The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-10 00:00:00

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

The London Times, in quoting an article from
these columns (March 30) on "The South and its
Leader," refers to it as indicating a certain reaction
in the minds of our intelligent classes from the ex-
treme bitterness with which Mr. Davis had previ-
ously been regarded, and as a sign of their disposi-
tion to judge in a more temperate spirit the mo-
tives of the great but unsuccessful attempt of
which he was the head and front. There can be
little doubt but that the protracted and, so far as
the public are permitted to judge, the unjustifiable
confinement of Mr. Davis without a trial, has
touched the generosity of the community in a
considerable degree, and that numbers who
reprobated and still condemn his course, have
been moved to indignation by a line of treatment
against which the very worst of criminals would
have an irrefragible right to protest. We were
aware at the time the article referred to was penned
that some such action was contemplated as that
which has now been carried into effect. We were
also aware that the convictions expressed in it
would bring us some censure. But we were per-
suaded that the honour of the country was com-
promised by the course which the Government
was pursuing, and were satisfied that it was our
duty by whatever humble means that lay in our
power to urge iE to a different one. Opinions as
to the nature and extent of Mr. Davis's responsi-
bility to the laws or the culpability of his action
might reasonably differ ; but there could be no ra-
tional difference of opinion respecting the legality or
the justice of his unexplained and untried imprison-
ment. In the absence of technical justification we
look for extraordinary circumstances touching public
safety or the like to find warrant for a course which,
in such exceptional cases, may be defensible if not
legal. No such circumstances could be found. The
present release of the prisoner shows that they could
not be found. The trial of Mr. Davis and the subse-
quent carrying out of his sentence, whatever that
might be, would have been a year ago regarded by
the public with complacency. The longer he was
held untried, the more was public feeling against
himself modified by condemnation of the mysterious
conduit of the Government. It was thought, and
the thought with many grew, as time wore on, into
conviction, that the Government through its officers
had been placed in a false position, and that it wag
to shield itself rather than to further the ends of jus-
tice that the unreasonable postponement was due. As
a consequence, the public eye glanced from the pri-
soner to the Government, and from the Government to
theprisoner, until a widely-felt if not of ten expressed
pursuasion obtained that the imputed guilt of the lat-
ter was in some measure condoned by the unwarrant-
able method of its expiation. Had Mr. Davis been
tried by court-martial and shot on his first capture,
the bulk of northern opinion would probably have
justified such a process! as it could easily have been
made to appear that the national safety demanded
it, whatever might be said of the letter of the law.
But, with delay, passion cooled, and it began to be
perceived that Mr. Davis was not an ordinary cri-
minal, not the leader of a riot, a house-burner, or
a murderer taken red-handed, but a political prisoner
amenable to different consequences; standing vica-
riously for many millions of people, whose punishment
or acquittal must be morally identical with his
own ; and in the opinion of many even in the
Northern States, defensible even by the strictest
construction of the Constitution he was charged
with violating. It is now felt by the sober and
reflecting that, both with regard to justice and to
ultimate cordial reconciliation of the lately con-
tending sections, it was a most fortunate circum-
stance for the whole country that the Confederate
chief escaped the fate which many bitter partisans
invoked for him ; and we feel confident that when
the effect upon the South of his enlargement is
fairly tested, it will be acknowledged, putting his
rights or wrongs as an individual entirely aside,
to have been a salutary thing for the nation.
The outcries of lamentation and vituperation with
which a part of the press has accompanied the re-
lease of Mr. Davis and his journey northward are
contemptibly womanish and weak ; and the appre-
hension of his peculiar opponents that Mr. Greeley
would gain too much political capital by placing
his name on the captive's bail-bond is equally so. It
is one of the worst features of our political life
that no possible action, however pure, chivalrous,
and noble, can be performed by any individual of
the least prominence, but that it is straightway be-
spattered with the foulest of abuse and attributed to
the most despicable of motives. It is small wonder
that the influence of newspapers should wane when
their writers suffer party feeling so completely to
overshadow all sense of truth, decency, and genero-
sity. The criticisms upon the course of Mr.
Greeley are of a piece with the slurs directed
at those who have dared to show Mr. Davis
attention or compassion. Even his counsel, Mr.
Charles O'Conor, than whom a purer and
more elevated character does not exist in the
community, has not entirely escaped assaults which
are disgraceful to those who have made them. Why
such demonstrations should have been made we are
at a loss to conceive. There certainly has been no-
thing to justify them. It would have been impossible
for Mr. Davis and his slender party to have travelled
towards Canada—whither he goes to see his children
—more quietly, more unobtrusively, or in a manner
better calculated to evince his earnest desire to avoid
observation than he has done. But it would really
seem as if some of the newspapers wished it other-
wise, with the hope that the populace might thereby
be incited to insult or mob him. All this is so small,
so frivolous, and so spiteful, as to be anything but
creditable to the community. It is natural that those
who have lost friends in the war should have no love
for Jefferson Davis, but that is no good reason why
they should be instigated to insult him. There are
empty hearths at the South as well as the North, and
the officers who directed the Federal armies travel
through it in every direction without meeting, so far
as we have heard, an unkind word or look ; and
Southerners are not people to restrain their feelings
solely through fear of consequences. Undoubtedly
there were dreadful deeds—deeds of barbarism, of
spoliation, of wanton cruelty—perpetrated during,
the war ; but does any dispassionate man really be-
lieve that they were entirely confined to one side ?
and, in any case, if we are to live in fraternal rela-
tions hereafter ; and if the memory of these things

is ever to be buried at all, is it not nearly time to
set about it? We profoundly deprecate the agita-
tion of these subjects, and sincerely wish that all
among us could have exhibited under recent circum-
stances a little more generosity and a good deal
more dignity.—Round T able.