The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-07 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tate DAY.—Morning, 10h. 15m.—Afternoon, 10h. 54m
To-moßßem.-Morninrt, Ilh. 34m.—Afternoon. Oh. Om

THE WEATHER.—SuNTrincz, JAN. 6. 1861.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
33—highest since noon yesterday.
21—lowest this morning and during the night.
28 —this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.09.
Wlrrn North -Westerly—fresh ; with fine sunshiny
weather, and bitterly sharp frost.

JAN. 7.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
29—highest since noon yesterday.
22—lowest this morning and during the night.
30—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.08.
WIND—W. N.W.—moderate; with hazy weather. There
seems to be a change impending.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, MONDAY, JAN. 7, 1861.

_ The consequences of Mr. BUCHANAN's vacillation
are now apparent. South Carolina, so far as the
unanimous vote of her representatives can effect it,
has seceded from the great confederation termed
the United States. She has done boldly and
openly, but in a worse cause, what she attempted
more covertly in 1833, in a better cause, under the
presidency of the vigorous General JACKSON. Then
the unrighteous protectiggist tariff of the North,
under which English manufacturers and Carolina
consumers alike suffer, was the object of " nullifica-
tion." Now resentment of the determination of the
North to prevent the extension of Slavery, is the
ground of open secession. Then a Federal ship of
war in the port of Charleston soon compelled the
Carolinians to accept, patiently, a substantial wrong
at the hands of the manufacturing States. Now a
double-tongued PRESIDENT'S message encourages
the South to rebel in support of the iniquitous pur-
pose of making the whole Union a thoroughly Slave
Republic.
The subject of the present quarrel should be
clearly kept in mind. It is not that the Northern
States wish to interfere with Slavery as an insti-
tution in any State which desires its continuance ;
it is not that a PRESIDENT has been elected by any
unconstitutional tampering with the freedom of
election ; it is not that the new PRESIDENT is an
abolitionist, whose personal opinions are in favour
of the interference of Congress with the " domestic
institution" in the Slave States themselves—it is
simply that the North is hostile to the extension of
Slave territory, and has elected a PRESIDENT, by a
large majority, in accordance with its views. For
nearly half a century the slaveholders have had it
all their own way, they have gone on extending
their demands, offering compromises, repealing
again their part of the compromise, enacting laws
which converted the Northern States into slave
hunting grounds, proclaiming all the territories
open to Slavery, electing Presidents, and nomi-
nating pro-slavery judges to the highest court of
appeal in the 'United States—but at last they
encounter one important defeat—a PRESIDENT is
edecrsd whose distinguishing profession is hostility
to the extension of slavery, and, in their wrath, a
secession is commenced by South Carolina.
We pointed out a few days ago, that the seces-
sion movement in South Carolina is not prompted
by zeal for slavery alone, The Carolinians desire
to regain the commerce which they have lost to the
Northern States, and to see Charleston the New
York of the South. They also desire, with the
planting States, the revival of the African slave-
trade; while Virginia and the slave-breeding
states are of course opposed to a traffic
which would depreciate the value of their
haiman chattels. The secession movement

will, therefore, be perplexed by many considera-
tions. There is the determination of the North-
West, to which Mr. LINCOLN belongs, not to allow
the Mississippi, their highway to the ocean, to flow
through a foreign country. There will be the
mortgagee interest of wealthy Northern men, in
the responsibility and heavy indebtedness of the
South to the North. There will be the planting
States, mad for negroes from Africa, to lower the
price of their labour. There will be the breeding
States dead against it, and agreeing on this point
with the Federal Government. And there will
soon be, we suspect, certain unpleasant consequences
which will make all sober risen bethink themselves.
Already we are told that in Carolina the slaves
have—as we expressed from the beginning our
fear must be the case—heard from the lips of their
own masters, that a northern movement in their
favour is going on. White men have to use every
precaution, to sleep, as it were, or indeed literally,
on their arms, from fear of a midnight insurrection
and murder at any unknown hour; and the value
of slaves themselves, who is becoming an article
which people think the less they have of it the
better, has gone down fifty per cent. I Verily, to
the Seceders secession may be no joke ! As to
the Northern States we cannot think it will ma-
terially injure them. They may, if they like,
calmly look on. Commerce will certainly not
alter her channels at the bidding of South Caro-
, lina,

If credence is to be attributed to the intelligence
from China, coming to Western Europe, via St.
Petersburg, the Muscovite Ambassador to the Court
of Pekin took no trivial part in those negotiations
between the Tartar and the Anglo-French bellige-
rents, which resulted in the important Treaty of
Peace signed but a month or two since (at Pekin)
by the respective Plenipotentiaries. Gen. IGNATIEFF,
the diplomatist in question, appears to have acted
promptly, most judiciously, and most effectively
as a mediator between the Allied Envoys and Com-
manders-in-Chief on the one side, and upon the other
the half furious and half frightened remnants of
the scattered Chinese Government. At the head
of this residue of the scared and vanquished Court
and Cabinet of HEIN FUNG, being that potentate's
uterine brother, the Prince of I— solemnly and
formally nominated some little time previously the
principal Imperial commissioner. So suddenly had
the tables been turned between the belligerents,
between the comparatively slight and numerically
insignificant force led onwards by Generals GRANT
and MONTAUBAN, and the almost countless legions
of Tartar horsemen, marshalled under the Prince
Generalissimo SAN-KO-LIN-SlN—that immediately
prior to the ignominious flight of the Chinese EM-
PEROR to Mantchouria, his Celestial MAJESTY had
issued an exceedingly Diabolical proclamation,
offering a reward of fifty-lan (a sum equivalent, in
Russian currency, to two roubles and thirty copecks)
for the head of every black barbarian—i.e., every
Frenchman—[might it not more probably mean—
every Sowar ?]—and double that sum (a grim but
notable compliment, this, to us " Britishers !")
namely, 100 lan for the head of every " white bar-
barian"—i.e., every Englishman! Like one of
those extremely ridiculous pOtentates, the despots
of a Christmas pantomime, or of an Easter bur-
lesque, the high and mighty HIEN FUNG, Emperor
of the Chinese, had sworn in his wrath that he
would punish the insolence of the outer-barbarians
—inflicting upon them to that end no less a penalty
than that of positive extermination. Yet imme-
diately afterwards, as though that delightful
mime, Mr. BLAND, were acting the tyrant's part
upon that immense stage at the opposite extremity
of this hemisphere amid the shouts of laughter from
European boxes, gallery, and pit—this swaggering,
blustering, swash-buckler of an EMPEROR had
turned tail after a fashion the most ludicrous ima-
ginable, and was " off" into the wilds of Tartary !
There has certainly been no such ridiculous anti-
climax seen anywhere since the winter of 1847-48,
when the late King of the FRENCH, only a few
hours after bragging that he felt firm in the saddle,
was thrown all of a sudden by that skittish jade,
Gallia, had to pitch himself out of the mud as he
best might, shaved his whiskers off, changed
his wig, put on an old pea-jacket,
and having changed not only his wig but
his name for greater safety, taking that of Mr.
SMITH, scrambled somehow on board a fishing
smack, and crossing the Channel in this melan-
• choly plight, landed (as Mr. SMITH) at Newhaven.
His Imperial Majesty of CHINA has more recently
had to eat humble pie in his turn under circum-
stances of hardly less ludicrous humiliation.
Scarcely had he put the price of 50 lan upon the
head of every Frenchman [or we will again sup-
pose—of every Sowar], and of 100 lan upon
the head of every Englishman in the manner
already here related, when he himself had to
disappear from Pekin at the mere terror of
the approach of the Allied Expedition. And
it was at this juncture, it seems, that
the Russian Ambassador, General IGNATIEFF,
interposed between the belligerents—entering
Pekin with a little escort of fourteen Cossacks imme-
diately prior to the arrival there of the Anglo-French
Plenipotentiaries, bent upon smoothing the way so
far for the settlement of all difficulties by driving a
timely " sense of their situation" into the heads of
the Chinese Chiefs of the Departments. The
manner in which the Muscovite Envoy did this was
certainly characteristic, His Excellency answered
the deputation that appears to have waited upon
him immediately upon his reaching the
Russian Embassy at Pekin—a deputation that
hastened thither, in point of fact, to
implore General IGNATIEFF [in the name,
observe, of the friendship subsisting for two
hundred years between the Russians and the
Chinese !] imploring him to save Pekin from
destruction—his Excellency answered this suppli-
cative deputation—How ? It is really worth
noticing the manner in which his Muscovite Excel-
lence acceded to the request of the petitioners, the
request, namely, that he would use his best efforts as
a mediator to mitigate, se far at least as it could in
any way have a chance of being mitigated, the
wrath of the advancing French and English. As
the first, and indeed the all-essential preliminary,
the still surviving prisoners, he told them plainly,
given up! The Russian General
awnodulAmbassadorto
exp
explaining to the Chinese officials
that those prisoners having been captured while
under the protection of a flag of truce, were the
victims of an act of indignity so monstrous, of a
violation of all the principles of in ternatioaal law
so heinous and nearly unparalleled, that the inci-
dent, unless thus tardily and partially expiated
would necessitate an avenging movement against
China on the part of all Europe, including Russia
herself, in spite of her two hundred years' friend-
ship and good understanding ! An acceptance of
all the conditions required from the Chinese Go-
vernment by France and England, General
IGNATIEFF assured the deputation, wadafter
this imperatively requisite ; intimating that,
for his own part, he would alone consent
to use his good offices with the chiefs of
the advancing expedition upon the consent of the
Chinese to one very simple stipulgtion—namelyp