The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-19 00:00:00

whose members, one and another, possess full prac-
tical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions,
and whatever else, Whether useful or elegant, is
known in the whole world, and there is scarcely one
from which there could not be selected a president,
a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, abun-
dantly competent to administer the Government
itself. Nor do I say this is not true also in the
army of our late friends, now adversaries, in this
contest. But it so much better is the reason
why the Government which has conferred such
benefits on both them and us should not be broken
up." What will our brave, but modest volunteers
say to this ? When will the Sovereign, much less
the Horse Guards, as the Sovereign's military servant,
address them in this style ? With regard to the
President's first remark, we beg to inform him that
all our soldiers, as numerous as theirs now are, have
" taken their places of their own free choice."
As might have been expected from the general
character of Presidents' Messages, the President
writes as our Prime Ministers speak, stating his
policy and justifying it by argument. He almost
directly accuses Mr. BUCHANAN'S Government of
complicity with the rebels. They had guns at Fort
Sumter equallto the best of our own, and outnum-
bering them ten to one. A disproportionate
share of Federal muskets had found their
way south ; accumulations of public re-
venue were lying ready for them to seize ;
the navy was scattered far and wide, and the
officers were found ready to resign rather than
fight for the Government, though their men con-
tinued steady. The animus of recording these
facts in a message cannot be mistaken. His own
avowed policy was, he says, to exhaust pacifio
means, as he proposed to do in his inaugural speech ;
and he argues at length to show that the attack
on Fort Sumter was a direct attack on the Go-
vernment. If the reader will turn to The Sun of
the 18th of March, he will find towards the close of
" The Inaugural" of Mr. LINCOLN, these words—
" In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen,
and not in mine, is the momentary issue of civil
war. The Government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in Heaven to destroy the Government,
while I shall have the most solemn one, to preserve,
protect, and defend it." Fort Sumter's fall con-
summated the aggression, the President argues,
which compelled him to act upon his oath.
The reader has seen that Mr. LINCOLN is very
philanthropic. He feels the importance of this
quarrel "to the world," to the civilised
world of course. He thus clearly puts
the case—" It presents to the whole family
of man the question whether a constitu-
tional republic or democracy, a government of the
people by the same people, can or cannot maintain
its territorial integrity against its own domestic
foes. It presents the question whether discontented
individuals, too few in numbers to control the ad-
ministration according to the organic law in any
case, can always, upon the pretences made in this
case, or any other pretences, or arbitrarily without
any pretence, break up the Government, and thus
practically put an end to free government upon the
earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics
this inherent and fatal weakness ?' Must a Go-
vernment of necessity be too strong for the liberties
of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own
existence !"

This is an adroit way of elevating the character
of the struggle, but not quite an honest one. The
real question is—Can a confederation, one half of
which cherishes as the dearest social institution the
" sum of all villanies," as honest SOHN WESLEY
called it, amalgamate under a common government,
judiciary and administrative, with the other half
free from this accursed abomination ? Mr. LINCOLN
ought to know that the " whole family of man"
takes an infinitely deeper interest in the abolition
of that infernal institution, which he is content to
take again beneath his wing, than in settling the
question whether the federation of " Sovereign
States" in a republic, or their uniting, as England,
Holland, Belgium, and Italy have done, under a
constitutional hereditary Sovereign, is the best
mode of government. They know that the latter
confers more political freedom than the tyrant mob
allows in the United States; they can therefore be
satisfied with it. But they know that slavery is a
damnable violation of all humanity and religion,
and not to be tolerated for an instant.

It is on this point that Mr. LINCOLN lacks moral
courage, as much as he overflows with that of the
physical sort. If the reader turns to the almost
unintelligibly vague paragraph on this subject, he
will find it very suspicious looking. It talks of
the Executive being guided by the law and the
Constitution—and refers to his inaugural address
as indicating the course he will take when the
rebellion is suppressed. If our readers will look
back again to The Sun of the 18th of March,
they will see that he is there on very
bland terms with slavery. He recites that wicked
clause in the Constitution, which in direct contra-
riety to the noble old Hebrew Law forbidding
any one to deliver up the bondsman escaped from
his master, requires the unhappy fugitive slave to
be given up to the lash. Righteous or wicked,
says ABRAHAM LINCOLN, it must be done—we
must do " the evil" of surrendering the fugitive
slave, that " the good" of maintaining our blessed
Constitution " may corns !" Of such politicians
we are tempted to add the words of the Apostle
whom we have partly quoted—" whose damnation
is just." Mr. LINCOLN is not the man for this
crisis—not more so than Louis NAPOLEON was
at Villafranea for the Italian crisis, or than Count
RECHBERG and his Master were for the Hungarian
crisis. Re palters with the cause of all the trouble,
andwith the first rights of 4,000,000 of men, as much
American subjects as their masters. He knows
that there is a von,
at the root of his beloved
gourd—" the Constitution
of the Union"—which
has sprung up so quietly, and so large, that he has
not the courage to bare the root, and to destroy
the cause of the danger. Give me back, he
piteously exclaims, give me back, if it
cost 400,000,000 dollars, and
my beloved Slave States, 400,000 men,
give me back
es, my
precious slaveholders, and my millions of crea-
tures "held to labour," who have no rights I am
bound to respect, and whom I will send back if they
stray for freedom, as I would horses or sheep, or
swine, if they strayed for grass or roots: Such is
the real interpretation of Mr. LINCOLN'S "in-
augural"—and for this precious object he asks the
sympathy of "the whole family of man 1."
Mr. LINCOLN seems much afraid " lest there be
some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to
what is to be the course of the Government towards
the Southern States after the rebellion shall have
been suppressed," and he endeavours by these vague
generalities to allay their fears. He must remem-
ber, however, that it is not by trimming and
truckling to timid friends of slavery that he can
command the enthusiasm of the world. We fully
concede that every inch of the legal argument
against the rebels is on his side—but even he does
not deny the right of revolution, and revolution
is at the bottom always a question of strength. It
is, we acknowledge, very ingenious to represent
the question as one whether " ballots; or bullets"