The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-04 00:00:00

TIIE SUN, Lormor, THURSDAY ' EVENTI93, DECEMBER 4, 1862

suppose they would run away to the North.
Nevertheless they began moving all they
could of them to the interior, although
it could not be desirable to have too
many crowded together. It now appears that
the denunciations of the proclamation most truly
indicated their feelings. They dread a "servile
war" of these "faithful and affectionate slaves"—
of course they can have no fear of any such calamity
except from their own determination not to give
them freedom. We cannot pity the South at the
worst. Were its whole territory devastated by the
negroes in insurrection, the fault is wholly their
os% n. They could always have saved themselves
and banished the North for ever, by simply pro-
claiming liberty to the :slave. If they prefer
to run the risk of endeavouring still to
crush him in hopeless bondage, much as we might
deplore murder and bloodshed, the guilt of it must
lie on the men-stealers, men-sellers, and men
breeders for sale. If at all hazards they will violate
,he first law of nature—" the right of all men to

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—their
blood be on their own heads; abolitionists are inno-
cent. If slaveholding is dearer than life, they must
not complain if they lose their lives for it.
As a kind of prelude to the issue of the proclama-
tion, in New Orleans, and Louisiana, the well-
abused Gen. BUTLER and his comrades seem to be
doing its work most effectually. Having a large
number of escaped slaves on his hands, and it being
necessary temporarily to maintain them, he has given
them military work to do—no longer, however,
are they limited to menial camp labour. He has
organised several regiments of them. This, as
teaching them habits of order and obedience in free-
dom, must be admirable training. Bat the effect
was immediately seen in the confidence inspired in
the slaves on the plantations. They began pretty
generally to run off, and, like the Israelites, though
not by a direct Divine command, they also have
"spoiled their Egyptians." We do not read of one
case of cruelty; indeed, unless in retaliation for
unbearable atrocities, the negro is the most
forbearing, good-natured being under heaven.
But the masters' carriages and equipages are
made to do honour to black riders, and
much rollicking drollery seems to be the only
wickedness perpetrated by the unchained victims.
Of course, canes go uncut, and the supply of
Louisiana sugar will be smaller ; but liberty is
sweeter, the black thinks, than sugar, while it is
certain that, for good masters, they are still will-
ing to work for wages. General LEE, poor man,
seems furious at the prospect, and threatens " re-
taliation" on Union prisoners. He will, however,
remember that two can play at that cruel game. If
he says, " Women and children are murdered by
the infuriated negroes, as many Union prisoners
shall be put to death." Indeed! But let him
first show that the husbands and brothers did
provoke the massacre ; let him next remember
that there are Confederate prisoners too. We
wholly disbelieve, however, all the prognostica-
• tions of " massacres." We had the same fore-
bodings in the West Indies, but the only massacre
was a universal rejoicing.

" The reed on which we leant has gone through
the hand that reposed on it, and has pierced us to
the heart." No, wonder, when the Earl of DERBY
uttered those words on Tuesday, in his great speech
in the great meeting in the Town-hall, at Man-
chester, no wonder, indeed, that the affecting truth
thus eloquently articulated was greeted with a
round of applause. For it unquestionably is the
truth—the simple and solemn truth of the tremen-
dous spectacle now being witnessed in the North
West of England. A destitution, the like or which
for its universality and for its intensity the country
has absolutely no record of—has now for months
past thrown entirely upon the benevolence of their
fellow-countrymen, a numerous and hitherto most
industrious population. But for the exercise of this
spontaneous benevolence—the whole of Lancashire,
and, with that, large tracts of the adjacent counties
there in the north and in the north-west of Eng-
land, would at this moment be desolated by the
frightful scourge of Famine, and as a necessary
consequence afterwards by the finishing scourge of
Pestilence. Yet time elapses, the year rolls on,
1863 draws slowly to its close with the mills
long since closed, the factory people long out of
employment—and yet, throughout the whole of
that desolated countryside, no outrages whatever
have been witnessed indicative of impatience on
the part of the afflicted multitude, or of disloyal
insubordination under so heavy and appalling a
load of misery.

But little more than a generation hack,
only ono generation and a social dic-
tion, barely approaching in severity the one
now carrying anguish to so many hearths in the
North, would have resulted in crimes of a very
flagrant character. Acts of violence would have
been heard of inevitably as of only too frequent
recurrence. There would have been tumultuous
assemblages, arson, pillaging, and probably even
bloodshed. In the days (not so very remote)
of Captain SWING —we all know from
the pages of, among others, CHARLES KNIGHT
and HARRIET MARTINEAU, how repeated and how
destructive were the cotflagrations that marked
the fury of the populace whenever suffering from
some unlooked-for distress—loss of wages through
lack of work. There were bread riots. There
were torch-light gatherings. Where the toilers out
of employment appeared with arms in their hands
prepared for any outrage at the bidding of the
mob-orators of their own class—men without any
sense whatever, for the time being, of loyalty or
patriotism—men driven half mad by meditating
over incendiary projects for some lawless trans-
formation of the Government.
In order to recall to mind how wild were the theo-
ries then in vogue, and how disastrously extravagant
were the commotions indulged in by the suffering
multitude, a multitude suffering from some unex-
pected though purely temporary deficiency of
employment—it is not necessai y e yen to go far back
among the historic pages in which the narratives
of HumE and SMOLLETT have been continued
down to a period almost immediately contempo-
rary. The state of things prevailing at these
occasional crises of no-work, and prevailing, too,
not so very long since, may be readily recalled
to mind by a casual reference simply to the re-
cords of some of our popular novelists
keen-witted observers and describers of me n
as they are, or rather as they were.
Opening the pictured volumes of The Old
Curiosity Shop any one who does not
chance to remember the passage referred to, will
find in the midst of a wonderfully graphic descrip-
tion of the manufacturing districts—not in the north
among the cotton mills, but more towards the
centre of England among the potteries and
iron-foundries in Staffordshire and the neighbour •
ing counties—most vivid description of one of these
torchlight and treasonous meetings among the
workpeople, a description eloqaently written by
Boz, and picturesquely illustrated by PHIZ. In
Sybil, again, or The Two Nations, the readers of
Mr. DISRAELI will remember the admirable delinea-
tions of men and scenes and incidents precisely of the
kind we speak of, pencilled by the skilled hand of

that practised romancist. Remembering ,hose
scenes, those men, and those incidents—mtual
each of them under different names, and nt by

any means the creations of a dreaming imagnation
—and contrasting with them the spectacle now
witnessed for months past throughout the ?overty-
stricken manufacturing districts of Laicashire
we can thu better appreciate the advance made in
the general intelligence of the people tiemselves,
and in the wisdom and beneficence of tieir riches.
The comparison is one which mark in a very
signal manner the immense and dstinctly ap-
preciable advance made in the much of mo-
' dern civilisation : meaning, at once, by that, our
social and political civilisation as a free people,
presided over beneficently by a Constitutional Go-
vernment. "But," said Lord DERBY, on Tuesday,
in the very midst of his much, there, in the
Town Hall of Manchester, after descanting in
eloquent terms upon the marvellous endurance of
privation marking the prognas of this great dis-
tress in Lancashire—" But re have yet happier
and more gratifying subjectsof contemplation. I
have pointed to the noble conflict which must make
us proud of our countrymenin the manufacturing
districts; I have pointed to the noble and heroio
submission to difficulties thy could never foresee
and privations they never expected to encounter;
but, again, we have mother feeling which,
sure I am, will not be disappointed, which the
country has nobly met—thtt this is an opportunity
providentially given to those who are blessed with
worldly fortune to show their sympathy—their
practical, active, earnest sympathy with the suf-
ferings of their poor brethren, and, with GOD'S
blessing, it may be a link to bind together more
closely than ever the various classes in this great
community, to satisfy the wealthy that the poor
have a claim, not only to their money, but to
their sympathy —to satisfy the poor also
that the rich are not overbearing, grining
tyrants, but men like themselves, who have
a heart to feel for suffering, and prompt
to use the means GOD has given to them for the
relief of that suffering." Nobly in response has
Lancashire herself now poured into the Relief
Fund her own lavish contributions. That Fund,
we have little fear left will still continue to expand
in proportion to the growth of the misfortune, it is
so beneficently designed to alleviate. Insomuch
are we sanguine that such may indeed prove to be
the result, that but a portion of the grant at first
anticipated as requisite in extremity will probably
be needed (when the nation has done its best) to
fill up the gap that may be still left among the re-
quirements of Lancashire.

We now know, on the authority of the Greeks
themselves resident iu England, their views recom-
mending to their countrymen at home the choice of
Prince ALFRED for their King. The Greeks of
England are an intelligent and wealthy body of
merchants, they know England thoroughly, quite
as well as they know their own conntry, and the
resolution which a numerous meeting of them in
Liverpool cordially adopted was—" That it is the
firm conviction of the present meeting that the
e:ection of Prince ALFRED of England to the throne
of Greece will be the surest guarantee for the future
happiness of our country."

The English Greeks acknowledge that they
aaturally took the lead in looking to England to
supply them with a Monarch, and their reasons are
just what thoy ought to be—creditable equally to
themselves and to us. Greeks resident in England,
said Mr. CORNELIUS, living in England and enjoying
the advantages of a great and free Government,
and emulously watching the moral and material
deveinDm.nf .f the country, were naturally the
first to look to art Mrignistt Prince for the Greek
throne. Though forestalled by their countrymen
at home in the manifestation of this feeling, they
certainly originated the conception of it, and he
trusted that the able men at the helm of England's
fortunes would approve the election of Prince
ALFRED. Under a constitutional Government such
as that might naturally expect to exist under an
English Prince, he felt sure that in the next half
century—a mere span in the lifetime of a nation—
Greece would commence a brilliant future."

were in a similar strain.
ThoughEv
the originated from England,
it had been so enthusiastically, as well as unani-
mouslyery speaker's
suggest io remarksn
adopted, that the Greeks at home displayed
their strong feeling on the subject before those in
this country had adopted any public action.
They Can know, as they tell us, little of the Prince
himself, but they have learned what a futile reliance
are paper constitutions; they, therefore, desire a
ruler whose origin and connections may be safely
trusted. Mr. RODOCANACHI appropriately ob-
served :—"ln seeking to obtain Prince ALFRED
for our King, we are not actuated by the individual
merits of this young Prince, because little can be
known to our countrymen of his personal qualifica-
tions. But it is enough for us to know that he
has been brought up it: the midst of a free and
great people ; that he is the son of a Queen whose
name has become a synonym for freedom and
virtue, and of a Prince whose stainless purity of life
made him as truly the type of the perfect husband
and father as he was of the Prince, in his wide
and liberal patronage of art, and his sympathy
with every charitable scheme that could help the
progress of mankind and ameliorate their social
condition. Is it too much to hope that the son of
such august parents will inherit their virtues, and
transplant to the soil of Greece the great tree of
British freedom and independence ?''

One of the greatest difficulties in the view of
Englishmen, connected with acceptance of the
doetion, has been the possible implication of Eng-
land with Greek schemes of ambition in the East.
We by no means condemn the ambition, but we
have too large an empire, and too much necessary
work on our hands, to incur willingly another task.
We think, however, we may take the word
of the English Greeks for it, that they have wiser
purposes." "In choosing an English Prince for
our King," they say, " we do not expect, as many
think, to be backed by England in enlarging the
frontiers of our country. What we want is Eng-
land's moral influence to help us in establishing
self-government, and in putting free Greece in a
position for becoming sone day the centre of
civilization in the East, and, by extending her
benign influence to our oppressed brethren, to
enable them by the help of the Almighty to re-
gain their freedom." If all Greece is of this mind,
England, on this point, could ask nothing better.

ARRIVAL OF TELE PRINCE OF WALES.—His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales arrived at Dover
yesterday afternoon in the Government yacht Vivid, Com-
mander Allen, which left Calais shortly after one o'clock
and reached the Admiralty Pier at Dover soon after three.
A guard of Honour of the Royal Artillery was drawn up
along the Admiralty
Pier, which was lined with townsfolk
and visitors who bad flocked to the place of disembarkation
as soon as it became known that his Royal Highness was
expected to land at Dover.

SOUTHAMPTON
Wednesday.—The Hamburg-
American Company's screw steamship Bavaria, Captain
Taube, sailed at 2 p.m.
for New York, with the German
and English mails, a full complement of passengers, and a
large cargo.

THE FEDERAL CE.UISERS.—LIVERPOOL, Dee. 2.
—The judgment by which the Memphis and the Elizabeth
prize steamers were condemned at New York has been
reversed. The California, from Mobile, with cotton, has
been captuxed by Federal cruisers,

LATEST NEWS.

TURIN, DEC. 3.
Signor Cassini4 has not succeeded in forming a
Ministry, and has relinquished the task.

It was announced that the mission of construct-
ing an Administration had been entrusted to Signor
Sanmartino, but this report has proved unfounded.
It is now asserted that Signor Posalesi, Prefect of
Turin, has been charged with the construction of
the Ministry, and that he has accepted the commis-
sion. The names of the future Ministers are not

yet known.
The filonarehia Nazionale of to-day expresses
a desire that the new Cabinet should be free
from party passions, and also to conciliate the
Parliamentary majority. The Monarchia considers
the occurrence of a period of truce desirable for the
purpose of appeasing political animosity.
The Opinione publishes a further article in oppo-
sition to the scheme of a merely administrative
Cabinet.

MADRID, DEC. 2, EVENING.

In to-day's sitting of the Chamber of Deputies
Senor Ballesseros was almost unanimously elected
President, the members of the Opposition abstain-

ing from voting.
The rumour that General Prim has given in his
resignation is unfounded.

PRUS ri lA.

BERLIN, DEC. 2.

News has reached Berlin that M. de Kanitz,
Prussian Minister at Rome, has become insane.
There is talk of replacing him by Count Perponcher,
formerly Prussian Minister at Naples, and who was
one of the group of diplomatists who went from
Rome to visit Francis 11. at Gaeta, from which
unpleasant abode they speedily retreated (with two
or three exceptions) when that Sovereign unfeel-
ingly proposed that they should remain to bear
him company during the siege. M. de Kanitz is
married to an English lady, sister-in-law of the
amiable and accomplished Duke of Sermoneta. He
is the second Prussian diplomatist who has re-
cently been overtaken by the same affliction ; the
other being Baron Meusebach, formerly Minister at
the Court of the Brazils, and who is since dead.
There is a report here of approaching changes in
the Austrian Diplomatic Corps. Baron Bach, of
Concordat celebrity, is to quit Rome, it is said, and
to retire into private life ; Count Apponyi is to go
from London to Rome, and Count Karolyi from
Berlin to London.

AMERICA;

SOUTHAMPTON, TIIURSDAY MORNING.

The North German Lloyd's steamer New York
has arrived here with 10 passengers, 325,073 dols.
in specie for England, and 10,500 dols. for Bremen.
She left New York on the 22d of November, and
spoke, on the 27th, the English brig African, bound
west ; and on the 3d inst. the English ship, Wil-
liam Stewart, off Land's-end.