The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TDIES.—In a few weeks the 'political crisis in
America will be decided by a great popular vote,
and the unexampled exertions made by the contend-
ing parties show the signal importance which is at-
tached to the result. The whole domestic policy of
the United States will be determined by the autumn
elections, and in this policy on the present occasion
is involved the destiny of the Union itself. In ordi-
nary seasons the difference between Democrats and
Republicans would be of comparatively little mo-
inent, nor would the victory of either party decide
much beyond the distribution of official patronage.
Now, however, one party proposes to reconstruct
the Union, and the other to leave it incomplete.
We say this because, although the resolutions just
adopted by the Radical Convention provide for the
readmission of the Southern States to Congress,
they do so only on conditions which the South will
not accept. If the Republicans win, the States
lately in rebellion will remain outlawed ; if the
Democrats are successful, this outlawry will be re-
pealed and the Union will be reconstituted. This is
probably one of the questions which none but
Americans themselves can truly fathom.. In Eng-
land we cannot avoid forming an opinion upon it,
and that opinion, we imagine, would be generally
favourable to the Democrats and their policy; but
the Republicans have such claims upon their
countrymen, and • they are so obviously entitled to
stipulate for the fruitsof the war which they brought
to a triumphant end, that it would be hard to re-
fuse them credit either for sincerity or sagacity.
We may narrow the question almost to a point,
but there will still remain a great and most impor-
tant issue on which we can scarcely form a judg-
ment. The Southern States of the old Union re-
cently in insurrection have not only been de-
feated in the field, but they have acknowledged
their defeat, and have made open professions of
political submission and return to allegiance. The
question is whether these professions are sufficient.
The Democrats hold that they are, and would re-
ceive the repentant States into the body of the
Union ; the Republicans hold that they are not,
and would impose other conditions, which the de-
feated States reject. At the Philadelphia Conven-
tion last month the representatives of Southern opi-
nions who attended the meeting, and who were well
known to express the real views of the South, de-
clared plainly and without reserve that slavery was
abolished and prohibited for ever, and that there
was neither desire nor purpose on the part of the
Southern States to re-establish it on American soil.
They declared, farther, that equal protection in
every right of person and property was due to the
enfranchised slaves. After this they proceeded
with similar frankness to repudiate the Confederate
debt, and to acknowledge as. sacred and inviolate
the debt contracted by the Federals, proclaiming at
the same time their deliberate - resolution to main-
tain, unimpaired and unimpeached, the honour and
faith of the Republic by their performance of all
national obligations whatsoever. These are the con-
ditions with which the Democrats are content. The
Republicans want more. They do not consider the
abolition of slavery complete without the full eman-
cipation of the slave, and this emancipation in their
eyes calls for something beyond that mere " pro-
tection" of the negro which the Southerners are
ready to guarantee. It appears from the reports of
the Republican Convention that negro suffrage is
to be included in the cries of the party ; but, at any
rate, they propose to raise the black man to a posi-
tion which would not only be thought intolerable in
the South, but would be by no means
i universally ap-
proved even in the North itself. Nor s this the extent
of their demands. In restoring to the South the right
of representation they would impose so many restric-
tions and establish so many disabilities that the
Southern States could only be represented in prac-
tice by men of Northern opinions, and, indeed, it
seems to be the aim of the Radical party to suppress
altogether the Parliamentary expression of those
principles on which the politics of the South have
been based, and which, it is not to be disguised, were
developed in civil war. The reader may now ap-
preciate, if he cannot resolve, the question before
the American people. Probably. they only can de-
cide, and in a few weeks they will decide, whether
it is safe to readmit the Southern States to Congress
on the terms which the South has accepted. The
most remarkable incident of the struggle is the re-
solute and uncompromising policy adopted by the
President. He, though originally a Republican,
and raised to power by a Republican vote as a leader
df the Republican party, has embraced the views of
the Democrats on the great question at issue, and is
advocating with extraordinary zeal the principles of
the newly-established cause. It seems to be doubted
in America whether his advocacy may not have been
carried too far, but it is beyond all luestion that he
is animated by the sincerest convictions and the most
genuine patriotism. Ile is above all mere party
spirit in the matter. He has declared in the plainest
language that he has no craving for office or power,
that he has no private or personal ends to serve, and
that his sole anxiety is to see the Union restored on
the only terms on which,- according to his judg-
ment, the restoration is possible. Nor does anybody
refuse him credit for good faith in these professions.
The reconstruction of the Union by the re-admis-
sion of the Southern States to their rights and privi-
leges is undoubtedly the great object of his policy,
and we in this country cannot but sympathise with
him in his hopes. In fact, if we cannot weigh
the two sides of the question, we can, at any
rate, see the alternative practically before the
American people. There is immediate restoration
on one side, and protracted disorganisation on the
other. If the Republicans win, the Southern States
will be kept outside the Union, nobody can tell for
how long. We know full well, from our own ex-
perience, what must come of such exclusion. The
people of the South, whatever they may be at pre-
sent, will become a hostile, disaffected population,
and our long history of penal legislation, cival disa-
bilities, oaths, tests, discord, agitation, and reform
will be repeated in the New World. President
Johnson can, at least, say for his policy that it will
avert all this, that it will efface the traces of civil
war, and will make all Americans one nation as be-
fore. The only question is whether this would be
done at too great a cost. The Republicans have
proclaimed as one of the maxims of their cause that
" Treason, defeated in battle, shall not rule by bal-
lot." But what is the " treason" here anticipated ?
Two years ago the Southerners, being in arms
against the Union, were called traitors, but they
have been vanquished, and they have read their
political recantation. " The Union of the States is
perpetual and cannot be dissolved " was one of the
resolutions adopted at their meeting. If their past
" treason" is to be visited, by way of punishment
simply, with exclusion from Parliamentary repre-
sentation, the penalty may be justifiable, but the
reconstruction of the Union becomes an impossi-
bility. We do not see, however, that the theory of
punishment is maintained, for even the Republicans
are ready to re-admit the Southerners to Congress,
though on impracticable conditions. The terms
which they would enforce would give the right of
representation, not to the people of the South, but
to a very small minority among them. The real
South would not be allowed to speak, and this inter-
dict apparently the Republicans actually desire to
maintain. Their doctrine is that the Southern
opinions which led to war should be suppressed at
present, and ultimately eradicated, by the gradual
inoculation of the whole South with Northern prin-
ciples. Thus, and thus only, they think the true
policy of the Government can safely be maintained.
They may possibly be right, but in this case the
Union cannot possibly be restored, nor can America
escape the evils of permanent discord and invete-
rate popular disaffection.

POST.—It is scarcely much more than twelve
months that the world was shaken at its breakfast
table by the magnificent roaring of an old lion
against the employment of wooden ships of war.
Lord Palmerston and the Duke of Somerset, Lord
Clarence Paget and his colleagues, were accused of
having conducted themselves with the most flagrant
perfidy towards their Sovereign and their coun-
try in having sent out to the Mediterranean the
wooden three-decker Victoria. There never was
an act so monstrous in these days of iron
ships. It was wholly out of the course of naval
nature, and must have been generated in the igno-
rance, hypocrisy, and absurdity of routine beyond
any example that could be found' in the progressive
European world of our age. For some days the
roaring continued, and it was not until we ventured
fo point out that the immense advantage of a three-
decker as the flag-ship was that she carried healthily
and well the crews of three iron ships which did not
happen at that moment to be fit for sea that the
roaring ceased. After having terrified all the re-
spectably timid people out of their appetites our
lion cheerfully submitted to the logic of facts, and
we beard no more about wooden ships beyond an
occasional growl that they were not all broken up
and " sold for firewood." Our readers will easily
judge of our.surprise to find our noble lion now no
longer advocating the destruction of our wooden
ships, but with that sort of rapturous re-agency
which, under a secret call for variation in his diet,
is said to seize upon the buffalo, and deaf to danger,
drive him headlong to his own destruction, gravely
proposing to employ wooden ships for purposes of
war, and particularly in attacking iron-clads.
Lions, like buffalo; are subject to aberrations of
intellect, but this is an extreme form of leonine in-
sanity for which we confess we are not prepared.
Of course the lion will take command of that par-
ticular wooden frigate which is to be armed with the
Woolwich gun, and sent to sink the iron-clad ; and,
much as we shall miss his sagacious roarings, we
shall look on with a calm consciousness of the ineyit-

able, and watch the lion come to grief, for we bay
not the slightest doubt that in an action between
an iron-clad and an unclothed frigate the latter
would be knocked into lucifer matches. and set crn
fire in the first ten minutes. You might as fell.
match a man in his night-shirt with bare feet agalne_,'
a burly burglar with hob-nailed boots. The. real
use of wooden frigates and ships in a mantel::
war would be as training ships °i-ci
own waters, or as vessels of defence. It woU'h
be cruel to send them out as cruisers, wit';
the chance of being caught by an iron-clad
sunk. The fact is, that iron as opposed to wood
,:
everywhere carrying the day against its ?IP--
combustible rival, and the notion of pitting
a wooden frigate against an iron one, because the
guns carried by each will pierce iron sides under
certain circumstances, and set fire to wooden side
under any, could have entered the head of an In'
genions writer who has not yet received his bar
tism of fire. We recommend him from choice
t
take the iron ship, if the opportunity offers, til
if t
it does not, to be wise and stay ashore. Dei
the question of guns versus ships is not settled
yet. The success of Major Palliser's chilled iton
shell piercing eight inches of iron, backed by fig,
not yet so complete as to dispose of the questo'
for ever. There are more ways than one of 01
iron plates ; there are more ways than one of puttl,lg.
them on, and until it has been clearly demonstrated
that alternate layers of teak and iron of the thick. Der
of a ship's side can be as easily pierced as the single
layer of armour or teak, the question can hardly 11
considered settled. Sir E. Belcher appears to be el
opinion that unless you can make your iron-01°1'
quite impenetrable to shot and shell, the armour bad
better be stripped off altogether. But Sir Edward
Belcher does not take his boots off because he
ocasionally gets his feet wet. It is not to be St..
pected that we could construct a ship which should
be perfectly impenetrable, because the moment I/
arrive at that perfection, although we may keep
the superiority which it would give us for a le"
years, other nations will quickly learn it, and the
necessity for having ships of war at all would
the
comparatively superseded. The battles of t,'°:
middle ages, when armies manceuvred and fag"'
from sunrise to sunset, and lived to fight the fat'
lowing day, without inflicting the slightest lose
upon each other, would be revived upon the sea'
But this perfection will never be arrived at, Ler:
there are always two modes of dealing with relni7;
ance of this kind. If you cannot pierce it by adi
rect blow from a small bore given at a high veloeltri;
you may crush it in by immense weight at ale„,
velocity from a large bore, and if there is no linut,7..
the thickness of a ship's side, neither is there to tine:
weight and size of a gan. But how or in what
gree the absence of perfect impenetrability on /0
part of iron and wood combined should be taken a
place wood only upon an equality with iron Vito
wood, or prove the combination of iron and wen?are
be unnecessary, we are at a loss to divine. "re
should be much better pleased to possess a few nrige
ironclads--such as they are—fitted for sea ; and We
are of opinion that so far from being a mistake/ 0,
look upon the introduction of iron in the constrn.,,,
tion of men-of-war as the very thing to develope c't;
national resources, and that-if we cannot make ee
ironclads absolutely invulnerable, we are no worn 720
off than our neighbours, who have neither our ir
nor our skill to work it.