's worth for its
money.

His lordship's language was not too strong in
telling the lords spiritual, that when it was de-
clared that a large percentage of children on leav-
ing school at present could not read, or write, or
go through the ordinary process of ciphering, it was
not to be supposed that these children were ever
capable of becoming useful or moral citizens "It
was a farce to continue the present vast expendi-
ture, and to keep up the present complicated ma-
chinery, if a mass of the children sent from schools
supported by the State were so imperfectly taught.
The State had a right to require that these schools
should undergo the ordeal of examination, and
should show in this way that they were worthy of
support." The present system is, in regard to both
the larger half of the schools in the country,
" a farce," for the larger half, which most
needs help, obtains none. It is a farce
also, in regard to the larger half of the children
whose attendances are so liberally paid for out of
the national taxes, for it is proved that they do not
learn those elements of knowledge which would
qualify them to be competent letter carriers, or col-
lectors, or the higher class of goods porters, or to
perform any of that large part of commercial work
for which we want servants who can " read, write
and count."

We quite agree with his lordship that " The
people of this country might rest assured that
where a school submitted willingly to the test of
examination the system of instruction followed
there was a sound one ; and that, on the other hand,
they might with certainty come to an opposite con-
elusion wherever they found an unwillingness or
an inability to undergo such a teat." The country,
if it reflects at all, cannot doubt why the whole
army of teachers, of school societies,and mane gerslay,
clerical, and episcopal,have all united to raise such
an outcry against payment after verifioation of the
items of their work. The cause tan beneither more nor
less than that the work will not bear it. The quaking
seems to be as great as when an inspector of

weights and measures unexpectedly pays a visit,
and demands to subject not only the troy weights,
but the weights for the many also to his test.
It is acknowledged that in very many schools the
first-class scholars are all right enough. The
troy weights will do. It is the avoirdupois
weights which turn out to be more than half of
them Eght. The less valuable intellectual ma-
terial of the school is made to bring in
as much capitation grant as the better,
by, in fact " stamping it." We commend
to the clamorous teachers, and to the public
too, some of Lord OTERSTONE'S closing re-
marks :—" He confessed," he said, " that he should
have been much better pleased if, instead of all the
protests and ingenious arguments by which the
new Code was opposed, the school managers had
said, ' You have mado mistakes in your new sys-
tem ; you will find them out as you proceed ; but we
believe that the children in our schools are effi-
ciently taught, and we shall not, thezefore, object to
their examination.' This would have been far more
satisfactory, and would have inspired him with far
greater confidence in a system which was maictained
at such great expense to the public than the course
which had been taken by the school managers and
their advocates." We arc certainly pleased to find
that the longer the subject is discussed, the more
the aim of the Government to pay the nation's
money for educational " value received" is appre-
ciated and commended.

A remarkable pamphlet has recently been pub-
lished by Mr. FREEMAN—entitled " Astrology
in a Nutshell." It is penned, as the title page
informs us, by Mr. CHRISTOPHER COOKE, the
Solicitor to the Astro-Meteorological Society.
The argument, sustained with great logical
acumen throughout this really curious brochure,
is addressed by its author to Mr. ALDERMAN
Hummay, apropos to certain remarks uttered