The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-21 00:00:00

THE PAPAL STATES.

A letter from Rome, dated May 11, says :—On
Wednesday last, the Bth inst., at Valmontone, on
the road between Rorre and Frosinone, the French
laid hands on two carts which were travelling
towards the Neapolitan provinces. They were laden
with arms, and were besides bearers of 500 Roman
crowns in copper pieces, coined in Rome, with the
effigy of Francis 11. The drivers of the carts were
made to deliver up some letters in which, after be-
wailing the ill-success of Chiavone's expedition, a
plan was laid out for a great insurrectional out-
break, for which the 2d of next June was appointed.
The carts were brought back to Rome, and are now
lodged in the Castle St. Angelo. The French officer
in command at Valmontone would fain have over-
looked this fresh act of brigandage which was being
carried on under his very nose, but was induced to
interfere by the strong remonstrances of some of
the Roman patriots who had watched and followed
the suspicious-looking conveyances all the way from
the city.

The far-famed Chiavone is here and at large. He
came back to Rome, after suffering a thorough
defeat at the hands of the Italian troops at
Monticello and Nola. At these latter places he had
murdered seven persons in cold blood, all belonging
to the families of Panozzi and De Rossi, and he
makes a boast of his bloody deeds. He brought
back as a trophy the flags he had taken from the
head-quarters of the National Guards of those dis-
tricts. As he went through Valmontone he stopped
to havo a good dinner with his friends, the: Poutie,,,ol
gendarmes. He was stopped on his further promise
by a French military agent, who, however, allowed
him a free passage upon his exhibiting a passport
drawn up in the most perfect order, and bearing the
signature of Monsignor Matteucei, the Governor of
Rome, Minister of the Police. Chiavone talks very
confidently about his socn being again on the move,
ready for fresh exploits.
General Goyon deemed himself bound, on account
of the great noise made about this shocking affair of
Chiavone, to pay his respects to the ex-King Fran-
cis 11., and prefer his dutiful remonstrances ; but
the Bourbon professed himself a perfect stranger to
the whole transaction, utterly ignorant of it, and
declared that all such deeds are to be imputed to
the Papal Government. The Romans, however,
strongly suspect that between the French, the
priests, and the Bourbons there is not much to
choose.

It is not true that the petition of the Roman
people to the Emperor Napoleon has been laid be-
fore the French Embassy at Rome, or that it has
otherwise oozed out among the public at large.

ME CIVIL WAR IN AJLERICA.

(From the Times.)
The advices just received front America leave
little hope of a peaceful solution of the quarrel on
the other side of the Atlantic, though we would still
trust that this suicidal struggle may be averted.
But, if the last hour of the Great Republic has in-
deed arrived, and if the swords of its citizens have
been actually turned against each other, it behoves
us to reflect upon the facts which such a spectacle
will express. The notification of the event will
take a simple form. " Civil war," we shall be in-
formed, " has broken out in the United States."
The intimation will be quite intelligible, and cer-
tainly not unexpected; but has the reader be-
thought himself of its real import P Its import will
be nothing less than this,—that a people among
the most enlightened and educated in the world,
enjoying absolute freedom and institutions framed
upon the latest model, have betaken themselves to
courses which the States of the Old World have
abandoned for centuries as utterly barbarous and
shocking. To get to the days of " civil war" in
Europe we must go back hundreds of years, and
even then we shall find contests infinitely less re-
pulsive than that impending in America. When
Frenchmen fought Frenchmen at Jarnac and Mon-
contour, it was for lofty principles of religions faith.
When Englishmen fought Englishmen at Marston
Moor and Naseby, it was for high principles of
political right. In those days, too, war was not
thought so hateful as now. Nobody then doubted
but war in itself was as allowable as any other form
of action, and each party took the field without
scruple or misgiving in defence of convictions which
could not be otherwise maintained. To this day,
accordingly, we look upon the belligerents with
respect. We recognise the rudeness of their ideas
and the barbarous nature of the arbitrament to
which they appealed, but we cannot refuse them a
certain kind of admiration. Cavaliers and Puritans,
Catholics and Huguenots, are all respectable cha-
racters. Their errors were the errors of the time,
and such questions as were then raised had practi-
cally but one solution.
But how much of this excuse can be pleaded for
the Americans ? They, if this strife should unhap-
pily break out, will be plunging into the worst and
most obsolete kind of war, in the blaze of day and
with all the illumination of reason, for a cause
which it would be hard indeed to invest with any
dignity or defensibility. Stripped of its trappings
and pretexts, the contest will be a quarrel for ter-
ritory. The Americans will be cutting each other's
throats, and carrying fire and sword into each other's
settlements, for the sake of territories which both
parties covet. No war of aggrandisement among
European Powers was ever clearer in its purpose.
The Americans are rushing to arms for an object
which no Government in the Old World would
choose to confess, and they are preparing to fall,
not upon any foreign nation, but upon each other.
The anachronism will be dreadful. When we hear
of battles between such combatants, and in such a
cause, it will be like a War of the Roses or a Gun-
powder Plot in the 19th century. These free, en-
lightened, well-educated, self-governing Americans
will be tearing each other to pieces like the very
Indians whom they supplanted on the soil—like
the very savages whose bones are buried under bar-
rows—the monuments of "civil war" in days when
nothing better was known.
It is a mournful thing to reflect upon—too
mournful, indeed, to allow of any malicious moral-
ising. We cannot afford to exult over the ship-
wreck of democracy, for more than democracy is
involved in the ruin. Every appliance and advan-
tage which could render a community wise has been
found to be without the least effect in preserving it
from the worst of follies. We are accustomed to hear
from a certain school of politicians in this country
that aristocracy is the parent of wars and armies—
of lavish expenditure and martial ideas. Here, how-
ever, is the most purely Democratic State in the
whole world rushing headlong into a species of war
such as no old country would ever dream of, or has
dreamt of for hundreds of years past. We have peo-
ple rising against misgovernment as recently in Italy
or hurried perhaps into a war of succession, as for-
merly in Spain, but the spectacle of a great Common •
wealth deliberately dividing against itself, and
prepared to carry into the homesteads of its own
citizens those horrors which we now shrink from
inflicting even upon enemies, is such a spectacle as
Europe has not seen since dark ages of history.
Those model States of the American Union to which
we were bidden to look with admiration and envy
are acting as Delawares and Pawnees acted a cen-
tury ago. Their resolutions, if they are correctly
reported to us, are the resolutions of savages. The
"bloody belt" is going round the States of the
Confederation as it used to go round the tribes of
a Red Indian league. Professed peacemakers are all
in war paint, the hatchet is dug up, and the talk of 1
Christian Commonwealths is all of scalping and
tomahawking.
It is, perhaps, too late to advise; but if, per-
chance, there should still be room for warning, the
Americans may listen to honest admonition from
England. They have found by this time that no
political jealousies affect our estimate of their de-
plorable quarrel. We would rather see America
united and powerful, even though her strength may
cost us some trouble. We feel that slavery is an
abominable thing, but we know how difficult must
be the problem of abolition, and, above all, we feel
that no convictions, however deeply entertained,
can justify the extremity of civil war. There was a
great soldier in tiis country a few years ago—a
man of iron mind aid resolute will, whose feelings
might have been seared and hardened by sights of
war in every quarter of the globe. Yet that man,
so inflexible and larless, took an opportunity of
saying that there vas nothing which should not be
know one hour of eivf
at,49r than that the
ethiteizehna,radb-owuotrktointgaz,
epaenacee xA,treml,,v
war. Is Abralitial Lincoln;
.and simple-
from which the
done or tezne r pantry should
„IL- Jed
Duke of Wellington recoiled in Is the
President of the new Freetrading Confederacy pre-
pared to adopt a policy which would better befit
the Indians of Florida ?

Not only is there no cause for this strife, but

there is no prospect, or even possibility, of any
gain in the end. It is not to be imagined that the
North can hold the South in subjection, or that the
South, even if it succeeds in repelling the forces of
the North, will have bettered its position by the
proceeding. The great object of the Southerners is
to carry their slaves into new territories, but they
have already found that slave plantations are next
to useless unless the conterminous provinces adopt
and enforce a Fugitive Slave Law. By severing
their connexion with the North, and substituting a
traditional hostility, they will completely deprive
themselves of the co-operation which in this respect
they have hitherto received. A slave crossing the
frontier of the Southern Confederacy will be lost
for ever. Whichever way the case is turned it re-
mains hopeless still. It is bad enough even without
this final extremity of present bloodshed, hut if the
sword is once drawn it will become instantly and
irremediably worse. Coercion, if it means anything,
must mean conquest, and permanent conquest is
impossible. Of the result, in short, nothing is either
discernib!e or probable but civil war, with all its
unspeakable horrors, and with no likelihood of a
speedy end. War breeds war, and a week's fight-
ing will infallibly engender passions which years
will fail to appease. Perhaps the least formidable
prospect is that of such a success on the part of the
South as will enable it to maintain its independence
of the old Union, but that success can only be ob-
tained at the cost of animosities which will divide
America into hostile camps, and leave it a prey to
horrors from which Europe escaped long ago. Is
that to be the end of the model Republic in the
eightieth year of its existence? For the sake of
humanity and progress we trust not ; and we shall
hope even against hope for better things until the
fatal truth is brought home to us.

(Fiore the Daily .s'ews.)

There must be something very intoxicating about
the pleasure of driving, beating, and selling a fel-
low-creature, when people who were never in a
position to hold a slave in their lives, out of mere
hatred of the principles of civil and social equality,
stretch their sympathies over a thousand leagues
of ocean to meet the slaveowners of Georgia
and South Carolina. When this Secession
movement braisa ass, e felt quite, burp that
the friends of reaction at home would not be able to
restrain themselves from proclaiming it a move-
ment on behalf of freedom. They have forborne
longer than we expected, but it seems they can hold
no longer. Without stopping to inquire by what
miserable process any Englishman could so pervert
and muddle bis traditional notions of liberty, we
will look at what the Secessionists are doing, and
inquire what are the principles and institutions of
that Government which they have earned so much
praise for setting up.
It certainly seems strange that a section of the
American community of which the world never
hears save when it tars and feathers or hangs some
white man, a missionary, or traveller from the
North, it may be, accused of abolitionism, should
suddenly conceive a passion for liberty. It is only
partially intelligible when we remembpr a certain
sense of the word which our race has left some 500
years behind. We must go to feudal times, when
high-spirited barons flew to arms to vindicate,
against a too humane and inquisitive central power,
their liberty to harry a helpless local population
with toll and tax and dungeon, to find anything
like the ideas of freedom which the Secessionists
profess. Perhaps the nearest approach to an asser-
tion of the same principle in our own times was the
well-known demand of a great English Duke during
the sgitation of the Reform Bill, who said to his
tenants and their votes, "May I not do what I
like with my own ? " This was thought at the
time very revolting; but it is the faintest echo
of the old spirit, once deemed chivalrous and
gentlemanly. Yet the old and modern claims
are the same. Once let one portion of
society resolve to build up itself whether in
wealth and luxury, or in liberal culture, makes
no moral difference—by the deliberate sacrifice
of another section, consigned on system to per-
petual degradation, and its character is made, no
matter whether its Government is called repub-
lican or monarchical, whether its victims are
black or white. Formerly the slave-owners of the
South regarded their position without complacency,
as one for which they were not responsible, and
which they were simply to make the best of until
a door of escape was open. Such is still the feeling
of the better men of the class. But it is a state of
mind inimical to the entire theory of the new Go-
vernment set up at Montgomery. In the new Con-
federation slavery is sacred, blessed, mysterious,
ineffable. Modern civilisation has gone quite astray
on this matter, and the seceders of the South will
correct its aberrations. To accomplish this the basis
of the institution is laid deep in the fundamental
laws of the Confederacy. It is a part of the new
bouthorn Constitution that r.o law shall be made
denying or impairing the right of property in
slaves; the general government is in all its juris-
diction required to protect slavery. And no wonder,
considering what slavery is to be and do for the
law-makers. Hear the Hon. Mr. Hill, one of the
ablest and most distinguished men in Georgia, and
a moderate and sensible man, as sense and modera-
tion go now-a-days. The hon. gentleman, speaking
at Atlanta, was eloquent on the superiority of a
society which abandons productive industry as a
dishonouring occupation to another and subjugated
race. "We have none of the incentives to riots and
violence that the people of other nations have. 'We
shall never have any bread riots nor pauper mob
violence. Such scenes will never disturb or disgrace
this country. We have no pauper population, and
no inferior classes among us. This stratum, which
is found in society in all other countries, is filled by
our negroes, who are not degraded, but elevated,
by being assigned that position, and who are com-
pelled to work and maintain themselves from being
paupers, whether they will or not."
Thus relieved from the necessity of toil, the
Southerners are to show the world what the
Anglo-Saxon race is capable of becoming. " Our
prospects for the future are great. We shall be
a benefit to all the nations of the earth and be
ourselves. The radical element, which hung as
a weight to impede our progress, we have cut
off and left. We shall have the greatest im-
provement of our race, and constitute the most ele-
gant society on earth. We shall have society that
will charm the world by its elegance—all our white
population educated and intelligent, with peace and
plenty smiling over our happy land." And all this
glory and bliss will be due to slavery as protected
and developed under the new constitution. The
results to humanity, of course, will be proportion-
ately great. Such a grand spectacle must tell upon
the outer world. So Mr. Hill proceeds :—" Slavery
is right, and if left to its own course, the world
will be convinced of this truth. Its rectitude is
undeniable, and its duration is that of human want.
Slavery will ultimately be its own logic to the
mind, its own power in the earth, and its own
bayonet to its foes. This day will come. It may
be delayed by wars or commotions, but it will come.
Our example—our progress and good government
will carry conviction to the whole world. Five
years will not have rolled around before the
Northern people will consent for slavery to go to
the Canada line, if by it they could get us back into
the Union. They do not understand this matter.
Let us, by our example, brash away the clouds of
ignorance which now so befog them."
Now, all this is simple and coherent enough as a
theory. It cannot be carried out, for compulsory
labour is not and cannot become sufficiently produc-
tive to supply for all the white men in the society
where it prevails those wants which modern civili-
sation inspires. And if it could be done, affrighted
Christendom would recoil with horror before the
spectacle of a state founded on principles essenti-
ally Pagan. But as a scheme it is intelligible to
transparency, and it is far less astonishing that it
should be proclaimed in the Slave States than that
anybody reared amidst institutions of popular free-
dom should hail its proclaimers as champions of
liberty. When we read that the seceders of to-day
are but carrying out the principles of Washington,
Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, the explanation is
at hand, that a man may invoke those venerable
names without knowing very accurately what
those who bore them thought about slavery. But
Englishmen who do not write can tell, without
the aid of I'innock, the difference between liberty
and an arrogant lawlessness, and we ask our
friends in the free States of America not to be-
lieve that because their struggle is here and there
misrepresented for party purposes in England,
the English people do not thoroughly understand
the nature of the contest in which they are en-
gaged.

A VOLUNTEER'S FORCED MAItCII.—An incident
occurred at Castle Cary, on Monday last, in connection
with the rifle battalion drill, which is worthy of record, as
evincing what may be achieved by vigour and resolution,
when the heart is in the right place. Mr. Robert Gifford,
of SheptonMontague, a private in the 23d Somerset,walked
--to Castle Cary to join his comrades who had chartered an
omnibus from Cary to Wells, but mistaking the time fixed
for the departure of the 'bus, he did not arrive at Cary until
10.30. The 'bus had left at 10 to a minute. Here was a
pretty fix for our gallant rifleman, who had promised his
commanding ofilcer to be at the muster of his company at
Wells at 1 o'clock. Weil, well, " Where there's a will
there's a way," and here there was a very extraordinary
way too; for our brave volunteer, nothing daunted, and
"—ling perhaps thc4 he was already three miles on the
at double
road, slung 11::_rift° across Iltipaefr, azul sertins off
• in tires to fan ut, having, ag,
quick time, reached Wells . fnot the entire I
coutred as, he was, actually accomplished
distance from Cary to Wells, being 13 miles, in rather lees
than three houra.—§liorbow ne Joirnal,