The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-21 00:00:00

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vitiated its character, educated it in disloyalty, and
impelled it into war. They desire that a settlement
shall be effected which shall make the South Repub-

" loyal men " who have a right to seats, cannot
but give fierce additional stimulants to Southern
disaffection.

lican, like the North, homogenous with it in insti-
tutions, as well as nominally united to it under ono
Government—a settlement which shall annihilate

We are, accordingly, it would seem, in danger
of having a President who is at variance with
nearly two-thirds of Congress, using his whole ex-
ecutive power and influence against the party he
was supposed to represent, and having on his side
the Southerners who made the rebellion, the Nor-
therners whose sympathies were on the side of the
rebellion, a small collection of Republican politi-
cians called " the President's friends," and the un-
defined political force passing under the name of
" the Blairs." But Congress is stronger than the
whole body of its opponents, and is backed by the
great mass a
no
ef
dt loyalhbey the
profusepeople,
determinedshedding of s O
n: tuct
ho
surrender all the advantages of the position which
has been
loyal blood.

the accursed heresy of Secession by extinguishing
the accursed prejudice of caste.
Such a settlement the people have not in the
" President's plan." INT hat confidence, indeed, can
they place in the professions of the cunning South-
ern politicians who have taken the President cap-
tive, and used him as an instrument while seeming
to obey him as agents? There is something to'
make us distrust the stability of the firmest and'
most upright statesman in the spectacle of that re-
markable conquest. Mr. Johnson, when elected,
appeared to represent the most violent Radical ideas
and the most vindictive passions engendered by the
v
war. He spoke as if the blacks were to find iu him
a Moses, and the
.rebels a Nemesis. It seemed as
if there could not be in the whole land a sufficient
number
of
sour-apple
for
the
possible trees to furnishiethn victims of
ac-
commodations
pa-
triotic wrath. One almost feared that reconcilia-
tion would be indefinitely postponed by the relent-
less severity with which he would visit treason with
death. But the Southern politicians, finding that
further military resistance was hopeless, resorted at
once to their old game of intrigue and management,
and proved that, fresh as they were from the expe-
rience of violent methods, they had not forgotten
their old art of manipulating Presidents. They
adapted themselves with marvellous flexibility to
the changed condition of things, in order to become
masters of the situation, and began to declaim in
favour of the Union, even while their curses against

66 Constitutional government is on trial" in this
contest ; and Mr. Johnson seems neither to have
the constitutional instinct in his blood, nor the con-
stitutional principle in his brain. The position of
the President of the United States is analogous
not so much to that of a Napoleon or a Bismark,
as to that of an English Prime Minister. In the
r einnl e n
their,
theory and ordinary working of th e Ge
ionve r
he is one of a body of statesmen, ag g n
general views, and elected by the same party ;
what are called his measures are passed
by Con-
gress, because the majority of the Congress and
he are in general accord on all important ques-
tions ; and it is against the whole idea of consti-
tutional government that the executive will is a
fair offset to the legislative reason—that one man
is the equal of the whole body of the people'sßepre-
sentatives. The powers of an executive are of such
a character that, pushed wilfully to their ultimate
expression, they can absorb all the other depart-
ments of the Government, as when James the Se-
cond practically repealed laws by pushing to its
abstract logical consequences his undoubted power
of pardon ; but a constitutional government im-
plies, as a condition of its existence, that the ex-
ecutive will have that kind of mind and temper
which instinctively recognises the practical limita-
tions of powers in themselves vague; for if the ex-
ecutive can defy the Legislature, the Legislature can
bring the whole Government to an end by a simple
refusal to grant supplies. In his Washington
speech the President selected for special attack the
Chairman of the House Committee of Ways and
Means, and the Chairman of the Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations ; but it would be difficult to
conjecture how he could carry on the Government
without the aid of what these men represent, for
Mr. Stevens pays him his salary, and Mr. Sumner
gives effect to his treaties. Bismark, in Prussia,
snaps his fingers in the faces of the Prussian Cham-
bers, and still contrives to get along very comfort-
ably; but an American President does not enjoy
similar advantages. He can follow his own will or
caprice only by the toleration of the legislative
body he defames and disregards. His great power
is the veto ; but the perverse use of this could
easily be checked by the perverse use of many a
legislative power which a mere majority of Congress
can effectively use. The fallacy of the argument
of " the President's friends," in their proposition
that Congress should settle the dispute by the easy
method of allowing Mr. Johnson to have his own
way, consists in its entire oversight of the essential
character of constitutional government.
And now what would be the consequences of
the yielding of Congress in this struggle ? The
first effect would be the concession that, in respect
to the most important matter that will probably
ever be brought before the United States Govern-
ment, the executive branch was everything, and the
legislative nothing. The second effect would be
that the Rebel States would re-enter the Union,
not only without giving additional guarantees for
their good behaviour, but with the elated feeling
that they had gained a great triumph over the
" fanatical" North. The third effect would be the
establishment of the principle that they had never
been out of the Union as States ; that, accord-
ingly, a doubt was over the legality of the
legislation which had been transacted in the absence
of their representatives ; and that Congress having
for the past five years, represented only a section
of the country, that section was alone bound by its
measures. The moment it is admitted that the Na-
tional Legislature, as now constituted, is an incom-
plete body, and that it needs Southern " loyal men"
to make its laws operative over the South, a whole
brood of deductive reasoners will spring up in that
region, eager to carry the principle out to its re-
motest logical consequences. After two or three a
those cotton crops on which some persons rely so
much to make the South contented have given it
the requisite leisure to follow a long train of reason-
ing, it will by degrees convince itself that the whole
national legislation during the war, including the
debt and the anti-slavery amendment, was uncon-
stitutional, and that, as far as it concerns the
Southern States, it is void, and should be of no
effect. Persons who are accustomed to nickname
as " Radicals" all those statesmen who do not con-
sider that the removal of au immediate inconve-
nience exhausts the whole science of practical poli-
tics are wont to make merry over this possibility
of Southern repudiation, or to look down upon its
fanatical suggesters with the benevolent pity of
serenely superior intelligence ; but nobody who has
watched the steps by which Calhoun's logic was in-
wrought into the substance of the Southern mind,
—nobody who has noted the process by which the
jus • tification of one of the bloodiest rebellions in
the history of the world was deduced from the
definition of an abstraction,—nobody who explores
the meaning of the phrase, common in many
mouths, that " the South thought itself in the
right,"—will doubt that the seeming bugbear may
turn out a dreadful calamity. It is impossible, in
fact, for the most far-sighted mind to predict all
the evils which may flow from the heedless adop-
tion of a vicious principle ; if the war has not taught
us this, it has taught us. nothing.
But it is not to be supposed that Congress will
yield, for to yield would be to commit suicide.
There is not an interest in the nation which
is not concerned in its adherence to the
principle, that in it the whole legislative power of
the United States Government is vested; and that it
has the right to exact irreversible guarantees of the
Rebel States as the conditions of the admission of
their Senators and Representatives. They are not
in the Union until they are in its Government ; and
Congress has the same power to keep them out
that it has to let them in. By the very nature of
the case, the whole question must be left to its
judgment of what is necessary for the public safety
and honour. Its members may be mistaken, but
the only method to correct their mistake is to elect
other persons in their places, when their limited
period of service has expired ; and any new Con-
gress will, unless it is scandalously neglectful of the
public interests, admit the Rebel States to their old
places in the Union, not because it must, but be-
cause it thinks that a sufficient number of guaran-
teeson have been obtained to render their adt ahe dmission
prudent and safe. It is in this form thatoe
autumn
sub-
ject is coming before the people
elections ; and this explains the ea
nded on
the
eofputhbe_
e trhi na gt
Con-
gress oi with
'-
President's friends to for6stall and
lie mind, and sacrifice a greatP
principles, to the will of
his moods. agretlfyn mislead hfaosut
We think, if the vote taken
en n
0 :vv
by is peo-
gress would be ov.e
le We think this, in spite of such expressions of the
rwhelmingly sustained tl
I) • weream individual,
t
popular will as found vent in the President's meeting,
at Washington and Mr. Seward s meeting N- in ew
York—in spite even of the resolutions of Keokuk
' •
and the address of the "James Page Library Com-
pany" of Philadelphia—in spite, above all, of the
perfect felicity in which, if we may believe the Sec-
retary of State, the President's speech left
the American people. The loyal men of the loyal
States do not intend that the war they carried on
for great ends shall pass into history as the blool-
iest of all purposeless farces, beginning in an ecstasy
of public spirit and ending in an ignominious sur-
render of the advantages of hard-won victory. They
demand such guarantees, in the shape of amend-
ments to the Constitution, as shall insure security
for the future from such evils as have scourged them

it were yet echoing in the air. They wheedled the
President into pardoning, in the place of hanging
thein ; they made themselves serviceable agents in
carrying out his plan of reconstruction • they gave
up what it was impossible for them to retain, in
order to retain what it would destroy Their influence
to give up ; they got possession of him to the extent
i do
of insinuating subtily into his mind ideas which they
made him think he himself originated ; and finally
they
taking c a
hn e out the
f capped c,l,ipmraaxetiocfalthelirts.kilnsf,u,
with
aituhdtahce party
ybtyy
to which he was indebted for
relations"
his elevation, and made
him the representative of the small party which
voted against him, and of the defeated Rebel Con-
federacy, which, of course, could not do even that.
The Southern politicians have succeeded in many
shrewd political contrivances in the course of our
history, but this last is certainly their masterpiece.
Its only parallel or precedent is to be found in
Richard's wooing of Anne
What ! I that killed her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart's extreraest hate ;
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of my hatred by,
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I no friends to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil, and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her—all the world to nothing!"
Now can the people trust these politicians to the
extent of placing in their bands the powers of their
State Governments, and the representative power
of their States in Congress, without exacting irre-
versible guarantees necessary for the public safety?
Can the people uphold, as against Congress, a
President whose mind seems to be so much under
the influence of these men that he pub-
licly insults the Legislature of the nation ? Is the
President to be supported because he sustains state
rights against centralisation ? The only centralisa-
tion which is to be feared, in this case, is the cen-
tralisation of all the powers of the Government in
its executive branch. Is the President to be sup-
ported because he represents the principle of " no
taxation without representation ?" The object of
Congress is to see to it that there shall not be a
" representation" which, in respect to the national
debt, shall endeavour to abolish " taxation" alto-
gether—which, in respect to the freedmen, shall tax
Permanently a population it misrepresents—which,
in respect to the balance of political power, shall
use the black freemen as a basis of representation,
while it excludes them from having a voice in the
selection of the Representatives. Is the President
to be supported because he is determined the de-
feated South shall not be oppressed? The pur-
pose of Congress is not to commit but prevent op-
pression ; not to oppress the rebel whites, but to
guard from oppression the loyal blacks ; not to
refuse full political privileges to the late armed ene-
mies of the nation, but to avoid the intolerable
ignominy of giving those enemies the power to play
the robber and tyrant over its true and tried friends.
Is the President to be supported because he is
magnanimous and merciful ? Congress doubts the
magnanimity which sacrifices the innocent in
ordr to propitiate the guilty, and the mercy
which abandons the helpless and weak to the
covetousness of the powerful and strong. Is the
President to be supported because he aims to re-
present the whole people ? Congress may well
suspect that he represents the least patriotic por-
tion, especially when he puts a stigma on all
~eard-
ent loyalty by denouncing as equally traitorous the
xtremists of both sections," and thus makes es no dis-
tinction between the fanaticism" which perilled
everything in fighting for the Government, and the
" fanaticism" which perilled everything in fighting
against it. And, finally, is the President to be sup-
ported because he is the champion of conciliation
and peace ? Congress believes that his conciliation
is the compromise of vital principles ; that his peace
is the surrender of human rights ; that his plan but
postpones the operation of causes of discord it fails,
to eradicate ; and that, if the war has taught us
nothing else, it has taught us this—spreading it out
indeed before all eyes in letters of fire and blood—
that no conciliation is possible which sacrifices the
defenceless, and that no peace is permanent which
is unfounded in justice.

Theatrical Licenses and Regulation

Committee.

This committee met for the fourth time yester-
day, and the chair was taken by Mr. Locke, M.P.,
in the absence of the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen.
Mr. Strange completed his evidence, and was sub-
jected to cross-examination by Mr. O'Beirne, Mr.
Powell, and others, in reference to certain details
of management at the Alhambra. He explained
that his management differed very little from that
of the opera or the theatres, allowance being made
for his more complete organisation for the sale of
refreshments. Mr. Strange stood up rather warmly
for the character of ballet girls as a body, compared
with that of girls in an equal position of life. Mr.
Bodkin, the assistant-judge, was next examined,
and expressed himself personally in favour of con-
fining music-halls, E4O called, to the performance of
music, and leaving the theatres or halls where bal-
lets and such spectacles are represented to be
licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. Mr. Bodkin,
like his colleague, Mr. Pownall, appeared to have
little regard for public wants or public taste amongst
the middle and lower class. Mr. Pownall thought
that working men could dine at six, visit the musi
hall, without wanting further refreshment, and
" take their coffee," as " we"—the aristocracy—do
and Mr. Bodkin thought that no regulations or
supervision were required to keep the upper classes
moral, but that the middle and lower classes require
all kinds of leading-strings-
Mr. Bodham
Donne, the licenser of plays, was
next examined, and told the committee that the
Lord Chamberlain, in granting or refusing dramatic
licenses, was guided only by a regard for public
safety in the construction of the building. When
asked why a dramatic license was granted to the
, Gallery of Illustration, and refused to St. James's-
hall, he boldly stated, in defiance of the notorious
facts, that the small building was remarkably
adapted for the drama and the large building
wholly unadapted. It almost appeared from his
cross-examination that St. James's-hall was safe as
long as songs only were sung upon its stage, but
that the moment any dramatic performance was at-
tempted the foundations became weaker and the
roof showed a tendency to fall.

The inquiry was adjourned until monday next,
when Mr. B. Webster will be examined amongst
other witnesses.

CHARLOTTE WINSOR'S CASE.—Application was
made yesterday at Judges' Chambers, by Messrs. Burt and
Stevens, the attorneys having the conduct of Charlotte
Winsor's defence, for a writ of habeas corpus commanding
the governor of Exeter Gaol to bring up the prisoner be-
fore the Court of Exchequer Chamber on Tuesday next,
to assign errors on the record. Mr. Justice Lush made'
the order, upon the usual affidavit stating
the facts of
the case.
THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III--'yesterday was
the birthday of the Emperor of tho French, his Majesty
having been born at the Tuileries on the 20th of April,
now, therefore, COMpleted 48 58th year.
1808, ands having