The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-17 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1862.

We hope Mr. LINDSAY'S or Lord TEMPEST'S motion
will be fairly discussed to-morrow night. Every-
thing admonishes us that it is of the last importance
to decide it correctly—the rapidly ceasing employ-
ment of our Lancashire mills; the meetings of
various kinds in the North ; the perplexities of the
Poor-law Board ; the appeals to public charity ;
the impatience of Sir CHARLES WOOD'S sluggish-
ness and obstructiveness in the Government of
India—all remind us that the next winter will be
a serious crisis in the most populous and wealth-
producing part of our kingdom. And we submit
to public consideration that this question—the
question of our relation to the Confederate States
—has hitherto been discussed on far too narrow
grounds. We admit that for a time it was right to
abide by the technicalities of international law,
and that if the North prohibited our trading with
its Southern ports, we wore bound to do so. We
ought to wait and see whether the insurrection of
the South was a revolution, an affair of mob tur-
bulence, or the union of a vast community for what
they regarded as their rights. We were right,
therefore, as a matter of humanity, in recognising
the temporary position of belligerents as the one
we must assign to each ; though even this gave
such mortal offence to the proud citizens of the
North. But we must equally deny that we are
bound to stop at that position just as long as the
ambition of the North may see fit .to demand. Now
that the South has maintained its position
for a full year, and seems likely to main-
tain it for ever, now that it has driven
the great army of the North from its capital, with
little apparent likelihood of ever losing that capital,
now that it has shown itself capable of superhuman
exertions and sacrifices to achieve its independence,
we ore entitled by the laws of nations to consider
whether the Southern Government has not earned
its title to recognition. Even on the ground of
international law we must think we are now at
liberty to deal on the de facto principle with the
South.

We are met indeed at the threshold, with a kind
of augmentum ad Angliam—an appeal to English
consistency, against acknowledging a Slavery Re-
public, one whose cornerstone is slavery. We
heartily wish the argument would hold, as between
North and South. We are sorry it will not. The
cornerstone of the Union is also slavery. This is
distinctly so—for Mr. LINCOLN has twenty times,
and in twenty forms, declared that to abolish
slavery would destroy all hope of restoring the
Union. There is no mistake on this point. The
much lauded, but really infamous constitution of
the Union, provided that the Union by its Federal
powers should uphold slavery, and force back the
fugitive to the whipping post of his tyrant. The
Union created that abomination of Christian civili-
zation, the fugitive slave law, and Mr. LINCOLN
himself, as an essential condition of the Union, in-
sisted on the maintenance of that law, and has, even
since the rebellion, put in force in Washington.
Moreover, the North everywhere depresses, insults,
and deprives of civil rights the free negroes ; the
_
their Illinois has just passed resolutions to pro-
hibit
entry within its territories. We cannot
allow, therefore,
ana that to recognise actual slave-
holdersrecognise those who
is at all worse than to
are fighting to include them
with themselves in
one
Government, and those who,
if they do not enslave t
technical relatie North
their doors, or politically and socially
drive him from
bane
maltreat him.
viewtboeatouu:rhtiheeh we
most
important,
hinted, and
But the
overrides
tI.L?
which seems
LuPortant is that,
whateversomuatyh,
the case which is one 1,-
ernues tech-
nicalities. Here
and the
we, of course, include France
With
ourselves. We
hold that the question
cottonv
supply is one of such magnitude that the necessity
of millions being saved from starvation, or,
what is
as bad, being saved from the demoralisation mese.
quent on pauperism, requires us to acknowledge
that necessity as a higher law than any of the con-
ventional arrangements termed international law.
Not only is the independence of the South now a
fact, and the Union a fiction, but, were it not so, it
is now for us to consider the moral claims of our
starving millions in comparison with the demands
of the North to prohibit our buying of the South.
We maintain that the moral claims of the