The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Mr. Beecher was well chosen as the na-
tional orator at Fort Sumter. He is eloquent and
enthusiastic, and he represents, too, exactly that
element in the civil strife which has predominated
and triumphed. One thing beyond all doubt has
been decided by the American war, and that is the
fate of slavery. This result did not appear probable
at first. It was perfectly clear that the North valued
something far more highly than the abolition of
slavery. Whether that something be called Union,
or empire, or integrity of territory, matters little.
There it was, preferred by the great body of the
Northern people to every other object, and for its
sake it seemed as if almost anything.the Slave States
could ask would be willingly conceded. Yet in the
end, after the vicissitudes of four eventful years, the
emancipation of the negro is the one great result be-
fore us. It is certain that slavery is doomed, and
that its extinction, indeed, has been half accomplished
already. Mr. Beecher and his friends are entitled to
triumph at the success of their principles—the more
so as it is a success at which everybody can rejoice.
But Mr. Beecher was not content with this triumph.
As he stood on Fort Sumter and delivered the ad-
dress which he was commissioned to give, he expa-
tiated with singular ability and force upon topics
far more obscure and difficult. He wished to show
not only that America had been purged of the crime
of slavery, but that the cure, terrible as it was, had
been beneficial in its very process. He argued that
war, war in itself, even apart from its object or its
justice, was attended with advantages and blessings
of its own ; that it was a species of national educa-
tion ; that it led a people from infancy to man-
hood ; that it filled them with a belief in their own
convictions and a knowledge of their own strength ;
that it proved their patriotism and zeal, and
that it left them all the better for the ordeal.
These are not new arguments. The ennobling
effects of war have often been discoursed upon
by philosophers and historians, and perhaps the
national character of Mr. Beecher's country-
men was peculiarly open to the improvement which
such stern teaching might bring. That this charac-
ter was Actually affected by the war as it proceeded
was a subject of common remark, and it is to be
hoped that Mr. Beecher's prognostications of the
result may be verified by experience. But the future
is a mystery. America is changed, and that is all
we know.. The transformation may be political,
social, and national all at once. Mr. Beecher him-
self answers for the social metamorphosis, and al-
ready there are many symptoms of national and con-
stitutional transition. One great and powerful ele-
ment in American character is probably extinguished.
The spirit of the South will no longer shape the na-
tional counsels or stamp the national policy. Mr.
Beecher thinks this is all for the best. He tells us
that all we misliked or mistrusted in Americans pro-
ceeded from the South. " All the arrogant attitudes
of this nation, so offensive to foreign Governments,
were inspired by slavery and under the administra-
tion of its minions." This, in the main, is true. The
influence of the South usually predominated in the
Government of the old Union, and it was the im-
pending decline of this influence which served as the
signal for Secession. But there was much in the
Southern spirit, for all that, which went to the
making of a nation. The Northern people looked up
to the people of the South. They were proud of their
Southern countrymen as more purely national, and
perhaps as more aristocratic than themselves.
Southern boys took the lead in schools and colleges,
just as Southern statesmen did in Congress, and the
world has seen what Southern soldiers could do in
war. Mr. Beecher must not forget, when he says
that the last four years have given America a his-
tory, how much of this history has been contributed
by the South. The most famous city in all America
will be Richmond, and Americans of all parts will
probably be of one mind in so regarding it.
But the change will not stop here. There were
two great parties in America independently of
slavery. Probably, though they both bore de-
mocratic designations, they expressed that inter-
nal conflict of opinion between Conservatism and
Liberalism which is to be found everywhere and
at all times. One of these has been worsted in this
struggle, and the other is in the ascendant. There
are people in America who look at its political divi-
sions and institutions much as Mr. Baines and his
friends look at our electoral constituencies. They
are jealous of State rights, and of all the peculiar
and independent administrations which stand in the
way of popular will. They are discontented even
with the Union itself as it formerly existed. It is
not Union enough for them. They desire to see in
the place of the " United States" a great nation of
Americans, " one and indivisible," in which the will
of the majority shall be law. The party holding
these opinions has been strengthened by the war,
and it is surmised that the new President may in-
cline to their views. Certainly in one of his ad-
dresses he spoke as if he thought the Constitution
needed reform, and as if certain guarantees for
popular principles, hitherto absent, ought now to
be introduced. Mr. Beecher himself anticipates
some species of revolution, if not in organic institu-
tions, at any rate in the policy of the nation as in-
sensibly resulting: He thinks it will be a beneficial
change, and that the policy of Annerican.Governments
will serve as a model to other countries of the world.
In his opinion, the hopes which were expressed in
our Parliament on a recent occasion will actually
be fulfilled. That future which Mr. Disraeli desired
for the American nation is the future which Mr.
Beecher prognosticates. It may be observed that
even the orator himself did not pretend that the
Civil War, on the part of the North, was a war ex-
clusively for emancipation. He owns frankly that
they fought for "territory," and argues that we,
cramped as we are within our narrow confines, have
no idea what " territory" means, or of how far it is
necessary to a nation's development. We cannot un-
derstand the object, and therefore we have " miscon-
ceived" the conflict. We dare say there is truth in this.
The passion of Americans for territory has always been
extraordinary. It was said, we remember, at the be-
ginning of the war that no citizen of the North could
ever possibly reconcile himself to such a consum-
mation as the claims of the South pretended. If
Virginia were to be carried off by a new Republic
in the South, there would actually be a spot in the
old Republic where the United States were not fifty
miles wide, and that, it was declared, no American
could ever endure. But if we look without sym-
pathy on these speculations it is because we have
no experience to guide us. Ii all history there is
no example of such a State as the Americans expect
to become. China makes the nearest approach to
it. In that Empire the population is counted by
hundreds of millions, and they have been united for
ages, but they, are governed by a foreign race, and
they are incessantly exposed to civil war. At pre-
' sent the Americans have barely' reached a census
of 30,000,000, and yet they could not live together
in unity. How will it be when these 30,000,000
become 60,000,000 or 100,000,000 ? Americans
think the problem easy, and the issue sure. We
can but say that there is no precedent for such a
consummation, but if Mr. Beecher's picture of the
future be correct we have no reason to deprecate it.
The Americans have conceived their own destiny,
and are working it out in their own manner ; but
they have now, at least, learnt this,—that Europe,
whatever may be its speculations or sympathies,
will never interfere to disturb them.

HERALD.—The debate in the Lords on Tuesday
night was by no means the least interesting episode
in the history of the unended and almost unending
Edmunds scandal. The attendance was unusually
large and the number of speakers was above the
average ; the proceedings were of an exceptionally
animated character, and the language employed by
several speakers was more forcible than is commonly
heard in the decorous and dignified Upper Chamber.
Nor were these incidents of the debate at all sur-
prising. The Peers must by this time have had more
than enough of their late reading clerk and of
their present Speaker. We believe that they are
heartily disgusted, both with the delinquencies of the
one and the " errors" of the other. Even more
intensely than the public, the Lords must wish that
the mischief, which began at the Patent Office and
ended in their own house, could be decently buried
out of sight, or, better still, that such things had
never been. But, unluckily, those wishes are not
to be realised. The unsavoury subject comes up
again and again, with the persistency of an uneasy
ghost or an importunate creditor. It will not be got
rid of. Put out of sight it will not be ; put out of
mind it cannot be. It is not to be burked m a com-
mittee room or buried in a blue book. It has brought
the Patent Office into disrepute, the public audit
into discredit, the Lord Chancellor to disgrace, and
Mr. Edmunds to ruin. But still the public is not
satisfied, for every one feels that the chief delinquent
has escaped, and that even-handed justice has not
been done. It was only natural that Lord Redes-
dale should share this general discontent. His lord-
ship thought that the report of the select committee
cast an implied censure on himself and the other
members of the pension committee, and he therefore
brought under the notice of the house the passage
by which that censure was conveyed. Lord Redes-
dales presented the case of himself and of his col-
leagues in a very effective and perspicuous manner.
The members of the pension committee say that
they felt themselves limited by their instructions.
They were ordered to inquire into the amount of
pension to which Mr. Edmunds might, by former
practice, be deemed entitled. They had no official
knowledge of any charge against him, and any in-
formation they had obtained respecting it was from
vague and uncertain rumours, of which the other
members of the house were as cognisant as them-
selves. When they entered upon their labours Mr.
Edmunds's resignationlhad been accepted, and after
they had made their report a week elapsed before the

house formally agreed to its recommendations. They
say, therefore, that looking to the nature of their ,
instructions, they would have been acting ultra vires
had they extended their inquiries to matters uncon-
nected with Mr. Edmunds's duties in the House of
Lords. They say further, that even if they had
failed in their duty by passing such matters over,
the house had the opportunity of rectify-
ing the mistake and supplying the omission.
We must own that we are rather inclined to
agree with Lord Redesdale. His view of the func-
tion of the pension committee may, perhaps, be
rather technical ; but it should be remembered that,
as chairman of committees, he has had peculiar
opportunities of judging how much discretion the
forms of the house allow in such cases, and that his
opinion of the committee's powers was supported by
Lord Eversley, a former Speaker of the House of
Commons. Lord Redesdale also protests that when
joining in the pension report he did net know that
Mr. Edmunds had resigned upon compulsion. The
members of the committee had some conversation
about the money which he had been called upon to
pay, but their belief then was that he had actually
paid more than the amount with which he believed
himself chargeable. It may be, on the other hand,
that Lord De'rby's view of the committee's duty is
the correct one ; that it was perfectly competent to:
the committee to inquire into any circumstance that
had come to their knowledge, and to settle not only
the amount of Mr. Edmunds's pension, but whether
he was worthy to receive a pension at all. The
point, however, may well be left in dubio. It is one •
of the matters on which men equally upright and
punctilious will arrive at directly opposite conclu-
sions. Any intention to censure the pension com-
mittee has been distinctly disclaimed, and the dis-
claimer has been accepted as satisfactory by those
whom that censure would have affected. The discus-
sion, however, showed how keenly anything like an
amputation of breach of duty was felt on both.
sides of the house ; hoW anxious every peer on the
benches was to vindicate himself from the charge of
neglecting to do anything required of him by
regard for the public interest and for his own re-
putation. We have written advisedly the sentences •
immediately preceding. When we speak of both
sides of the house we say nothing about its centre.
From the peers on the benches we expressly ex-
elude
the lord upon the woolsack. In the remon-
strances of Lord Redesdale, the apologies of Earl
Granville, the complaints of Lord Hardwicke,
the arguments of Lord Derby, the excuses of Earl
Russell, and the retorts of the Marquis of Bath,
there was at least one point of resemblance. Every
noble lord who took part in the debate recognised
the gravity of the situation, and seemed to feel it
incumbent upon him to disclaim the very smallest
participation in the scandal. But presiding over
the assembly, officially regulating the debate, was
the man who had caused all the mischief. Again
and again did the speakers on either side refer to
what the Lord Chancellor had done, or had failed
to do t • again and again did expectation stand on
tiptoe to hear him speak in his own vindication, to
hear him express something like regret for an " error
which had involved such serious consequences.
But the expectation was not to be realised. The
Lords waited in vain. The calm impudence which
sustained Sir Richard Bethell, when, an advocate
at the bar, he insulted judges upon the bench, did
not desert him when, a parvenu among the Peers,
he had brought the house into a difficulty and his
office into discredit. As; in the one case, he spoke
where he should have been silent, so in the other he
was silent when he should have spoken. " The least
said the soonest mended," says the old saw, and
Lord Westbury on the woolsack, listening to the
debate on Lord Redesdale's resolutions, was its most
moderns instance. " Having known Mr. Edmunds
for many years in connection with the House of
Lords," said Lord Redesdale, " and having found
him in all respects a gentleman and an honourable
man, I was not likely to take up the charges brought
against him in a loose manner without knowing
something on the subject." Why did not Lord
Redesdale know "something on the subject?"
Through the default, the great and grievous default,
of Lord Westbury. He knew officially what the
pension committee had not heard at all, or had heard
only "in a loose manner." Of the extent of Ed-
munds's defalcations he was well aware, and that he
had brought himself within the criminal law the
Chancellor was only too certain. How, knowing
all this, he could conceal his knowledge, suppress
the facts, hoodwink the committee, and help a.
man, guilty of grave delinquencies, to the reward
of faithful servi,-zes must remain among the "things
hard to be understood" on any supposition consis
tent with public decency or the Chancellor's integ-
rity. But the debate on Tuesday night has fur-
nished us with something still more extraordinary.
It has shown us how a highly-paid official can re-
main unmoved while on every hand he is re-
proached with grievous improprieties. How the,
chief equity judge eau sit silent while the assembled
Peers of England, in effect, charge him with breach
of trust ; how he who should, like Caesar's wife, be,
above suspicion, can( practically confess himself
beyond the power of vindication. So long as he can
hold office and draii, Ws salary, so long as he can see
his son fill the place from which Mr. Edmunds has
been thrust, it would seen). that the Chancellor cares
for none of these things. His lordship may have
his own standard of what is proper, his own esti- •
mate of what is becoming ; but if the Ministry, the
Lords or the Commons, have a proper regard for
their personal character, their traditional reputation,
or their public duty, they will not allow the matter
to rest where it is, merely because the Chancellor
thinks he can afford to treat the outraged feelings
of the nation with supercilious indifference or con-
temptuous insolence.