The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-01 00:00:00

The American Prem.

The New York Tribune has the following :
The veto of the Civil Rights Bill is founded upon
arguments so shallow that they can be answered in
a very few words. The objections on the score of
policy merely are hardly worth discussing at all. If
there is any Republican who is opposed to granting
citizenship to the coloured race, we leave him to
argue the question with the editor of the Times, who
introduced a bill for that purpose into Congress, at
an early period of the session, and enthusiastically
urged it in his weathercock columns. The con-
stitutional objections are all that we care to
notice. The objection to any interference by
Congress to secure equal civil rights to the negro
is sufficiently answered by the Message itself,
which expressly declares the President's will-
ingness to co-operate with Congress in securing to
him these rights. How can it be unconstitutional
to protect him in a part of these rights, as the vetoed
bill does, when the President offers (whether sin-
cerely or not) to protect him in all? But, apart
from this, it is obvious that a man deprived of civil
rights is substantially a slave running loose, who
may be appropriated like a wild horse, by the first
man having rights, who may seize him. Liberty,
without the right to enforce it by suit or testimony,
is a hideous mockery of that sacred name. And if
Congress cannot secure to the negro the simple I
rights guaranteed to him by this bill, it cannot in
any way enforce the constitutional prohibition of
Slavery. A law against murder, which should
be construed as excepting throat-cutting, would be
as effective an interpretation of the great amend-
ment which should authorise Congress to prohibit
slavery, but deny to it the power to secure civil
rights to the enslaved. The objection to the section
giving to the United States Courts jurisdiction over
cases arising under the bill is fully met by the clause
in the Federal Constitution which declares that the
judicial power of the United States shall extend to
all cases arising under the laws of the United States.
The objection that the bill makes it a penal
offence for Legislatures to make or judges to
administer laws inconsistent therewith is wholly
without foundation. The penal clauses of the
bill are so framed as to apply only to executive
officers, such as marshals, sheriffs and gaolers. The
bill, as originally proposed in the Senate, was thought I
to be open to misconstruction upon this point, and it
was amended for the very purpose of making it clear.
We shall not enter into a full argument upon this
subject, but refer our readers to the speech of Mr.
Trumbull for its further elucidation. The result of
our examination has been to satisfy us of the utterly
frivolous character of the President's objections to
the bill ; nor do we believe any respectable lawyer,
not a bigoted devotee of Slavery, will venture to
argue in its favour.
The New York Times, of April 10, says :—We
quoted yesterday some remarks from a Boston
periodical, pronouncing Republican institutions a
failure, because " first-class men," such as Phillips,
Emerson, Whittier, Lowell, Sumner, Stevens,
Wade, and Schurz, did not succeed in getting at
the head of the Government as our rulers. There
is no greater mistake than to suppose the flashy
rhetoricians, poets, sentimentalists, logicians,
scholiasts, dervishes, romancers, and transcenden-
talists, are the orders of men appointed by Divinity,
or fit to be selected by the people, as rulers. There
have been Emperors who were eloquent, and Kings
who were rhymsters, and Presidents who were
humorous ; there have been rulers and law-makers
who were great, and at the same time devotees,
or sentimentalists, orlogic-choppers. But it is a fact
that when the professors of the intellectual
arts above spoken of have had opportunities of
trying their hand at the practical work of
government and administration, they have gene-
rally made the most melancholy failures. They
found it a much easier thing to shine in the placid
realms of thought than to master or to guide the
fierce passions, and conflicting interests, and
variant vagaries that rise, and struggle, and clash
in the soul of a great nation, and especially during
great political and social upheavals. In France, in
1848, after the expulsion of Louis Phillippe, a Go-
vernment of orators, and poets, and sentimentalists
was established—men who could turn the roundest
sentences, spin the gayest fancies, and strike the big-
gest lyres—with Lamartine at their head. But of all
the Governments that France has had during the last
century, it proved the weakest and consequently
the worst ; and the power was soon snatched
from their feeble hands by grim soldiers who had
neither elocution nor poetry in their souls—through
whom it quickly passed into the empire. It was
the same in the German revolutions of the
same period. In Berlin as well as other capitals,
they were led, and led to speedy ruin, by professors,
and scholars, and poets, and sentimentalists. One
of the ablest of these professor politicians (who
in this represents the opinion of nearly all
of them) has since made the melancholy con-
fession that the freedom-spouters proved the de-
struction of practical freedom, and that had the ad-
vice and the
_iaded m
imeasurese urged
en of
commerce, i n theePamrleiracme, anentsd by the
apparently tly dull
mer-
chandise,
and manufact=se,rnamn de
governments
sa lifed
surely l
adopted, Republican
workboef
ganoenntlyouerstoalbvnlisilise,adr.,
andln tohaerrgyrienagt
e ne
a rpreyrint:
through the great public
it, the poets, and orators, and menmeasures
onf ebereisnsiiatnattepdabrtys
were nowhere ; and it was reserved for a leather-
dealer like Grant, who can neither rhyme nor, so
far as the public knows, reason, and for a " plain
man" like Lincoln, to be the agents for rescuing this
great nation from the most appalling perils, and
triumphing over military and political obstacles
that appeared insurmountable.
orators
first we were
itnhg-is iknittehilley
who
toso kf
ot or the flashing
our
orators and glitter-
did attempt to do' but those of
something in
our redemption •
the practical line made such wretched failures, and
their acts of intellect looked so petty amid the
gigantic forces that swayed the nation, that we soon
ceased to look to them in any way whatever. Sup-