The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-25 00:00:00

Southerner into the public property of the Federal
Government—in other words, for transferring the
property of the South to the North, without any
consideration having been paid for it, would remain
just what it is, neither better nor worse,
whatever designation it may receive from
friends or enemies. Where the action of this
court, or whatever it may be, will end, it is im-
possible to say. There is no more reason why one
Southerner's property should be confiscated more
than another's. All the Southerners were heart
and soul in the war. Some Southerners, however,
are innocent of the possession of property, and these
must necessarily escape the action of the Confisca-
tion Department. Those, however, who are guilty
of being property-holders, especially holders of
landed property, stand convicted at once, and are
ipso facto fit subjeets to be dealt with by this extra-
ordinary tribunal. It is true that the owners of
property have been so reduced through the universal
ruin which the war has brought upon their unhappy
country that they are in a state of pitiable destitu-
tion. Persons of wealth and affluence have found
themselves in a position in which they have been
compelled to barter away articles of furniture for
food. But what difference does this make to the
Confiscation Department ? There are the estates
and plantations of these unfortunate Southerners
occupying precisely the same geographical spot that
they have ever occupied. Indeed, the Confiscation
Department might urge, with specious plausibility,
that large tracts of valuable land could be of no
possible use to men who were reduced to utter in-
solvency. It might be further urged that, as the
negroes are now free, and as those estates could only
be profitably cultivated by means of the system of
industry which has been broken up, their owners
would not be able to cultivate them even if they
possessed capital, instead of having been ruined and
reduced to insolvency. To expect them therefore,
to make use of their desolated plantations would
involve the same cruel irony as to require men to
make bricks without the necessary straw. For these
considerations, the court in its mercy will pursue
the even tenor of its way, and proceed to transfer to
the North the private property of such Southerners
as may be convicted of possessing property. When
we look back to the origin and history of the
war we must confess that this is not, after all,
calculated to surprise the reflecting mind. For
what object, with what purpose, to what end, could
we suppose that war was being waged ? Nobody
capable of reflection ever imagined, we should con-
ceive, that the old Union could really be restoredto
what it was before the war. There is no power in the
universe that can force amity and friendship upon
six millions of men by murdering therh and desola-
ting their country. To have supposed that the South
would ever again take the North to its bosom, and
that the two estranged halves of the Union would
get on together as they had once done, would have
been the extreme of absurdity. No man in the
North capable of reasoning and reflection could have
imagined this possible. What, then, was it that the
North was fighting for ? It is quite evident that
the North had determined that, rather than suffer
the South to become free, it would conquer the
country and treat it as a conquered country. But
there is this difference between a conquered country
like Poland and a conquered country like the South.
When a country is conquered by the foreigner it is
the practice merely to hold it in subjugation without
altering the ownership of the soil. A few of the
chiefs may be put to death or exiled and their estates
transferred to somebody else, but the great mass of
the people aro left in possession of their property.
There is no pretence upon which to dispossess them
of their property. They have committed no crime,
they have merely defended their country, and to re-
duce them to subjection is all that the conqueror
requires. This will satisfy him, if his new subjects
will only keep quiet and not revolt against his rule.
But in a case like that of the South the conqueror
takes a very different tone. The Federal Govern-
ment affects, however inconsistently and preposter-
ously, to treat the Confederates asrebels and traitors.
The North pretends to consider the Southerners
as guilty of high treason, and to have forfeited life
and property together. Hence we find that the
onus of making out a case of exemption is cast
upon the Southerner. The North disclaims being
bound to prove its case against the Southerner who
stands convicted of the possession of property ;
it is for him to make out a case to exempt himself
from punishment and his property from confisca-
tion. As to those unhappy, or rather happy,
Southerners who have no property at all, the North
does not seem to think it worth while to give itself
any trouble about them. They have got nothing
which the North happens to desire. The North is
humane enough, it seems, not to require their lives.
Besides, a man without property is harmless
enough ; but property is a dangerous weapon in the
hands of an enemy, and a very useful weapon if
you can only divest him of it and transfer it to your-
self. The North would not let the South go be-
cause it was unwilling to part with the profit which
it had always made out of the South. The resto-
ration of the Union as it was was quite out of the
question. But though the Union could not be
brought back, and though the profit which had been
derived from the South could not be got back, the
soil of the South might be seized and held as the
property of the North. The Confiscation Depart-
ment seems to have been instituted for the purpose
of carrying this object into effect. It has, we are
told, already seized a large amount of property for
confiscation. We have been told throughout by
the Federals and their partisans that the war was
a war initiated and carried on by the large land-
holders of the South, or, to use their favourite
phrase, by the slaveholding aristocracy. Was this
charge against the planters intended to form a basis
for depriving them of their estates ? Be that as it
may, there is reason to suppose that the Confiscation
Department, which has begun its labours by seizing
a large amount of property for confiscation, will not
cease from them till it has given entire satisfaction
to those who instituted the system.