The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-25 00:00:00

any fight in the South. The Southern chivalry
wql collapse into exile like an over-inflated
balloon—and, instead of peace, I hope the next
news will bring submission to the Federal Power,
or that the hordes of the Pirates are burnt
to the ground." There is an indication of a
deprecatory character at this—followed, however,
by ringing cheers, not from Americans recollect, but
from Englishmen ! And Mr. TRAIN continues—
"Never," he exclaims, "was known before such an
outbreak of nationality." Another allowable, per
haps more than allowable, rapture of exaggeration
—that we will pass like its predecessor. "The
Hermit PETER and his Crusaders," he says, "and
the rising of the Girondists . . . were nothing
in comparison to the outburst of enthusiasm from
the insulted North, who [here follows a truly
transatlantic figure of speech] will pour down upon
the pirate bands and traitor gangs and sweep them
off like turning the waters of the Mississippi into
the drains of New Orleans and purify the city, by
cleansing the accumulated political stench of the
party lately in office." Later in his speech Mr.
TRAIN adjures his English audience—" Don't forget
what I have told you about the issue of the contest
—America must drop the comparison. It is no
longer North and South, it is order against anarchy
—patriots against parricides—Unionists against
traitors. They must submit," he says, " or—be
exterminated." Speaking of the desperation of
their plight (the plight of the Southerners) at this
moment, he breaks forth in words thus impassioned :
—" They have sown the wind and must reap the
whirlwind—with naval brigades forming—patriotic
bands raising—merchants contributing—bells ring-
ing Union—cannon roaring Union—fair girls wear-
ing next their bosom Union bows, woven with Union
rosettes—and cheers going up to Heaven from the
Union men of Union-square—with such action Ame-
rica fears no evil." And, in a yet more fervid strain,
he thus continues—" The fisherman at Marble-
head drops his net and cries Union, to the rescue—
the farmer on the Green Mountain hears it at the
plough, and the Ohio boatman passes over to the
hunter on the prairie, onward over a range of moun-
tain passes to the gold digger on the Sacramento,
when up go the flags, as San Francisco cries Union
along the line. General HOUSTON'S great heart is
gladdened at the sound," he cries out, " and on he
rushes with the red artillery. Fort Pickens booms
a reply that reaches to the capitol, and cheers
our old back-woodsman PRESIDENT, till the tears
start as he hears the cry of Union now, and
Union for ever. It has been our living senti-
ment, and by the blessing of GOD it shall be our
dying sentiment—Union now and Union for
ever." Almost what we call in an Irishman a
bull, and in an Englishman a blunder—that about
" our dying sentiment" being "Union for ever."
But the heart from -which those words of
patriotism leap in tones so earnest, commands our
heartiest sympathy for its enthusiasm. We bow
before that enthusiasm. And while we recognise
in the speaker one who is, body and soul, an
American—we recognise in him also one who is,
we may almost venture to say, a Compatriot.

The severest condemnation of the Southern
President's Address is its tone of "injured inno-
cence." In some of the continental states, houses of
a character which, in this country, subject the
landlords to a prosecution, are licensed by the
Government, and their unfortunate inmates receive
a regular license too. But we never beard of any
Christian Government treating this domestic insti-
tution as a perfectly innocent thing, much less of
its being exalted to a virtue, and represented as the
perfection of civilised society. In Japan, indeed,
as the Bishop of VICTORIA tells us, the TYCOON and
the DAntios deal with the " social evil" much in
the fashion that Mr. DAVIS does with slavery ;
they regard it as a social good, and think the
wages of female shame as honourable a source of
gain as any other. President DAVIS assumes,
throughout his long address, that slavery is just
as good an institution as representative government,
trial by jury, or anything else which has been sup-
posed to belong to the most advanced stages of
Christian society.
In one passage Mr. DAVIS sets forth, with
American eloquence, the blessings which the whites
have conferred on the negroes by using them as
property. The primeval one—that of increasing
and multiplying—the negroes have enjoyed almost
to the same extent as Australian sheep—they have

increased, he says, from 600,000 at the date of the
constitutional compact, we presume he means in
1'787, to upwards of 4.000,000. While as to their
moral and religious improvement, according to
Mr. DAVIS'S account, those "brutal savages," under
the mild teaching of the South, have become
"docile, intelligent, and civilised agricultural

labourers, supplied not only with bodily
comforts, but with careful religious instruc-
tion." The marvels wrought by this gentle
moral and Christian use of the " brutal
savages" show that it is the system on which
the smiles of Heaven rest, for it has converted
the South, of course for the benefit of the former
savages, into a seeond Eden. " Under the super-
vision of a superior race, their labour has been
so directed as not only to allow a gradual and
marked amelioration of their own condition, but
to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles
of the wilderness into cultivated lands, covered
with a prosperous people; towns and cities have
sprung into existence, and rapidly increased in
wealth and population, under the social system of
the South." The white population has also increased
from a million and a-quarter to eight millions and
a-half between 1787 and 1860: "and the productions
of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for
the full development and continuance of which the
labour of African slaves was and is indispensable,
has swollen to an amount which forms nearly
three-fourths of the exports of the whole United
States, and become absolutely necessary to the
wants of civilised man."

Englishmen should see how a man of Mr.
DAVIS'S intelligence can portray the blessings of
Southern slavery. Either this is all done in sin-
cerity and belief in the truth of the picture, or it
is a consciously got-up representation to delude,
were that possible, the Christian world. If the
former, probably the history of Christian civilisa-
tion does not contain a more striking instance of
the subversion of the moral instincts by a long
course of crime. In earlier days they were not so
entirely perverted. Slavery was felt to be, in
itself, the evil and the wrong Which Christianity
has, throughout Europe, pronounced it to be; the
plea was, " We inherit it, we do not defend it, but
we must have time to get rid of it by gradual
amelioration of the slave's condition." Now
the South is mad with the North, because the lat-
ter retains the Christian view of slavery, while the
former has sunk back to a Mahommedan or heathen
view of it. The South now uses its possession of
the Christian's revelation, not to learn from it the
sinfulness of slavery, but convert the Redeemer
himself into its patron. In looking at the eulogies
of slavery we have quoted above from Mr. DAVIS'S
pen, one might, however, be alnioat tempted to
ask him what hinders the emancipation. of these
negroes ? If they have been rendered such
" docile, intelligent, and civilised agricultural