The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-03 00:00:00

mortal honour and glory ! It cannot, it must not,

shall not Fe ! Let all loyal citizens, wherever found,
join hand and heart in the solemn pledge to uphold
and defend the flag of our Union now and for
ever. Let there be no faltering in our ranks—no
swerving from duty, no compromise of principle.
Thus shall we speedily resume our onward march
of true glory—the glory of knowledge and wisdom
of truth and justice, of union and liberty. (Enthu-
siastic applause.)
Major SUITED., of California, proposed that the
following gentlemen should be named as Vice-
Presidents :—Messrs. John J. Ridgeway, Francis
Warden, Woodbury Langdon, Dr. Thomas William
Evans, W. K. Strong, James W. Tucker, George B.
English, Henry Woods, George R. Russell, F. A.
Lovering, W. C. Emmett, James H Deming, A. K.
P. Cooper, B. G. Wainwright, and Edward Brooks.
Also that Messrs. T. Wallis Evans and Auguste
Depreyster should be requested to act as secretaries.
These nominations were acceded to unanimously.
Mr. TUCKER, on behalf of the Committee of Ar-
rangement, proposed the following resolutions :-
6, Whereas, in the year of our Lord 1787, the people of
the United States,' after having secured their independence
by a long and bloody war, did ordain and establish the
Constitution of the United States in order to form a more
perfect Union, to establish justice, to promote general wel-
fare, and t ) secure the blessings of liberty' to themselves
and to their children ; and
" Whereas the people of the several States, in adopting
said Constitution, made it, and the laws of Congress enacted
in pursuance of it, the supreme law of the land
and thereby
transferred the essential powers of sovereignty from the
States to the general Government ; and
" Whereas numerous States have since been admitted
into the Union by Act of Congress, and have thus received
all the State authority which they possess from the general
Government ; and
" Whereas, for a period of nearly 75 years, the people of
all the States and the State Governments themselves have
enjoyed peace, prosperity, and the undisturbed exercise of
all personal and civil rights, at home and abroad, under the
protection of the Government of the United States, which
is not even charged by its enemies with ever having enacted
laws in violation of the Constitution or of the rights of any
State or citizen ; and
" Whereas a number of persons in several of the States
have conspired to overthrow this benign Constitution, and
have succeeded in exciting rebellion and plunging the said
States into a revolution against the Government, without,
however, submitting their so .called acts of secession to the
vote of the people of their own States ; and
" Whereas the Government of the United States, in the
exercise of its rightful authority, has declared its purpose to
maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to vindi-
cate the laws, and has called upon the people to support it
in so doing;
" Therefore,—
" Resolved, —That in the maintenance of the Govern-
mcnt and Union, as handed down by our fathers, one and
indissoluble, arc involved net merely the fate of the Ameri-
can people, in the South as well as in the North, but also
the hopes of freedom, progress, and Christian civilisation
throughout the world.
" Rtsoired,—That the Government and People of the
United states would be false to the highest political trust
ever placed by Almighty God in human hands were they to
allow the " powerful and perpetual Union;' which the Con-
stitution was ordained to establish, to be degraded into a
mere voluntary society 91' States, which would be nothing

but an organised anarchy, the sure precursor of a military
despotism.

" Resolved,—That the declaration of the American Go-
vernment, that it has not, does not, and will not enrirtain
the least idea of suffering a dissolution of the Union to
take place in any way whatever,' deserves the cordial
approval of all good citizens, and that the demands of the
Government for the men and means of suppressing the re-
bellion will be fully met and surpassed by the devotion, the
zeal, and the self-sacrifice, if need be, of the millions of free-
men who have so long enjoyed the protection of the Con-
stitution, and who, with the blessing of God, will support
the Government by all means in their power, until the su-
premacy of the laws is re-established throughout the land.
" Resolved,—That it is the duty of all good
differences past
abroad as well as at home, overlooking allcitizens
of political opinions, to aid, by their efforts, their prayers,
and their money the constituted authorities of the country
in upholding the Constitution and the Union, and in car-
rying on the war which has been forced upon them by
the lawless and unconstitutional acts of misguided men—a
war, not to destroy the interests of any part of the country,
but to preserve them all ; not to subjugate any State, or the
loyal citizens of any State, but to put down, everywhere,
and, as we trust in God, for ever, the authors and abettors
of tumult and rebellion.
" Resolved,—That a copy of these resolutions, as embody-
ing the sentiment of a very large number of Americans in
the city of Paris be forwarded to the President of the
United States."
Loud cheering greeted the resolutions thus pro-
posed, and they were adopted with acclamation.
The Hon. W. L. DAYTON, American Minister at
the Court of the Tuileries next rose, and was re-
ceived with loud applause. He spoke as follows :
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,--I find my-
self, though far removed from my own country,
surrounded by the faces of American citizens, and
subject to the rules and conventionalities of Ameri-
can social life, among which is the necessity of a
speech whenever called for. It is needless, my
friends, to deny that our country has fallen upon
evil times ; that much of its prestige abroad is for
the present gone, that our self-love is rebuked and
our pride is humiliated not by the actions of others,
but by the misconduct of portions of our own
countrymen. Nations, like individuals are some-
times spoiled by prosperity. (Hear, hear.) It
does not follow as a logical sequence that where-
ever there is dissension in a country it results from
the wrongs and oppressions of a Government. In
our case, it results from its very opposite. It seems
to come from the plethora of its abundance
and prosperity. It is the wanton outbreak of a
restless and excitable people who complain substan-
tially of nothing. We who know the condition of
our country and the value of its institutions, though
chastened in pride and rebuked in feeling, cannot
forget these truths. (Hear.) You have come to-
gether on this occasion to give expression to your
feelings of attachment and respect for the laws and
Constitution of your country. It is in good time.
Your friends there are now testing the question if
you have a country, for a country without a Govern-
ment is no country. It is a habitation without a
name—a locus in quo for a miserable existence.
The world cannot expect, and least of all can Eng-
land expect, that we shall disgrace our Saxon
lineage by permitting a Government which has ac-
complished so much for humanity within so brief a
space to go out without a struggle, and, if need be,
such a struggle as the world has not seen. Our Union
cost much, and it is worth all and more than it cost.
(Loud cheers.) This is no time or place for laboured
argument. It is enough to say, though that may
assume the point in dispute, that the United States
is no Confederation. It ceased to be such in 1787,
when its present Constitution was formed. It is no
compact between the States to be broken with cause
or without cause, at the option of any ; but it is a
nation, treated with as such, recognised as such by
every civilised Power on the face of the earth ; and
who ever heard of secession as applied to a nation ?
(Cheers.) We know of rebellion and of revolution,
and we recognise them as a right under certain cir-
cumstances. But what publicist, what writer upon
international law, has ever told us when and where
the right of secession begins and ends ? The
word, as applied to the existing state of things
in our country, is a delusion. The facts show
it a wicked, causeless rebellion. Nothing more,
nothing less. (Tremendous applause.) We are
sometimes asked how this civil war will end.
We cannot fix the times or seasons of its termi-
nation, but we think we can see the end. The re-
lative strength of the two sections of the country
foretells the future of the controversy. We have
been told that " the race is not to the swift nor the
battle to the strong," but this, I think, in temporal
matters at least, is the exception, not the rule. The
long delay and forbearance of the Government have
led some minds to doubt its power, but this was not
the quiet of weakness and timidity, but rather of a
conscious strength. This delay, too, was superin-
duced by the fact that the masses of the people,
North and West, never believed that the men of the
South would bring the matter to the dreadful issue
of civil war. They could not realise the fact that
any considerable portion of our people could wil-
fully throw off their allegiance to the Federal
Government, which they had only known, as we
thought, by its blessings. But the cannon at Fort
Sumter roused them, like the blast of a bugle.
(Applause.) If they -were slow to understand, slow
to realise the truth of their position, they were
quick to meet it. The instant terrible uprising of
at least 20,000,000 people, as if by a single impulse,
was sublime. The history of the world, ancient or
modern, has nothing more so. And I desire to say
now that, from the days of our revolution to the
present hour, the country has never been stronger
than at the present moment—never more able to
meet any contingency which may arise from foreign
or domestic war. The danger is, if this rebellion
continue, that the whole country roused, as one
man by a common impulse, will become a military
Power rather than an agricultural and commercial
people. But in the meantime we ask, not in the
spirit of defiance, but as a matter of right, that
the outside world will leave us alone, We do not
ignore the sympathy of men or of nations who
think well of us and of our principles—and I thank
God I have found such during my brief residence
in Europe—but for those who distrust us, who
doubt our powers of self-government, who look
upon the present condition of things in the United
States with an ill-concealed joy (if there be such)—
I say, again, leave us alone, hands off—rebellion is
not revolution, and secession, as a political principle,
is something unknown. It is to be made good only
by the strong arm of that power which avows it as
a political right. (Hear, hear.) It will be no matter
of surprise, in view of my past professional life, that
my attention should have been early called to such
laws of France as may bear upon our rights. The
commercial world has been much agitated by the
threatened issue of letters of marque and reprisal
by the so-called Confederate Government of the
South. I have looked into the French laws as
respects the rights of these privateers ; and if I
understand them aright—and I desire to speak with
great diffidence, and subject to correction, in refer-
ence to the laws of a foreign country—(load ap.
plause)—France will, I think, leave
.oidus
ha,llontheinikn
virtue of her own laws. Those laws
—l, that a captain who takes the command of a
foreign privateer is guilty of a piratical act ; 2, that
the French citizen who shall enlist in a foreign
service without the authority of the Emperor loses
all his rights as a French citizen ; 3, that no prizes
of a privateer can stay in a French port over 24
eos te;o
na
dn
edeatnhaatti,o
na s
oa
consequence, 4, there can
y tbeem
pn
prizes in a French port by Courts of Admiralty in
our Southern States. (Loud cheers.) If lam cor-
rect in these views of the laws of France, there will
be little chance of trouble and few points of conflict
between the Government of France and our own.
I sincerely hope that we may have trouble nowhere
outside the limits of our own country. (Long con-
tinued cheering.)
The Ron. C. M: CLAY, American Minister to
the Court of St. Petersburg, next addressed the
meeting in the following terms :—Gentleman,
had desired to go where my Government had
ordered me without entering upon political ques-
tions. It was with no ordinary feelings that, land-
ing at Calais, I first set foot upon this land of our
ancient ally and steadfast friend, who so gallantly
aided us in the achieving our independence and
founding a great nation. (Applause.) As an
agriculturist I was interested in the thorough cul-
ture of the soil, and as a lover of nature I was en-
chanted with the large vista over green fields, hill,