The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-02 00:00:00

TILE ENGLISH PRESS.

(From the .Anglo-American Times.)
The attitude of the Anglo-Saxon race, as repre-
sented by the English and American press, is worthy
the attention of foreign nations. If two nationalities,
speaking the same language, nearly related, and in
intimate connection, cannot understand each other,
how can communities widely differing in language,
institutions, tastes, and habits? The London Times
argues plausibly, with seeming impartiality, but, in
truth, as an advocate skilfully disguising his true
character of a hired pleader. The papers favouring
Northern sentiment, among the most able in Eng-
land, are angry with their American friends for
putting forward such extravagant demands, based
on reasons they consider unfair and even untruth-
ful. Thus the Star and the News among the dailies,
and the Spectator leading the weeklies, assume one
attitude of wronged friendship, with another which
ought not to be overlooked. These papers are equal
in literary ability to any of their opponents. With
consistency, through good and evil report, often
against the feeling of the majority of their readers,
they adhered to their principles, and not the less
resolutely when threatened with and even suffering
severe pecuniary loss. But it is not to such organs
of opinion that the Americans turn ; for they with
avidity seize on the journals of the party they call
the oligarchy, attaching an importance to what
they say which amazes their allies in England. The
Daily News, in disgust, asks, are tuft-hunting pro-
clivities most developed in Republicans ? Indeed
the question is pertinent, for, setting aside the ably
expressed opinions of organs representing the Eng-
lish people, they snatch at those uttered by the
papers of the Upper Ten Thousand, and justify an
El-feeling against the English people, not for what
is said or done by the English people, but by the
class they affect to denounce and despise. In the
American papers of the 12th inst. will be found a
summary of an article in the Standard of the pin-
ceding day on the Alabama question. Now the
idea of sending out at so much per word an article
of the Standard as an expression of English feeling
is almost laughable, and the best of the joke is
that its own correspondent, writing on the 12th,
alludes to that article as setting forth as by official
authority the ultimatum of Great Britain on the
Alabama imbroglio ! So that even Granny's own
correspondent forgets, that she is in opposition to
the Government, expressing the very reverse of
official opinion. In astonishment, Englishmen see
such importance attached to what this respectable
old lady says, and find the Pall Mall Gazette most
quoted, not because of its undoubted ability, but be-
cause America recognizes in it most directly the
organ of the oligarchy. On the 10th the most bel-
licose of the Gazette's leaders was published in the
New York Tribune with a long commentary from
its London correspondent, and it furnished the text
for the letter writers of other papers, as well as of
leading articles.- The newspapers most quoted in
the United Sates are those Most hostile to Ame-
rica, and which most directly and avowedly repre-
sent the class Americans persist in considering the
rulers of Great Britain—the Pall Mall Gazette, the
Standard, and the Saturday Review. In this we
recognize some of that feeling described in the
parable of the lost sheep, which induced the shep-
herd to leave his ninety and nine, and run
after the one that was lost. The Standard last
Monday thus accounted for the importance at-
tached to its opinions : The educated classes are,
in truth, the nation ; it is the organ of the educated
classes, therefore it represents the nation ; and it
might be supposed that Americans arrived at the
same conclusion from the same reasoning. The
tone of this portion of the English press reflects the
Upper Ten Thousand only, on the Alabama ques-
tion, but it is therefore entitled to a considerable,
though not to an undue, attention. Its design ap-
pears to be to cloak England's sin, while bringing
into the strongest light America's extravagance,
' with the object of inducing the nation' to occupy
this position—nothing we can do, will induce Ame-
ricans to be oar friends ; they hate England with a
deadly animosity, root and branch, lord and pea-
sant; we must resist and prepare for the inevitable
conflict, and as America is a rapidly growing corm-
,
try, but now weakened by the strain of a terrible
war, the sooner that conflict comes the better for
us. It is on this text that their lea ling articles are
written, and what so annoys and distresses the English
friends of the Republic led by such men as BRIGHT
and FoasTER, is, that Americans play into the hands
of this section. Nothing can save privilege but a
war between England and America; nothing is so
hateful to Americans as privilege—legal and social
distinctions born with the individual--yet they do
their best to place the nation behind that class, to
maintain for another age the institution against
which they have warred from their Declaration of
Independence. Take the .Standard's article of Mon-
day, and see how this tone pervades it, as well as
that on Tuesday and others. In the first, such men
as Mr. FORSTER are denounced as the un-English
worshippers of the Republic, who reverse the Ma-
hommedan rule, and pray with their faces to the
West. It is not our object to show the Standard's
ridiculous mistake in this ; but we may observe, en
passant, that Mecca is to the West of the vast
mass of Mahomtnedans who pray, therefore, look-
ing to the West, as do the Republic's adorers. The
assertion is, that America is insolent in direct
proportion to the meekness and adoration of her
British worshippers who have brought about the
present complications by generating the false notion
that England would meekly endure insult and
humbly submit to chastisement at ber hands. It
appears then that the nations owe the difficulty to
BRIGHT, FORSTER, and their followers, and not
tOLAIRD,WHARXCLIFFE, ROEBUCK, and their's. It
maintains that the sympathy of the nation was with
the Confederates, and this it will never have the
meanness as well as the folly to deny, and it tells
Mr. FORSTER to get out of the way, and not attempt
to screen the upper classes from American anger
behind the manufacturing mobs assembled to cheer
Northern zealots. In its Tuesday's article it goes
further, taking up much the same ground as the
Pall Mall Gazette. A coal reception is to be ac-
corded to Mr. MOTLEY, and the charges preferred
by Mr. SUMNER are to be brought to his notice at
once for settlement. It may or may not suit
America to delay, but it will not suit England. The
former may have ulterior objects to serve as a
burglar who pays a visit to a family with his eye on
the plate, and Granny wants to tackle the burglar
at once. Were it -not that Americans attach such
importance to the organs of the oligarchy we would
not devote this space to the Standard, and the
sooner they can learn to treat these opinions with
the indifference or the amusement they create
among the masses in England the better. On the
other side Americans so allow sentiment to inter-
mingle with their wrong that it is difficult to get at
it, diluted as it has become. A journal that heads
its article " Canada or War," and fires off in that
line, " Your money or your life," does all it can to
damage the case. Nor is it wise in men who ap-
peal to the equity and common sense of mankind, at
the same time that they make claims for an 'infrac-
tion of international law, to announce their intention
hereafter of. setting aside the whole international
code, and to do that, to a far greater extent, which
they condemn in others as against themselves. The
precedent created by the Alabama is the real matter
to deal with ; shall it or shall it not henceforth be
a rule of the sea that a belligerent can build, equip,
man, and commission a ship-of-war in the port of
a neutral; is that ship to be regarded as a vessel of
the navy of a Power at war, which has never been
in a port beloaging to that Power ? If so, so be it ;
America's claim against England falls to the ground,
and as sure as her MAJESTY sits on the throne of Eng-
land has England established that law which will drag
her from her eminence. Froin such insignificant per-
sons as the Messrs. LAIRD, and such a place as their
shipbuilding yard, will'date the decline of what was
once the greatest empire on earth. The premature
concession of belligerent rights, the deadly hostility
of a large and earnest section of English society are
in. truth little more than, matters of sentiment, but
the other is a hard, dry, horrible fact, looking uglier
and uglier from every aspect. In vain does the
Times attempt to qualify it by the action of a few
filibusters on the Canadian frontier, or by the tone
of feeling during the Crimean war and the Indian
mutiny, for neither- by act nor. through feeling was
I anything done by Aragic4 approximote to

the injuries and insults arising from the action of
a certain section of the English throughout a war that
rent the Republic asunder, that was no struggle in
a far-off land, but the enemy in your house, at your
throat. No, no; let the Times and these journals
honestly admit the measure of the wrong, and we
will not have leading orators and journalists in the
United States balancing such arguments with as
plausible exaggerations in the other direction,
whereby both nations are led further and further
astray—further and further from the real matter in
dispute, and further and further into the region of
mystification and sentiment.

IMPERIAL PARL I A MEN

HOUSE OF LORDS-LAST EVENING.

The LeED CHANCELLOR took his seat on the woolsack
at five o'clock.

In reply to the Earl of LONGFORD,

Earl URANVILLE said there was no desire to pass by
any military officer in the appointment of the permanent
Under Secret ar) ship for Ireland, the only reason why tt
military man had not been appointed was because it was
difficult to find the necessary civil qualifications in mili-
tary men.