The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-27 00:00:00

THE COST OF VICTORY.

Some malicious and evil disposed writer having
stated that the war with Paraguay had cost the
Allies £60,000,000, of which sum Brazil had to bear
£56,000,000, and that neither the latter country nor
the Argentine Republic would recover during the
present century from the effects of the conflict, a
writer in the Brazil and River Plate Mail sets
himself to refute these enormities. • The war has in
point of fact cost Brazil only the inconsiderable trifle
of £30,000,000. All this expense has been fully met up
to the present time, "every item being liquidated as
it fell due, so that there are no arrears portending
future embarrassment." But how about the ruinous
loam by which these items were met, the depression
in commerce, and the paper currency? Still it is
satisfactory to find that though things are bad in
Brazil, vet they are better than was commonly
thought. And perhaps the writer in the Mail
will do a. little more, and undertake to show what
Brazil has gained in return for her RfX),000,000 ;
or what humanity in general has gained by substi-
tuting the domination of a slaveholding empire for
the rule of the tyrant Lopez.

A POPULAR ERROR.

(From the Anglo American Times)

One of the opinions here generally held about
America we believe to be an error is, that the Repub-
lic must eventually break to pieces from its growing
magnitude and weight. People regard the Govern-
ment as a chain to which something heavy is sus-
pended, extra pounds being added till the snapping
point is reached ; considering, that what they call
overgrown nations, among which the United States
will soon be classed, must, by a natural law, split
into fragments. So it has always been, they say ;
and what has hitherto been shown in the career Of
nations will continue tobe their fate. Those formed
the most quickly have disappeared the most rapidly;
but all have had their rise, some have had their
day of power, their decadence, and many finally
their death. When asked for their application of
what they regard as a truism to the Republic, they
point to the diversity of climate, soil, and conditions ;
to the conflicting interests; to the difference of habits
engendered say by the stony soil, the pine forests,and
frozen lakes of Maine, and the rich slime, hot sun,
and sugar canes of Louisiana ; to the agriculture of
the west and south militating against the manufac-
tures of New England, New York, and Pennsyl-
vania, with the mining, which has virtually given a
different currency to the Pacific slope from that
eastward of the Rocky Mountains, and the fact that
from the California side men gaze over an ocean
towards China, Japan, and the thousand islands
stretching to Australia and New Zealand, while
from the Atlantic coast they look across their ocean
towards Europe. In these are involved other reasons
from which they think proof can be extracted that
the split must come, as in a country so large and di-
versified, Nature decrees that, interests must more
and more di verge as population increases, climate
and pursuits changing habits, manners, and even
the physical frame. On the surface the arguments
appear sound and justified by the course of past
events ; yet they intermingle two distinct subjects
it is necessary to separate ere the question can be
correctly viewed ; the one is the natural causes
leading to dissolution, the other the artificial causes
-or those created by the inhabitants themselves.
Our assertion is that Nature raises no barriers to
the Union of the Continent under one Government,
and that the error of all the arguments is in the
assumption that Nature does. Viewing the ques-
tion as regards the inhabitants, the subject is hazy
and indistinct ; this and that may be asserted and
may be contradicted, for it is a mere matter
of opinion and conjecture, but the natural laws,
plain and immutable, instead of supporting the
argument for a disruption, do the reverse. The
whole continent fits together without generat-
ing a single conflicting interest ; but, on the con-
trary, harmonizing each part so with the rest, as to
extend the advantage possessed by any one to all or
any other. The products of the South are eagerly
bought in the North, the products of the North
are quite as eagerly consumed in the South. The
banana, the hot sun raises and ripens spontane-
ously, can be exchanged for a block of ice into
which the winter frosts freeze the northern lakes.
The fish caught on the Atlantic sea-board brings
from the miner his coal and his metals. If Maine
has a great water-power, if Pennsylvania has the
means in abundance for generating steam, manufac-
tures may in such localities arise to supply the wants
of other States. If Tennessee has no coal but Ohio
has, Tennessee must raise another commodity to give
in exchange, and be thankful that her neighbour
has what she lacks. Silver may come from Nevada,
gold from Colorado, copper from Lake Superior.
Grain may be most abundantly grown on the great
prairies ; cotton and sugar in the Valley of the
Mississippi ; herds may best be reared in Texas, and
fattened in Ohio. Cincinnati may pack pork in
barrels by the score of thousands, and the wheat
ships from Chicago may be deep in the water.
Vermont may supply the dairies of the big cities,
and the lumber may float in rafts down many
rivers, but we can in no case see where the interests
of the States clash. Nor do they, so far as the gifts
go bestowed by Nature on each ; no more than the
banana and the ice clash and recoil in the interchange.
Yet there are conflicting interests. Yes; but such
only as have been created by man, acting against, not
with, Nature. Nature, left unshackled, the natural
course being taken, produces harmony, not conflict;
but if man arbitrarily interferes and insists that
here shall cotton be grown, there tobacco ; on this
spot shall be manufactured steel, and on that
calicoes, then is the conflicting interest introduced.
The war originated in the attempt to protect an
interest which the Republic knew to be a scandal
engrafted on its laws, but this interest was the re-
verse of a natural course, being in the highest de-
gree artificial and unjust. It is true that bad laws
have no small influence on the people they affect.
Heavy fiscal laws will make liars, heavy customs
duties will make smugglers, slaves will make a
semi-civilized aristocrccy, and such long continued
will affect the character of a people. In the case
of the Southerners negro slavery did make a chasm
along DIXIE'S line, but this barrier was not, as
Englishmen in general suppose, caused by na-
ture, being the work of the vile institution inherited
by the Republic in the day of its independence from
the mother country. Now we do not contend that
there is no chance of the Republic breaking up ;
what we do assert is, that it will not be Nature's
doing, but man's; for Nature is on this point all
harmony, however discordant the other. That
harmony is daily shown in Nature's aid towards
uniting the Continent under one Government as her
mysteries are revealed. The telegraph, the locomo-
tive, the steamer, combine to bring closely together
for all practical purposes the utmost ends even of
that huge domain. Discovery facilitates this object,
while no discovery has ever been made which acts
as a barrier, for the simple reason that there is no
such barrier in Nature, and the great blunder, the
supposition that there is, must be dismissed ere this
quee.tion can be understood aright, While adrait- I

ting that the citizens may so legislate as to make their
interests clash and end in producing the eventual
disruption wherein Nature takes no part,—a multi-
tude of circumstances carry the great Republic al-
together beyond the range of any historical parallel.
Practically the Continent is a waste in the course of
being settled ; the settlement is being made by an
homogeneous people, speaking the same language,
acknowledging the same code, and upholding, as a
creature of their creation, the same Government.
Almost equally as a general rule are these people of
one religion, recognizing the same SAVIOUR, and
worshipping the same GOD. Where can history
even remotely show a parallel like unto this ? and if
history cannot, upon what do men, who predict
the disruption, ground their argument ? Not
upon Nature, for, as we have shown, its laws favour
unity, as do the geographical features of the coun-
try. Not on history, for it teaches nothing on
which to forecast the American future. On the vice
and folly of mankind—yes; there, we sdmit, our
weak point is struck. Vice and folly, selfishness and
greed, jealousy and ambition, may produce the pre-
dicted result. But here we enter on the region of
probabilities, and the probabilities are all strongly
against the break-up of the nation. As we have
said, the geographical features favour unity, one of
the greatest difficulties of splitting up the country
being the Valley of the Mississippi. Englishmen
talk loosely about the West casting off its connec-
tion both with the Eastern and the Southern States ;
but if asked what they mean by the West the allusion
is to the great prairie States, yet they are unable
to tell where these begin and where they end; where
the line is which divides the East from the West ;
how far towards the Pacific Ocean the West ex-
tends or if to the Pacific, and more difficult still
how far down the Mississippi. The man who had to
divide the Union into three would have an awkward
task to accomplish, and one which would appear to
angels looking down from heaven as did theoperators
in the Gold Room on the celebrated Black Friday to an
uninterested spectator in the gallery—an outbreak
of lunacy in another form. This severance of the
West, about which Englishmen who know nothing
of America so glibly talk, is one of the most extra-
ordinary delusions. West, itself, is in this day a mis-
nomer, however applicable when Chicago was a vil-
lage, that town being now of the two rather an Eas-
tern than Western city. There is no portion of the
Union more interested in its preservation than these
prairie States, and we never heard of any sovereign
nation advocating a disruption which shut it out
from the sea. No part of the Republic more fiercely
and successfully resisted the threatened disrup-
tion than these very States, and the fact that to-
wards them verges a preponderating power, is an ad-
ditional reason for believing that the Union will be
maintained through every vicissitude. Formerly
there existed one great and growing cause of seces-
sion, and that to the extremity was fought out and
eradicated. While Americans recognised that im-
pending danger, no other has been perceived, nor can
we foresee another. So numerous are the advan-
tages of unity—so injurious would be disruption to
each individual citizen, acting directly on him, that
a split appears to us to be almost impossible ; and
we purpose, next week, to bring forward some rea-
sons for both, benefit and injury, sufficiently obvious
to convince unprejudiced persons who may have
overlooked them that there is nothing in the future
more improbable than a split in the United States.