The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-12 00:00:00

we should, with our present means of conjecture, be
in no way surprised at a few serious repulses.
We must still think, however, that all turns
on the greatest of all the questions involved, and
the one so studiously kept by Mr. LINCOLN and
most Americans in the background—the question
of dealing with slavery. An influential contem-
porary, who always contrives to take the view
which shall spare slavery and slaveholding, speaks
of the Emancipation party in America as a san-
guinary one ! And but for some names, on which it
is useless to cast dirt, would doubtless honour the
whole of them with its most dignified contempt.
Yet we have seen no sanguinary proposals
on the part of Abolitionists, and the probability
is that they think as we do, that a well considered
plan of declaring abolition of slavery as the policy
of the Government would save both blood and
money. It is silly nonsense to talk of Abolitionists
encouraging a servile war. A great number of them
in America itself are actually Peace Society men ;

those who so talk and write doubtless calculate on
the ignorance of their auditors and readers. • The
basis of Abolitionist plans is, an equitable
compensation for the present Slaveholders.
Not one fixed, indeed, by the prices current
for human beings in the South prior to the Seces-
sion, but one that should be fair under all the cir-
cumstances. The value of slaves must be less than
it was, and will become less every year the quarrel
continues. Part of the news of this morning is that
within a trifle of £lOO,OOO is just gone to Bombay
to pay for Cotton. Every such remittance is the
sure precursor of other large remittances. Our
East India free labourers are as fond of money
as any of us at home—and as the
rupees for cotton begin to circulate
among the ryots and native estate holders, they
will call up increased supplies as if by magic. The
value of negroes will fall with every hundred
thousand pounds sent to the East, with every
thousand pounds of capital—the only thing wanted
in Jamaica—invested in cotton-growing there. It
will also fall owing to the war and unsettlement of
things in America itself. A moderate compensation
is all that equity requires for another reason.
The whole thing is a system of crime,
and the compensation for a legalized crime ought
never to be equal to the full extent of the loss inci-
dent to geting rid of the crime. To be rid of such
an infernal institution as personal slavery, is itself
an immense part of the compensation.
The North ought, therefore, if it means to suc-
ceed, to take its course at once. It should declare
that slavery is abolished—that it is advancing
South to enforce its abolition—that all owners
who quietly and peacefully renounce the crimi_
nal relation of master and slave will receive an
equitable compensation, to be afterwards arranged ;
that the emancipated slaves must work peacefully
for wages, and will not be allowed to squat on lands
they have not purchased by their own earnings,—
that anything like negro risings will be visited
with severe punishment—but that every black "has
rights which every white man is bound to respect"
—and among those rights are " life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." Such a policy would
compel Kentucky and the border states to
yield at once—the rest must soon follow ; and the
fons et origo mali to the American Union would be
dried up for ever.

That strikes involve enormous losses to the
working men themselves,. with frequently almost
ruinous damage to their masters, no one now denies.
We did not need Dr. WATTS' well-arranged figures
to convince us of that. He had no difficulty in
showing what probably Mr. POTTER himself knows
enough to calculate, that thousands who strike for
wages, or time, which is the same, will not re-
cover for years, sometimes not for a lifetime,
the clear losses of refusing to labour. Nor does
the result strike us at all more than we should have
expected, that the direct loss to the men from
seven strikes in the cotton districts, and that of
the London builders, amounted to more than a
million and a half sterling. Every reader at once
observes that he has no doubt of it ; he would not
have been surprised to find the total larger.

The problem is to detect the real cause of strikes,
if there be any general cause or causes, and to
apply the appropriate remedy. It must not be
snpposed that because the loss of the vast sum
above-named is distributed amongst so many per-
sons the loss is lightly felt ; the reverse is the truth.
The sum lost by each is his livelihood. It is
not the diminution of a balance at the bank, or the
failure of a superfluous investment, but the loss of
his daily bread. The suffering, notwithstanding
what clubs and societies can do, is commonly ex-
treme. The aspect of the man himself too fre-
quently reveals the sad truth ; a visit to his home
would tell a yet more melancholy tale. We have
known article after article of furniture parted with
to meet the urgencies of the hour, and we have
admired the cool courage of the sufferers when they
have been really convinced that they were acting
for the good of their class; for their own good they
have known they were not acting. But they were
not going to be beaten by their masters, or they
should secure ultimately work for all, and on
better terms ; or, if the folly of such reasons or
hopes could be all but demonstrated, yet the un-
answerable argument remained, that they could not
desert their fellow-workmen, they must all act
together. A similar feeling would have prevented
the catastrophe at Ball's Run.
That, except by the merest chance, the workman
is a tremendous loser by a strike can need no
demonstration, but is it possible he should be con-
vinced of it ? One thing makes it difficult. He is
accustomed to live from week to week, and if ho
does but scramble through he is too apt to resume
work, when he does so, looking on the time lost as
of little consequence. And, perhaps, in so far as it
is merely a loss of food or clothing, when he can live
again as well as before, it does not make much dif-
ference to him. Too frequently, however, his own
health and that of his family, and the furniture of
his house, are sad mementos of the conflict. But
what as much deludes him as anything is the
receipt of money from his club. Notwithstanding
the exhaustion of its funds in a strike, he thinks,
while he gets in this way the money, which he and
others have subscribed, that enough will still be
left should he be laid aside by sickness. Hence he
has lost nothing ; the chief pecuniary benefit of the
Union will still be continued to him. Yet this
is but partially true. But for the madness of
wasting in this way the funds which
ought to have been a life or health in-
surance, his relief in sickness, or payments
at his death to his family might have been
very much larger. It is painful to think, in
addition to all other evils, of the difference to
the benevolent payments of the unions which in-
evitably must have resulted, had the splendid
sum of half a million not been absolutely wasted,
for no return whatever, by the Amalgamated Engi-
neers, and had it been retained in the treasuries of
the societies. Unhappily the loss is never brought
directly before the men, and they suffer the cur-
tailment of payment in time of need, with rut
recollecting how much better pay they might have
had.
The Unions have, of course, been the chief
causes of strikes; their working is, unhappily,