The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-22 00:00:00

revealing itself under the title of the Confederate
States Government.

Almost simultaneously with the appearance of
the Message of Mr. DAVIS, at Montgomery—
Mr. LINCOLN'S Secretary of State, Mr. SEWARD,
addresses a despatch to the new American
Ambassador at the Court of the Tuileries,
from the United States capital of Washington.
And in this despatch Mr. SEWARD on the part of
his Government, says quite plainly, " There is not
now, nor has there been, nor will there be, the
least idea existing in this Government of suffer-
ing a dissolution of the Union to take place in
any way whatever." Nay, the Secretary of State
at Washington proceeds, beyond this, in terms
yet more explicit : he says—" There will be here
only one nation and one Government, and there
will be the same Republic and the same Con-
stitutional Union that has already survived a
dozen national changes, and changes of Go-
vernment in almost every other country.
These will stand hereafter, as they are now,
objects of human wonder and human
affection." About the "affection" we are certainly
disposed to say little enough. But as to the pro-
bably speedy termination of the war we are in-
clined to be a little more sanguine: For, in this
contest between the Northern and the Southern
States of the American Republic, it is not simply
that the North has a vast and visible preponderance
in wealth and in population, in what are called
"the sinews" as well as in the mere instruments
of warfare, while the South has little beyond
the fierce and maddening incentive of despe-
ration ! It is not this consideration alone
which impresses us with a sense of the inherent
weakness of the South, and of the innate strength
of the North. But beyond that, apart from that,
behind it, within it comes the instant after-
thought that the Civil War now commenced may—
any day—flame out into what is far worse—into a
Servile War. Once let the ports of the Slave States
get effectually blockaded, as they will be eventually,
and that, too, very speedily—and provisions and
other essentials will begin to fall off—the slave-
owners, the white masters, will themselves discover,
through their own individual privations,
the horrors of this internecine struggle
promoted and commenced by themselves! The
Blacks—numbering them in all some 4,000,000—
will, in their turn, begin to inquire into the cause
of their starvation. They will recognise—it requires
no great wit to recognise anything so perfectly
obvious—that they are being actually starved, and
oppressed even beyond all their former experience
of oppression—why ?—in order that they may not
have a hope of their ulterior emancipation ! Then
will begin—then must inevitably begin, a "double
revolt"—the Whites rising in tumult because of
their continued and increasing privations—the
131acks, infuriated not only by their privations, but
'by the remembrance of their past wrongs
and the recognition of their present opportunity !
A powerful enemy without—terrible insurrection
within—both these are matters of dead certainty
for the Confederate States Government. And
so viewing them, it is not very difficult to imagine
the inevitable consequences. JEFFERSON DAVIS
and his—let us say at once—accomplices, will
find themselves, sooner than they may conjecture
even in their most lucid intervals, utterly be-
wildered. And, with the mercy of Heaven, a
speedier close to the present war may then come
than even the most sanguine have yet ventured to
anticipate.

Lord JOHN is an avowed Constitutionalist. If he
advocates anything worth calling reform, nothing
grieves him more than any attempt to show that
he is departing from the principles of the Consti-
tution. And, with certain important deductions,
he is the advocate of Constitutional institutions all
over the world. We think that now, if ever, he is
called upon to consider carefully the demands which
his Conservative Constitutionalism fairly make upon
him. One of the most serious deductions to which we
have just alluded, is his strong leanings to what le
terms the integrity of the Austrian Empire—a
kind of integrity which shall enable the Emperor
of AUSTRIA to wield the military resources of the
Kingdom of Hungary without the necessity of con-
sulting the Diet of that kingdom in regard to
taxes and number of soldiers. In other words,
that in all matters of war and foreign policy Hun-
gary is to be but a province of Austria. Lord
JOHN confesses, with an air of good nature, to
some such notion of the integrity of Austria as this.

Now it can hardly, we trust, be possible to keep
the question of the Constitutional rights of Hun-
gary long out of the House of Commons ; and
perhaps the Lords will have their pro-despot de-
bate over it too. We may hope that Mr. BERNAL
OSBORNE, who spoke so nobly for Hungary in July,
1849, when Lord PALMERSTON answered him at
once so plausibly and so treacherously—for he
was than telling the Court of St. Petersburg that
the British Government had not any formal
expression of opinion to offer—we may hope Mr.
OSBORNE at least will not forget the cause which
he then advocated. May we not then look to Lord
JOHN RUSSELL to give the first place in his regards
to the just constitutional claims of Hungary, and
to suggest to the Emperor of AUSTRIA that the
combined action of the Hungarian kingdom and
the hereditary provinces ought to depend on the
KING and the EMPEROR, respecting the just rights
of each, and on his rendering his government, as a
whole, worthy of the combined support of the
nationalities over which he was sovereign.
In the debate just referred to in 1849, Lord PAL-
MERSTON showed that he knew well the claims of
Hungary to a separate constitution and Govern-
ment, and that the question then was what it is
now, whether these rights should be conceded, or
whether the government of Hungary should be
amalgamated more or less with a constitution at
that time proposed for the remaining part of the
empire. Unhappily, criminally, we think, under
the German influence, as it was thought, of our
Court, Ministers determined to let Russia shed the
blood of Hungary without even the feeblest protest !
But we will not dwell on these times, so painful
to theheart of every Englishman. All we now ask
is that England should make the only atonement in
her power, at a moment when her moral influence,
which Prance would hasten to support, might be
effectually given to the cause of right in Hungary.
We need not recapitulate the unanswerable state-
ments and arguments of M. DEAK's speech on the
address. We only assume that Lord JOHN RUSSELL
knows them well by this time, and knows also that
they are true, and the demands founded on them
just. He is too well versed in European history
not to be aware that M. Dix has but submitted
to the Diet, and through it to all Europe, what the
most absolute Court in Europe, or the sturdiest
Tories in our own House of Lords, or His Royal
Righness PI lace ALBERT himself cannot deny.
Lord JOHN knows that the question now is, whe-
ther a people peacefully demanding their most un-
doubted legal and constitutional rights shall be
longer debarred from them by brute force.
Lord JOHN says he holds old-fashioned notions
about Austria ; but can it be old fashioned to assert
for Austria the right to more than a Personal union,
through the Crown, with Hungary ? Tie notion