The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-14 00:00:00

an eminent man at home, favourable to liberty, and
hostile to slavery. We felt a ittfle disappointed
when an inferior man, as we supposed, at least
one unknown in England—Mr. LINCOLN—was se-
lected for the Presidency. Now, we regard Mr.
SEWARD as an utterly unprincipled politician—a
man preferring slavery for the South if it does
not trouble the North; and a Minister who,
as we strongly suspect, would not be sorry to get
the North out of its disgraceful humiliation by the
South, through a war with England. It would, in-
deed, be ruin to thousands of his countrymen—death,
literally, to other thousands—but what would it
signify? Mr. SEWARD would become great
thereby. We believe that at this moment there is
ten times more humane consideration in England
for the sufferings Americans must endure, if we
are compelled to fight, than there is in the breast of
Mr. SEWARD himself. We fear he will urge on his
countrymen to hostile courses, to purchase the tem-
porary popularity of his rowdies, and the execrations
of posterity.

Mr. WEED is certainly in the wrong if he
supposes that England will put up with the attempt
to humiliate us, by making us dance attend-
ance on protracted negotiations. The first
answer, if it be one of objections, on the grounds
of international law, may he entitled to a reply
and an ultimatum, unless indeed our Government
has despatched an ultimatum already. That, how-
ever, would be the extreme of forbearance. One
point is so clear—the illegality of the seizure with-
out condemnation by a court—that there is not a
word to be said for it. If Mr. SEWARD means
peace, he will accept the illegality as an honour.
able and easy means of getting out of the difficulty,
even if he thinks the seizure substantially right.
He will acknowledge that other nations cannot
accept Lynch Law at the hands of Americans,
however satisfactory it may be as a domestic ad-
ministration of justice in New York or Baltimore.
As our Government is understood to have confined
itself advisedly to the reason which admits of no
refutation, a negative, or even procrastinating
reply, can only result from the same temper as
dictated the rude speech to the Duke of NEW-
CASTLE and the PRINCE OF WALES.

Mr. BUXTON, in his speech at Maidstone on
Thursday night, dwelt much on the suitableness of
arbitration in the dispute—should Mr. LINCOLN
have the folly to make a dispute of it—between
England and America. There is one consideration
of importance in this case—who is to be the
arbitrator or arbitrators ? There is also another—
who is to bind the American to good faith ?
In the last case we attempted to settle
with them by arbitration, though pledged to abide
by the decision of the arbitrators, they refused the
award, and quarrelled with us over it for nearly
thirty years. Of what use is arbitration with such
repudiators of moral as well as of pecuniary obliga-
tions ? We acknowledge the merit of the arbitra-
tion clause introduced by Lord CLARENDON into the
Paris Treaty ; but then its utility implies that the
honour of the nations who refer the case can be
implicitly relied on.
We can conceive of no arbitration which would
bind Mr. SEWARD and Mr. LINCOLN but one of
all the maritime Powers of Europe. They all,
as well as England, are deeply interested in this
question. If England has to fight now, it will
be with the sympathies of every Power which
has ships at sea ; and it is fair, when one
individual of a maritime community quarrels with
another, that all should be invited to decide
on the right of the case. To this, probably
America would objeet. She would challenge
every one of the jury—but why—because every
juryman would feel that if he sanctioned the seizure
of the Commissioners, his own turn for insult would
come next. There is no power which America has
flattered more than it has France, unless we except
Russia—would Mr. SEWARD accept Louis NAPO-
LEON'S Government as an arbitrator' We fear
not. Yet we have certainly no reason to presume
on French partiality. America, however, we sus-
pect, after all her toadying of France would be
very reluctant to abide by her decision.
One thing England must insist on is, that the
question be not again hung up, as the boundary
question referred to the King of the NETHERLANDS
was, in consequence of the United States refusing
to accept her decision, though they had pledged
themselves to do so. We have had enough of such
wearisome chicanery ; besides, even a boundary
question could better lie unsettled than one in-
volving the personal liberty of two individuals who
had committed themselves to the safeguard of
our flag. It would be intolerable that Messrs
SLIDELL and MASON should lie in a wretched pri-
son, should the Washington Government—if Wash-
ington be a centre of Government so long—once
more reject an award, and dispute with us-for eight-
and-twenty years whether they had a right to
seize them or not. We imagine England, unless
she objected to it as undignified, would feel little
fear of abiding by the arbitration either of France
singly or of all the States of Europe.

Mr. HORSMAN'S abandonment of all hope of Par-
liamentary Reform is so complete and absolute in
itself that it would amount almost to Political
Despair, only that he evidences himself such entire
contentment under it. Never was there a more
smug complacency than that 'displayed by the
right hon. member for Stroud upon an occurrence
that he affects still to regard as a sort of national
disappointment. " The question of Parliamentary
Reform," he said on Tuesday, " was killed in 1860,
and was buried in the silence of the QUEEN'S
Speech in 1861. The nation," he then went on to
say, "instead of indulging in a general mourning,
indulged in something that sounded like a general
fit of merriment; and well it might, when it found
that that great demand for Parliamentary Reform
—that national, overpowering, and irresistible de-
mand, that had been in the mouths of every Minis-
ter and Statesman—that had been the prominent
topic of every QUEEN'S Speech, the cause of so many
Cabinet Councils, the subject of so many hustings
speeches, was by the unanimous testimony of his
own champions and apostles, so far as regarded the
constituencies, such a delusion—so far as regarded
the representatives such a gigantic sham, that out
of 650 of the deeply-pledged members of the House
of Commons, only 46 could be found to enter even
a formal and unmeaning (!) protest against a
Minister that he stormed office upon a pledge
of Reform, abandoned Reform, and yet retained
ostffiLe." thoßuagtr a
hhesomewlohnagt
,p,burlleaotfheacrsebnyteint,cew.e
hßauvte,
the consolation of knowing when we come to look
at it again that it comprises within it so much !
Such half-veiled sympathy in the exultation
expressed by the derisive Charivari that greeted
1 the final bursting of the Reform Babble—that
" something that sounded like a general fit of
(
merriment" both within and without the walls of
Parliament ! So earnest a Reformer is Mr. HORS-
MAN ! So heart-and-soul is he for the renovation
of our whole representative system ! Again, the
portentous and Brobdignagian sentence but just now
excerpted from Mr. HORSMAN'S late vacation ad.
dress to his Stroud constituents, comprises within
it so just and happily timed a gibe at what the right