The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-19 00:00:00

attack them their failure was equally conspicuous.
There is something childish and Chinese in the
" buggaboo" sort of game played in the fac of two
very large masses of armed men of sticking up
painted guns, or " quakers," in sham works, of
planting pumps before their sham lines, and of
firing ricks of hay and barn doors with redhot pel-
lets. If General Beauregard is ready to be attacked
but not to attack, General M'Clellan is also pre-
pared to receive an offensive movement rather than
than to make one. In fact, they are both perfectly
well aware at this moment that their armies are
quite beyond their grasp, and that all they could
beuld
do in such a country as lies between them would
to depend on the officers of brigades to work their
men almost independently, and to hold their own
behind their lines and in the position in which they
are placed. Any attempt to manoeuvre or to handle
even a third of the reputed forces before Washing-
ton in that hilly, wooded region must fail. No coup
crceil can be of service unless the General directs
operations from a balloon by an electric telegraph
to each colonel's pocket. A regiment marching
along is lost to sight in a few hundred yards as
completely as if it was a rabbit bolted into a warren-
hole, or bobbing through a turnip field. The advan-
tages are all on the side of the defensive force ; but
of the two the Confederates are more familiar with
the ground. Still it is obvious in the present temper
of the public, fretted as they have been for months
past by announcements that " a great battle will
take place immediately," that some forward move-
ment must be made, and that all the money
and men distributed about Washington must do
something. Not that there is now-a-days any of the
ignorant impertinence and arrogant clamour which
led to Bull's Run, but that the North, which has
given so much, wants something in return now
that the fighting season has arrived. Two large
armies cannot stand face to face continually with
raging nations behind them. But where is Beaure-
gard's army ? There are traces of the enemy along
the Federal front; there areshootings of sentries and
small skirmishes between pickets, but as far as I
can learn there is no positive knowledge that the
bulk of the army is at any place in particular,
though it is quite certain that whenever a Fede-
ralist force appears a Confederate force is soon in
view of it. If Beauregard expects that his oppo-
nent will march directly on his position in front of
Manassas I think he will be disappointed, and he
will probably be forced at last either to divert a
portion of his forces to the west, with long marches
and a difficult country before him, or to make the
attempt on which I have always calculated, if ever
he could obtain possession of the Potomac, to cross
into Maryland. There would be no novelty in illu-
strating the position by a reference to the attitude
of Sir Richard Strachan and the Earl of Chatham,
but the position is nevertheless like enough. Gen.
M'Clellan is so well acquainted with his army by
this time that he must be aware many of his
inferior officers are not fit for their places. Of his
men he is sure. The rank and file are equal to
their work. The want of proper officers is felt
most in the Cavalry and in the Artillery, as well as
in the Quartermaster's department. Talk of the
system of purchase in our army ! If any one will
turn to the New York papers he will see plenty of
advertisements which show that purchase of com-
missions of such a sort as never should be tolerated
is not unknown in the United States. One gentle-
man offers the sum of £2O for a lieutenant's com-
mission " in a regiment actually in the field."
Another has a company to dispose of on moderate
terms. A third is anxious to get a regiment all to
himself. Political intrigues and low canvassings
are also at work, for the colonelcy of a regiment is
a political as well as a military position, and gives
a man a status in the eyes of the people of his State
which is useful when the war is over. But all this
arises necessitate ref. Here is a prodigious force
rapidly rising towards the number voted by Congress,
out of the ground as it were, to be officered as best
it may, under all the forms of election and voting
and canvassing familiar in republics, and known out
of the military world, in constitutional monarchies.
The original regular army, which did not exceed
20,000 men, was deprived of many of its officers by
the seceded States. The gentlemen in private life
who had received a military education at 'West
Point were divided according to their States, and
furnished an inadequate contingent to the armies
on both sides. The result was, that all the regular
army officers received promotion enough to turn
their heads ; lieutenants and captains became gene-
rals of brigade. No one would take anything less
than a brigade, and regiments were regarded as poor
commands by men who could scarcely, in the natural
course of events, have hoped to command a company
for years to come. Skeleton regiments were con-
structed in order that " colonels" might hang their
shakos on the horses, and colonels were made because
they said they had regiments which were only ab-
stract creations, The bar, the railroad board, the
bench, the church, the counting-house, the surgery,
furnished leaders; while the desk, the shopman's
counter, and the indigence of the bourgeoisie,
yielded more than their proportion of officers of
inferior rank. These men are distinguishable
at once by their air, their mode of address,
their long hair, and the uncouth way in which
they wear their uniforms. But, after all, the
wonder really is that the army is so well officered
as it is, and the number of men of fine faces and
figures, with the appearance and manner of the
soldier about them, which one sees in the streets
and in the camps, shows what a large military ele-
ment there must have been among the American
people, for the class of which I speak is beyond all
proportion to the habits of the people, and yet it
has dropped easily and naturally into the discharge
of military duties. It will be long, however, before
the whole mass is thoroughly leavened with the
spirit of discipline and obedience. There is no
certainty about the operations of troops under such
circumstances, and they will be liable to such occur-
rences as took place the other night, when in a
simple movement from contiguous camps two
columns of Federalists began to blaze away into
each other, and inflicted loss on both sides before
the mistake was discovered. As to officers mid men
killed or wounded by hasty shots from alarmed
sentries, they are more numerous than they ought
to be in a carefully-dzilled army, and the strange
recklessness which seems to be a characteristic of
the Anglo-Saxon race is exhibited in the way in
which the men handle their arms, the result of
which has been in a few months to send upwards of
350 men to hospital with wounds and mutilations,
and many others to their graves. Gen. M'Clellan
rides and reviews indefatigably. There is scarcely
a day on which he does not cover some 20 or 30
miles of ground about the camps, and he is now
attended occasionally by the Count of Paris and
the Duke of Chartres. What a singular turn of
fortune ! The sons of the Bourbon in the train of
the son of the Philadelphia doctor ! How strangely
it reads, "Son Altesse Royale le Comte de Paris,
Etat Majear de General M'Clellan, &c." And face
to face with them on the staff of Gen. Beauregard
is a Polignac. The young Princes are favourites
with the staff and officers of the army, which,
accustomed to a strong foreign infusion, has
nevertheless learnt the difference between princes
of the blood of Bourbon and the foreigners of infe-
rior clay. There is a list in the New York papers
of the aliens in the American service ; a list
of the rank and file would be an astonishing docu-
ment in that respect, but as the war continues the
native American element will more largeily predo-
minate. I have returned from the West Etna have
oiranl:attieiemetto make these few remarks, and to assure
at present people in England that no movement is
but that, bfo eoearteenplated in front of Washington ;
the month is over, land and sea will
resound once more with the tumult of ba'
[AD,

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Germany seems destined to exhibit the impo-
tence of philosophy. No better study could fall to
the lot of one of her own professors than examina-
tion of the history of the last 20 years. If the in-
quirer were a sound-minded and impartial man, he
would end by confessing that neither tentative and
narrow-minded England, nor volatile end revolu-
tionary France, nor Turkey sunk in sloth, nor Spain
blinded by fanaticism, has come so short of its own
wishes and the just expectation of the world as these
Germans, who have founded a science of politics on
the basis of the necessarily true, and dissolved the
principles of human things into their original
nebulae. To those who remember the events of 1848
and the two succeeding years the speech of the King
of Prussia at Konigsberg—an abstract of which we I
publish to-day—will give a kind of shock. Not that
any one will be surprised to hear that a legitimate
German Sovereign, fall of notions of his own
dignity as a King, a soldier, as the guardian of the 1
Rhine, the wary guest of Compiegne, the suppli- 1
cated of Austria, and the reverenced of a score of
smaller Princes, should believe that there is an
inherent divinity in his own person, and that he
reigns by an authority prior and superior to that by
which his subjects hold their lives and property
and liberties. The weaknesses of human nature
need not to be dwelt upon. Every one knows that
no strength of mind, no amiability of disposition,
no intercourse with the world, will prevent men
from attaching in their secret hearts an excessive
importance to any superior quality or position which
they may fancy that they possess. The nobleman
in the midst of his affability seldom forgets that
he is noble, and a touch may make him retire into
his Dukedom or his Marquisite. The clergyman,
though meeting ministers of all " denominations"
on an Exeter-hall platform, still derives a secret
comfort from reflecting that apostolical and lordly
hands have been laid on his head, and that
his commission has not come to him through the
Deacons of Zion Chapel. That a reigning Sovereign
should feel the difference between his own porcelain
and the vulgar delf of which Parliaments and Diets
are constructed is but natural, but that at this day
a King, and a King of Prussia, should venture to
tell it openly to his subjects shows how much the
German will bear, and how thoroughly his rulers
are aware of his suppleness,
On Thursday King William held a great recep-
tion of functionaries and other persons. Among
them were the representatives of the two Chambers
of the Prussian Diet. These the King addressed in
the most formal manner and in the most explicit
language. On no incidental occasion, with no
chance and unstudied phrase, but as a solemn mani-
festo on the eve of his coronation, he laid down the
doctrine of Divine right. After thanking them for
their presence, he said, " The rulers of Prussia re-
ceive their crown from God. To-morrow, therefore,
I shall take the crown from the Lord's table and
place it on my head. This is the meaning of the
expression, ' _King by the grace of God,' and therein
lies the sanctity of the Crown, which is inviolable.
I know that you will thus understand the meaning
of the act which I have summoned you to witness.
And then comes a sentence truly remarkable—
"Aou will advise me, and I will listen to your ad-
, vice."
To feel the full force of this extraordinary decla-
ration one must remember that some years ago this
very formula, " By the grace of God," was hotly
discussed by the two parties in the Prussian Lower
Chamber, the Liberals wishing to expunge it, on
the ground that it was a confession of the doctrine
of Divine right, while the other party endeavoured
to explain it away, calling it a mere traditional
phrase, showing a decent respect for holy things,
and not committing the nation to any an-
tiquated theory. Well, it now appears that the
Liberals were quite in the right, and that the
interpretation which the official party scouted
some years back, when Frederick William IV.
was desirious of conciliating the multitude, is now
affirmed with every mark of solemnity by the
present King. It is unnecessary to inquire what is
the real meaning of the words " Deigratia." That
they have been borne by the English Sovereigns as
part of their style from early times precludes us
from blaming any Prince for the use of them.
Yet in the sense which the King of Prussia gives
them they are subversive of all true Government.
' This sense, we are convinced, never belonged to
them till monarchical power obtained:its supremacy
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and gene-
rated a school of lawyers and theorists who made it
the source of all human institutions. Indeed, a '
crown to which the wearer had an indefeasible
right, and which he could not forfeit for any mis-
conduct, was a possession unknown to the Western
world in the middle ages, when men had enough of
the original barbarian in them to require a personal
superiority in their ruler, and when the Church
would have been slow to sanction an infallibility
equal to its own. The words "by the, grace of
God" expressed an obligation, and not a right.
They were an acknowledgment that Kings are re-
sponsible to a higher Sovereig ;
n, and hold their
tphoewreirghfotrs tohfe good With° people not, on the con-
trary, that both God and man are bound to respect
gives to 111,
snbroeotltbhoe France,dliae
But the `bseaning which the King of Prussia
ce with
which i' " he
sne despatch concludes :—" The Crown,"
says words is- plain from the sentence
,-- ~ "has been surrounded by new institutions. by
:, a 13'fincelY succession.
benefit.irt ue of
of
yowhichur counsel.you
Youdestined
will
adviseto
me, i.
at
ntdh
le
shall listen to your advice." This, then, is the
Constitution of Prussia. The Chambers of this
enlightened kingdom, sitting at learned and philo-
sophical Berlin, affecting to lead Germany, to con-
in the eyes of their own King, not a Legislature,
and having
to " advise" theraCinaro
eo.ooaafnd to influence Europe generally, are,
r:hgeh
land; t to sa y
but whatul e shallthey
are mereand shall
councils
wintoautherity with himself,
" afford it the benefit of
tinir mulooll" It totwreu, %twig King Waligth