The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-13 00:00:00

DECORATION DAY.

The custom of decorating the graves of the dead is as old
as human affection, and it is as beautiful as it is ancient.
How many thousands day by day, in the privacy of their
great sorrow, visit the cemeteries throughout the country,
and there, quietly and unseen of men, lay upon the graves
of the departed those tributes—which most resemble life
in the proximity of death—bright flowers that woo the
sunshine, and• evergreen shrubs, emblamatic of that
enduring life which the grave cannot extinguish ! But it
is on such public occasions as this that we see how the
sympathy of the people is expressed for those whose
memory has become public property by dying in the
cause of their country. The celebration was grand in all
its features, and exhibited a sorrowful sublimity that was
not equalled in the yearj which have passed since the war.
With sounds of martial music, with solemn hymns
chanted above the graves, with religious discourses be-
fitting the ceremony, the living comrades of those who
sleep in a hundred cemeteries, almost from one end of the
land to the other, paid that homage which shews that the
dead soldier, though passed away, is not forgotten.- The
people generally participated in the feeling by abandoning
business to a great extent. In this city the Custom House,
the banks, and the public buildings were closed. Even
Wall-street was affected with a touch of human sympa-
thy, and, although the day was not a legal
holiday, , the money changers ceased to clink their
gold out of respect for the solemnities which were
being performed at Greenwood and Cypress Hill. The
flags on the public buildings floated at' half staff,
and guns from the forts in the harbour announced, that
honours were being paid to the heroes who had died that
the nation might live. Similar scenes occurred in
Washington, in Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati,
Buffalo, Providence,: Lowell, and many other
cities. Congress on Saturday adjourned over
until Tuesday in honour of the day, and the
Government departments were all closed, while thousands
of soldiers and citizens proceeded to the cemetery of Oak
Grove, and the soldiers' cemetery at Arlington, to pay the
annual tribute of this floral month to the fallen brave.
This is just as it should be. We hope that the custom
will be continued and become more honoured in the ob-
servance as years roll on. Let the dead soldiers be hon-
oured while the memory of their services remains with us,
and that will be as long as we value a united country.
Bright be the flowers above them ! " Requiescant in pace!"
New York Herald, May 31.

" Decoration Day "—or " Memorial Day," as we are
asked to call it in the general order of the Commander of
the Grand Army of the Republic—as observed yesterday
was emphatically a festival of floral tribute, evidently
expressive of feelings both deep and tender, and there-
fore removed from the shadow of vindictiveness which is
so apt to mar the sacred ceremonial. The tone of the
speech-making seems everywhere to have been of a cha-
racter to lift the mind above the irritation and the ran-
cour which the recollection of a great national struggle
may arouse, and to fix it upon the self-sacrificing heroism
whose memory and honour will endure when all the bitter
feelings of the time are forgotten. Let the tone which so
happily distinguished the proceedings of yesterday be but
preserved, and " Memorial Day " will keep an honoured
place in the calendar of our national holidays.—New York
Times, May 31.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FENIANS.
The English press admits that the United States
Government has acted promptly in its endeavours to stop
the Fenian raid. This is all very well, but we think the
feeling is becoming very strong throughout the country
that some means ought to be devised of putting an end to
the present Fenian mode of liberating Ireland—not so
much on account of the Fenians although the rank and
file of *ern, being both poor and ignorant, are entitled to
as much protection at our hands as we can reasonably give
them ; nor yet on account of the Canadians, though as
civilised neighbours they are entited to expect security and
peace, as far as we are concerned--but on our own
account, the United States cannot, with common
decency or self - respect, permit a third per-
formance of this farce. We go as far as any
reasonable men can expect, in allowing the
Fenian Republic to be set up within our borders, and
letting it raise money, enlist men and collect arms and
munitions, and loudly proclaim its intention of declaring
war against foreign Powers. We do not say the Govern-
ment is entitled to any great credit for permitting all this,
for we do not know that there is any way of preventing
it ; but then neither the Fenians nor anybody else can
expect it to permit more than this. We cannot allow the
new Republic actually to erect forts, or to keep troops
under arms within our territory, but every thing short of
this which it can muster funds to do, we allow it to do.
But then, the impunity which attends these attempts to
invade Canada involves us in a more serious responsi-
_bilitY. It, in the first place, encourages the adieu-
turers who prepare them in adhering to ' this mode
of gaining a livelihood ; and it enables them to
persuade the poor people who supply the money, that the
assemblage of large armed mobs, for the purpose of
fighting, plundering, and spreading terror through large
and populous districts, is no great harm, if some one gives
it the name of " war," and represents that the liberation
of Ireland is the object aimed at. Amore shocking out-
rage than the raid three years ago was never seen in a
peaceable community, but nobody was legally punished
for it. Nothing whatever happened to those who took
part in it, except failure—but as failure happened to
Pompey, Lord Cornwallis, and Napoleon Bonaparte, it
naturally has no effect whatever in convincing the common
rim of Fenians that there is anything criminal in these
enterprises. Moreover, we owe something in this matter
to civilisation. No sane man believes that the Fenians
are capable of conquering Canada, or even effecting a for-
midable lodgment on the soil. Even if they were able to
conquer Canada, nobody believes it would produce the
liberation of Ireland from British rule. It would be just
as sensible to expect Russia to liberate Poland if she heard
that our- Polish fellow-citizens had overpowered the gar-
rison of Alaska. The great body of the Canadian people
hate the Fenians : a considerable body of the Irish people
hate them ; so that really an invasion of Canada has no
more title to excuse as a demonstration againgt England
than the murder of a bar-keeper as a testimony against
intemperance. Means must . have some relation
to the end, in order to entitle them to the benefit
of anything that may be considered praiseworthy in the
end. The assassination of the British Minister might be
considered-by some Fenians a good way of bringing pres-
sure to bear on the British Government ; but should we,
on that account, pass it over as simply a foolish outburst
of patriotism? It is all very well, in judging other
people's actions, to try and put ourselves in their place;
but, then, in doing so, we are bound not to take leave of
our own judgment and moral sense. In so far as we wink
at these invasions, or allow them to pass with impunity,
we not only help the Fenian chiefs in their work
of imposture, but we do serious injury to
our own political system. We ought, therefore,
to help to put an end to the disgraceful swindle, and save
at least our own side of the border from being overrun once
every two or three years by an armed rabble, and our own
citizens' property from destruction, either by bringing the
leaders of these expeditions to justice, or stationing such a
force on the borders as will prevent their being attempted.
It is clearly not enough to issue a proclamation and put
troops in motion after the Fenian armies have appeared
in the field. By that time, whole counties have been filled
with alarm ; women and children driven from their homes,
telegraphs cut, trains stopped, tracks torn up, and the
business of large towns actually suspended, and thousands
of men called away from their legitimate occupations.
New York Times.

TENDENCIES OF EUROPEAN POLITICS. —TO a
superficial observer the contempoiary movements of
European history appear to be absolutely contradicting.
On one side we have a tendency to unification, and on the
other to diversion ; here a passion for rational agglom-
eration, and there for separate and independent existence.
More closely regarded, the two forces are seen to come
together, and to be carrying the Empires of the old world
to the point of feederal organization, where both are
reconciled. The Hungarians have revived the ancient
independence of the crown of St. Stephen's, and now the
Czech leaders are reported by cable to be desirous of
placing that of St. Wencesilau's in the same position.
The autonomy of Bohemia would only bring the Austrian
Empire more completely into the position of a federation
of kingdms, which the North German Confederation
pretty accurately represents,—New York