The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—We are witnessing with much though
various interest one of the greatest military specta-
cles ever presented to the civilised world. All things
considered, there never was such fighting before,
and for the like of it we have to imagine several of
Napoleon's most terrible campaigns fought together
in one country by the hostile factions of one people,
and with all the fresh aids and appliances which art
has since contributed to the service of war. Very
few of us think we have anything to do but to look
on ; all the better for us, a shortsighted selfishness
may suggest; all the worse for ourselves, if not our
material interests, wiser monitors will say. It is,
however, wonderful, considering that we call the
performers in this great tragedy brothers and cousins,
partners in race, in language, in religion, and in
laws, how few of us have relatives and friends in the
war. This is because the emigration for many years
past has been confined to the labouring classes. The
shipbuilders, merchants, and manufacturers who
have speculated on the wants of the belligerents,
busy and enterprising as they have been, are only a
small fraction of the British community ; and we
hear of their doings rather through American than
any home channels. The great mass of our people,
not only those in the deep quiet of private society,
but those m the great world, would open their eyes
with astonishment at a man said to be making his
fortune by blockade-running or supplying arms and
ammunition to the combatants. It is, however, a
melancholy fact that we have contributed almost
everything necessary to the spectacle. We have sup-
plied from our own race both combatants, at least
nine out of ten of them ; we have provided the bone
of contention, both the original slavery and the
more modern cry against it; we have furnished arms,
powder—nay, the very percussion caps and the me-
dicine chests, the clothing, and a good deal of the
shipping and of all the other materials required.
Some of us have gone behind the scenes and brought
back strange experiences. Staff officers, engineers,
doctors, and even clergymen have gone on errands
of science or curiosity, and will know what to do
when half our people set to work butchering the
other half. But we, ordinary spectators, see every-
thing much as the Americans themselves saw our
Russian and Indian difficulties. There may have
been wars on a grander scale in the days of Attila,
or Genghis Khan, or Timour ; but the achievements
of those almost fabulous personages no more touch
us than we hear of a mountain of locusts blown into
a sea, and then washed up on its shore. When the
matter is quite out of our knowledge, a million
seems no more than a hundred. But we are quite
at home in this business before us. The language
of the men, the familiar terminations and prefixes
of their names, with an occasional touch of mother
wit thrown in by the principal actors, give a
sort of domestic interest to the performance. Ame-
rica is bearing the palm in at least the magnitude
of her war, though we still have to wait for that
marvellous reconciliation that is to astonish the
world. Great as she has been in peace, and great
as she has proved herself in war, she finds it not so
easy to repair the shattered vase. On the contrary,
the vast mischief spreads, and, do what we will, we
are doomed to see complications rising North and
South, on every sea, on the Pacific as well as the
Atlantic coast. A great war is apt to become un-
controllable, because illimitable, too vast for control,
with too many issues for forethought. It rises to
the scale of a natural convulsion, the workings of
which may not be stayed or foreseen, and
which can only be told when all is over, in many a
long and sad history. How can we be sure that
some of these fragments heaped up or hurled aloft
will not come crushing down on us ? Already
commerce and manufacture throb at every beat of
that still mighty heart, and the hopes and fears of
thousands among. us rise and fall as some new
rage excites the American breast, or as it yields
under some touch of grace, some qualm of con-
science, or some voice of reason and common sense.
The present stage of this great struggle is notice-
able for its marked novelty upon the tenour of the
last four years. The extreme exhaustion on both
sides as to men and as to money appears to render
it impossible to carry on the war as it has been car-
ried on. There will not be for the future those
stupendous armaments, that waste of material, and
those far more dreadful sacrifices of human life.
There will not be such costly and murderous
struggles for the possession of certain points,
whether inland or maritime. Both sides seem to
have discovered that they have made mistakes in
attaching an exaggerated importance to positions
required for no purpose. We have, then, before us
the alternatives of a peace or a war carried on more
in the open country, either guerilla fashion or by
movements such as that by which Sherman has in
fact changed the fortunes and the face of the war.
Such a change will involve others, and, not the least
it will be liable to bring forward military adventurers
who do not depend on either Washington or Rich-
mond for their resources or their plans, perhaps not
even their authority. Such a result is fraught with
perilous consequences to ovory constituted or re-
, cognised Power either on the soil or at all within
reach 'of this great earth-shaking. We have no
thought of frightening the Americans into peace—
nay, the danger is as much ours as theirs ; but if
the war proceeds, it will one day come to such a pass
that neither we nor they will be able to say who are
the real rulers of that vast continent, and who are
the men whose power, whose vengeance, or whose
wisdom we have to watch. That the war must enter
on a new phase is evident from the proved impossi-
bility of carrying it on with the existing institutions
or rather constitution. The requisite levies whether
of men or of money, cannot be made under a system
of much divided and even discordant authority.
When the President employs detectives to see that
the States do their duty, the day cannot be distant
when the central Power will do that duty as it is
done in Europe—by the imperial agency, and no
other. Such was ever the result of long wars in
times gone by ; and the several States in this
instance have proved that they are no more to
be trusted than the feudal chiefs, the tributaries
and allies, whose shortcomings, vacillation, or weak-
ness have so often ruined the cause which depended
on their loyalty and zeal. For the prosecution of a
great war there must not only be a common cause
and a common ardour, but the sacrifice of every-
thing that interferes with perfect unity of action.
One of the earliest consequences of our own great
war wi▪ th France was the Irish Union ; and the first
result of the Indian Mutiny was the transfer of the
Indian Government to the British Crown. A divided
authori▪ ty makes large demands on time, and on that
mutual deference which contributes so much to the
pleasures of peace, but becomes impossible when
commands must be executed immediately and
thoroughly, which is the only pace war can take to
succeed. The Americans fondly hope that the sus-
pension of their constitutional guarantees for liberty
is an incident that will soon be a matter of history.
But years pass by, great transactions take place, and
a new generation is rising to men's estate, under a
reign of arbitrary power, and in the sphere of one
all-absorbing contest. Will the State or the Fede-
ration be the more important in their thoughts ?
Or, if they should have a quarrel with the larger
bond, will it be to fall back on the lesser? The Ame-
ricans have already sacrificed liberty for union, and
they may shortly find that they will have to sacri-
fice Union for Empire. They will have to sacrifice
that free voluntary Union which their fathers framed
and died for, in order to raise a power that shall
sustain itself at any cost, and hold its own against
all comers, whatever political constitution may be
found best for that purpose.
POST.—The republication of Lord Russell's. Essay
on the British Constitution, with an introduction re-
ferring to the leading questions of the day, among
which his lordship naturally assigns to Parliamentary
Reform a conspicuous place, as well as the annual
appearance of Mr. Baines's bill for extending the
borough franchise, which was read last night in the
House of Commons, and the preliminary pros-
pectus of a Reform League, with a capital of
£5,000 conditionally guaranteed, severally wit-
ness to the inopportunity of the discussion
they are calculated to promote. It is per-
fectly constitutional, and may be judicious, to con-
sider the expediency of modifying the subsisting
suffrage. There is every reason to believe that a
discriminating extension of the franchise would be
an elevating and conservative measure. The exist-
ing town constituencies leave very much to be de-
sired. In the metropolitan boroughs the need of
some amendment is experienced. But as Lord
Russell, in the historical portion of his introduc-
tion, points out, it is necessary, in the first place, to
lay down certain principles as the basis of action.
Moreover, to justify the modification of system
which works tolerably well upon the whole one of
two things should be required. The change ought
to be dedicated by the proven inadequacy or unsound-
ness of the actual representation, or by a spontane-
ous and rational expression of public opinion. As
a matter of fact, however, all these elements are
wanting. Lord Russell does, it is true, carefully
and elaborately define the principles upon which
the Reform Bill of 1832 was founded, and to which
he still, as we understand him, subscriber ; but he
omits to explain how, practically, those principles
are to be maintained in the further reduction of the
franchise, which appears to him to be desirable, and
also the reasons which have led him to that conclu-
sion. Lord Russell, it must be observed, declines
the theory that every man of sound mind, and
years of discretion, has an inherent .andinalien-
able right to vote as personal privilege.
vilege. He
holds that the purpose to be attained is good
government, the freedom of the people within
the State and their security from without. In
fact, Lord Russell seems to be aware that there
are, as Macaulay said, those who will be con-