The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-07 00:00:00

CUBA.

Tim last accounts from Cuba report that Colo
Nicolan, with 209 men, attacked and routed 400 insur•
gents in the Central Department, near Jicotea. The
Cubans left twenty killed on the field. A report of the
recent engagement with General Jordan's division has beer
received from the revolutionary source. It is said that
the Cuban forces were repulsed at first, but they made a
second attack, and routed the Spanish troops. The
Cubans fought desperately, and the it loss is estimated at
150, that of the Spaniards amounting to double the number,
Everything that goes on with respect to the negotiations
for the sale of Cuba is kept very quiet, but private letters
from the American Legation at Madrid say that the
scheme is likely to prove successful. Unless the Spanish
authorities should change their minds, General Sickles
expects to obtain the cession 9f Cuba ou a basis
falcon); tQ all parties. 2 ":* • 01•40.,.)..:41—_ •

GROWING KNOWLEDGE- OF AMERICA
1N ENGLAND.

(front the Anglo-American Times)

A New York paper, when discussing the finan-
cial relations of the United States with foreign
countries, observes, that the intelligent classes of the
Germans know, as a rule, more about the United
States than Englishmen ; but though this undoubt-
edly-was true, perhaps it is so no longer. Americans
who knew England in former years, having mixed
a good deal in English society, are surprised at the
change. The interest and knowledge of .the Eng-
lish have greatly increased about a land of which
they had before been shamefully ignorant as a na-
tion, and indifferent to in consequence. JonN BULL
is not remarkable for quickness in adopting new
ideas and making due allowance for this, consider-
able progress has been made by the British since the
war in a knowledge of America. This may be re-
gardtd as a hopeful sign, not only for peace and
security to both, but to the world generally. Here-
after it will appear strange that an American paper
could deliberately write that as a rule Germans
were better acquainted with the United hates than
Englishmen, while those in Europe conversant
with the fact, were obliged to admit its truth. Con-
sidering that the States are offshoots of England,
deriving from her much of their history, their blood,
national character, and institutions ; that a large
portion of the American Continentis British soil ; that
the language is English from the Rio Grande up to
the icy regions, yet that Englishmen should have
known less about the great Republic than the intel-
ligent class of Germans will hereafter appear al-
most incredible. Nor is this all. Little as England
was aware of it, the Republic has exercised a power-
ful influence on her national institutions which is
extending to the social character of her people ; and
the puzzle hereafter will be how could those thus af-
fected and connected have so long continued ignorant.
The Governmental problem and the:social problem be-
ing worked out in America are by far the most inte-
resting of the age, independent of their material and
political effect on other nations, but more especially
on England. Through a knowledge of the Union
much money is to be made, through ignorance of
it money is to be lost ; through this knowledge a
great peril was to be avoided, by ignorance a great
danger was incurred, while the knowledge could be
attained with little effort, for the language was the
same, and a strongly marked similarity existed in
the national characters. This curious enigma,
which history will reveal, originated in English pre-
judice more than in wars, boundary disputes, tariffs,
quarrels, and jealousies; in a word, it was due to
the snobbishness of the English character, a remark
we do not make flippantly, but from a firm belief
in its truth. The feeling which even now estranges
the colonies estranged America ; that prejudice
which finds nothing good out of England, erects a
lord into an idol, and bows down to the county
magnate. With all an Englishman's energy which
makes him cosmopolitan in his search after wealth,
or for a career, he has ever been but little cosmo-
politan in his general notions. Indeed the further
he gets from his lord and county magnate the
greater are they magnified, and the more earnestly
does he turn his face in prayer towards his Jeru-
salem. A nation whose ideal is a Peer, or a coun-
ty family located for generations on an estate
rooted to the spot by all manner of ties, must turn
with dislike from the new land, the new people, the
new interests, and feeling that dislike, it is in the
nature of an Englishman to express it. lie could
not readily change, nor could he bend to the new
position ; and if that be so in the very locality
wherein his interests are centred and surrounded
by the men of the other country, it is highly im-
probable that the Englishman at home would enter-
tain different feelings. English women feel this even
more strongly than the men, and the belief was once
general that the English-speaking people of other
countries were an inferior order of Englishmen, a sort
of hybrid, who held a relationship which it waslittle to
the dignity of the country to recognise. It mattered
not, nor does it now matter, what might be the rank
of the returned colonist. He may have been the
Prime Minister of a Province, destined one day to
be greater than Great Britain, he may have been
the leader in a brilliant campaign against warlike
savages ; he is a mere colonist, of no account when
he reaches England. A lord may pat him on the back,
or if he has a cousin among the county magnates
he may be shown as a curiosity, the visitors being
carefully prepared for his eccentricities as the denizen
of a savage land. If he has a son and sends him to an
English university he becomes "the colonist" with-
out any reference to his father's position in the
colony. If he enters the army even with men who
serve in these very countries, he still remains the
colonist. If he secures a seat iu Parliament he
is remarkable there as the colonist, and people ask
with surprise, " How did he get here ?" Liberal-
minded men try to divest themselves of what they
are aware is an unjust, even a ridiculous, feeling;
but it is no easy matter, for they are apt to
change contempt into an ostentatious patronage,
and to show the old feeling bred by feudalism in
acts of which they are almost unconscious. This
offensively displayed in a more barbarous age led to
the severance of the empire through the War of Inde-
pendence, and though in a lesser and lessening degree
it has continued to mark English connection with the
colonies. It was natural for the feeling entertained for
colonists tobe extended even in a more marked man-
ner to the citizens of theßepublic. If they knew little of
India, and but little more of their colonial empire, it
was not likely that the English people would know
much about the United States after the political con-
nection had ceased, and, knowing nothing, there
wereno means of removing the prejudice with which
they appear to have been born. The authors who
wrote on America during the early manhood of the
existing generation found those books sell best which
mercilessly caricatured the American people, and
this but tended to confirm the British prejudice
and to create the ridiculous typical Yankee. When
the claim to kinship was thus met, the retort was not
likely to be gratifying to the pride-stuffed Britisher;
and JOHN BULL only knew of America that he was a
standing subject of the typical Yankee's abuse. For
this he cared comparatively little, rarely reading what
was said of him ; bnt the American cared much, for
he read all JOHN BULL wrote. The consequence
was a great deal of superficial hate generated against
the parent country, increased by the indifference of
the English to every retort, by an annoying sense
that Englishmen regarded him as inferior, and while
alive to the folly and injustice, he was unable to
treat it with the contempt the real ignorance
of his coantry deserved. But the relations gradu-
ally changed, and though the masses in England still
believed in the typical Yankee, Statesmen were
aware that the Republic had grown into a great
Power— a dangerous Power—one with whom it was
advisable to be on good terms, when they began to
regret the relations not being what was desirable.
On this supervened the Irish exodus, a movement
so serious that it could scarcely fail to end disas-
trously, carrying as it did to a prepared soil the
bitter sense of " 600 years of wrong." It was not
likely that such an influx would tend to make
America more attractive to the Britisher who con-
gratulated himself as shipload after shipload of Irish
emigrants set sail. It never struck him to inquire
what they were about on the other side, and he re-
mained indifferent, feeling a security mixed with a
vague sense of the danger involved till roused by
the outbreak of the "civil war, which taught the
world as well as the Republic itself its strength. As
might have been expected had Americans been fully
aware of the English ignorance of their country,
the British took the wrong side, not because they
saw the question from any American standpoint,
but that they saw a chance of balancing power on
the American Continent by the split of the States
into hostile nations. Had they known America as
they ought, they would have seen what Southerners
blinded by their prejudice could not see, that the
war was hopeless ; that the North was sure to de-
cree that the Union should not be dissolved, which
must decide the question. But England, know-
ing nothing of the quarrel,
.1. now ing nothing of
Northern strength and Northern feeling, went far
enough to give the North grave cause for offence,
but not far enough to give material aid to or even
to conciliate the South. The very persons who
would not touch a Federal loan, and predicted
certain repudiation, pronouncing the action of the

Germans to be little less than idiotic, expended
millions in Confederate Bonds. Men do not loan
money on sentiment, though sentiment may influ-
ence judgment and lead them to believe their idol
a real divinity, who can and will repay every sac-
rifice. But the truth of the statement, that the bet-
ter class of Germans knew more of America than the
English, is made manifest by the way in which the
two nations lent their money. However, this war so
forced the Republic on the attention of the world,
attaching to it so romantic an interest, that some
Englishmen, whose language was the same, could
not help acquiring an extensive acquaintance of the
country, which has been growing year by year with
an increased rapidity. Books now describe Ame-
rica ; and when men try to palm off a caricature, the
public feel insulted by the cjuntcrfeits as a slight
on their knowledge. Theleading papers maintain cor-
respondents; American newspapers are extensively
quoted, and are now seen on the tables of clubs and
libraries ; indeed it is surprising to learn how widely
such a paper as the New York Natimz is known in
England, though its birth only dates from the
close of the war. some of the dailies devote
columns to the news from America, while Ameri-
can books are pirated and soil in cheap eoitions
throughout the country without the trouble of trans-
lation, while American authors are the paid contri-
butors to English magazines, it would be absurd to
suppose that the Germans—whatever might have
been their start—could long keep ahead in know-
ledge of America ; and the change is now so marked
that Americans cannot help noticing what is to be
seen as distinctly in Parliament as in the press,
both, after all, showing but the mere reflex of
society.