The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-04 00:00:00

REBELS.

The South justly complains of the opprobrious
term commonly used in the North, when anything
Southern is discussed,. The people are rebels ; the
States are rebels ; the judges, governors, generals,
are all rebels ; till, at last, the word has become a
common prefix for anything beyond the Potomac.
It often happens that annoying expressions precede
and sometimes originate a quarrel. Generally the
fight spills much of the bad blood, leaving those who
have been most hotly engaged, the first to acknow-
ledge the folly of an appeal to such a tribunal.
It has, however, the advantage of dissipating much
of the ill-feeling; the victor gains his point, the
vanquished bows his head, and unless the fight is
between a vicious type of old women;there is no
return to a wordy warfare. In manhood the victor
should be generous, the vanquished enduring, and
if a burst of passion be allowed, it is to the de-
feated ; for it is more natural, and therefore less
unbecoming, that the South should curse, than that
the North should scold. If the word rebel be thus
indiscriminately used in the United States, it will
soon change. its meaning. That it is undergoing
this process may be seen from the unconscious
manner in which any American girl may apply the
term even to herself. "I'm a good rebel !" is a
constant expression. Thus the word, intended for
reproach, is accepted by those to whom it is applied,
and in the end becomes among them a title of
pride. This is worse than childish, and is merely
prostituting our mother tongue. Rebels are banded
and armed citizens at war with their Government.
A. rebel is a person using illegal means to obtain
an illegal end. Nothing justifies rebellion but
tyranny and usurpation. Nothing sanctions re-
bellion but success. The stake played for in this
game is the greatest that man can risk. The suc-
cessful rebel passes from a traitor to a patriot,
while the rebellion changes to a revolution and
eventually beeomes a holy and righteous war. Of
the two great American revolutions the one assumed
the shape of the renowned War of Indepen-
dence,—the other the stigmatised rising of
a Slave Oligarchy. Yet the latter was fought
on a grander scale, and even more gallantly
than the former. While WASHINGTON'S name is a
household word and the god of an American's
idolatry, that of DAvls who upheld a falling cruse
with as dauntless a front and as noble a tenacity
is a byword and reproach. With sunken eye and
furrowed cheek the beggared and emaciated exile,
from the cells of his long imprisonment, sinking
beneath the curse of a weight of ruin, seeks in a
foreign country a home denied him in his own. The
difference between success and failure is the main
difference between IVASHINGTON and DAVIS. The
very institution it was the hard fate of the Southern
chief to endeavour to uphold was but an inheri-
tance from the greatest leader in the cause of free-
dom that the world has yet known. Between a
; rebel and a patriot there may be but fine shades of
difference, perhaps darkened by the clouds of ad-
versity, or lightened by the sunshine of success.
It is time this endless taunt should cease, for, as now

applied, it is a word without a meaning, which, if
persisted in, may convey to it a significance that
may associate rebellion in many minds with
the highest duties of man. It is for the
well-being of society which is intimately con.