The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-09 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, JUNE 24.

It the friends of the South have not recently
accomplished much in its behalf, it cannot be said
that its foes have not been exceedingly active in its
service. General Butler is in himself a host in aid-
ing the cause that he opposes, and in turning every
waverer in Louisiana into a Secessionist ; while
General Hunter and all the advocates of the imme-
diate abolition of slavery have been doing their very
best to embitter the existing hatred of the South
towards the North, and to render future harmony
impossible between them. But all these matters
-sink into insignificance compared with the aid and
comfort that have been given to the cause of
Southern independence by the revised Tariff re-
ported to the House of Representatives on Friday
last by Mr. Stevens, the Chairman of the Committee
of Ways and Means. I enclosed an abstract of it
in my last, but the document reached me so shortly
before the departure of the steamer that I had
scarcely time to read, much less to comment upon
it. Every cne expected decisive news from Rich-
mond, but few expected that legislation at Wash-
ington would startle the world more effectually than
the loudest artillery of the war ; and that an unwise
commercial code, established by the North, would
so suddenly array on the side of the South all the
sympathies and interests of the two greatest nations
in Europe. Should the new Tariff pass into a law,
the United States will become a kind of American
Japan, girt and swaddled in conceit and ignorance,
the commercial enemy of the civilised world. The
existing, or Morrill Tariff, was bad enough in itself,
as well as in the time of its enactment, but it has
been surpassed in every ill respect by that of Mr.
Stevens. If the latter do not expedite the final re-
cognition of the South by the Powers most largely
interested in the interchange of the staples of this
continent with the products of Europe, England
and France are patient Governments indeed, and
commerce is no longer the ruling power of our race
and time.

The new Tariff will bear especially hard against
England, but, if it attacks France with a minor
degree of virulence, it is simply because France
has not quite so extensive a commerce to be ruined
as England has. It is not only highly protective,
but in some respects prohibitive, and has been
hailed with such a furore of delight by one highly
popular journal of this city, which was formerly a
warm advocate of Secession and now pretends to
support the Government, as to lead not unwarrant-
ably to the belief that the journal in question is still
true to its " premiers amours," and sees in this
measure the certain success of the South by means
of an European intervention. The Tariff aims so
deadly a blow at foreign commerce that it has
driven all the merchants of this city, who know
anything of the science and philosophy of trade,
into a state of mingled alarm and indignation, that
speaks well for their sagacity, but says nothing for
their influence in the Government of the Republic.
Every article hitherto imported from England—to
say nothing of the wines, brandies, gloves, bijou-
terie, and silks of France. of which the people will
speedily learn to forego the use—will be doubled 1
and trebled in price. The revenue of the Federal
Government will not be largely increased, for the
simple reason that the import trade from Europe in
dry goods, cutlery, pottery, iron, &c., will be all
but annihilated. The American public will "pay
the piper." The American manufacturers of inferior
articles will enrich themselves at the expense of the
general community, and the grievance which was
one of the main causes or pretexts of the Southern
secession will be aggravated and intensified in the
great agricultural regions of the Far West. The
interest of the agricultural community is to receive
at cheap rates from England the dry goods, the
woollens, the tools, and the iron, of which it stands
in constant need, and to pay for them with the
superabundant breadstuffs, of which the West has at
times such a glut as to burn corn for fuel to light its
kitchen fires and to keep the trains running on its
railways. Hitherto the West has done the lion's
share of the fighting. It has been pre-eminently
loyal as well as pugnacious—thanks to its Irish and
German elements—and it will surely be an ill return
to make for its manifold sacrifices, if it be compelled,
in addition to the onerous burden of national taxa-
tion, to bear the weight of a still heavier tax to
fatten the millowners of New England.
The antiquated and obstinate politicians who form
the majority of Congress, and are first in the confi-
dence of the President, in trying to catch one bird
may lose another. In attempting to coerce the South,
and the friends of the South, they may make an
enemy in the West. And, worse than all, they may
ultimately lose both, and perhaps California and
the Pacific States also. They know as little of the
elementary principles of finance and of social and
political economy as if Adam Smith and Sir Robert
Peel had never been born, and as if the whole expe-
rience of Europe for the last 50 years were as dead a
letter as the social history of Madagascar. The
United States will not, perhaps, believe the fact,
especially when it reaches them from Europe, that
they are not in a position to make unnecessary
enemies in this manner ; that they are not yet at
the head of civilisation, nor likely to be so for many
generations; that they cannot dictate the course of
the world's trade, however much they may be in-
clined to do so ; and that it is still in the power of
Europe to look to itself and its interests by adopt-
ing at the eleventh hour a policy towards the South
which it should have adopted at the first, and
which, if it had been adopted at the proper time,
would have prevented all the cruel and useless
bloodshed of the war, and left the North without
that burden of a public debt which will yet sink it
to the level of some of the worn-out despotisms of
the Old World, unless it be wiser during the next
three months than it has been at any perioG since
the tall of Fort Sumter. Of this, however, there is
no chance. The North has been wrong from the
beginning, and will be wrong to the end; and
Great Britain and France will be unwise if they do
not immediately reconsider their previous policy
of expectant neutrality, and take the side which
the interests of commerce and the welfare of their
own subjects imperatively dictate. The revised
Tariff is a virtual declaration of war against them
both. It will gladden the hearts of President Davis
and
every general and soldier in his armies, and if it
do not depress in the same degree the hearts of all
the Northern people who clamour so vehemently
for the subjugation of the South, it will be for the
reason that the North is. in
reality se ignorant as
not to know the
mischief it is doing,
or so blinded
by panic and prejudice as not to see that it is 50
years behind the rest of the world in the knowledge
of the wealth of nations and the causes that
conduce

to it.
While thus impoverishing themselves in the inn_
sory hope of making the foreigner the largest con-
tributor to their war expenses, the Tax Bill, that
has at last passed both houses, and only awaits the
President's signature, will bring home to every
man's door the acute reminder that war is an amuse-
ment which must not only be paid for in the blood
and life of the combatants, but in the hard money
and the personal sacrifice of the non-combatants.
From and after the Ist of August next, the sad
privilege hitherto monopolised by Englishmen, of
being the most heavily taxed nation under the sun,
will be shared with them by their cousins on this
side of the Atlantic ; and the world will speedily
sa'e how " this new and vain people," as Sydney
Smith proclaimed them, will bear the infliction to
which they are not accustomed, and what effect the
unfamiliar and onerous circumstances will produce
upon their Government and Constitution. The Pro-
paert—u-
.7 nd Income Tax, which is to be collected by
whole army of highly-paid officials in every
State, is by the mil
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