The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-12 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.--SIIN OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 12, 1861.

THEB.MOMETBB., IN THB SHADB.
62—highest since noon yesterday.'
46—Lowest this morning and during the night.
67 —this day at noon.

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T T

S TN.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 12, IRAI

Every mail from America brings us accounts of
skirmishes, more or less destructive of life, from the
shores of the Po.tomac to the south-west of Missouri.
The first accounts are generally exaggerated, as
might be expected, and it is rather remarkable,
that though they come to us through the North,
they for the most part are coloured too strongly
against it. The losses are set down as greater than
they are ; or what was by no means a discreditable
failure reads like an utter rout or panic. In most
of these petty engagements the generalship some-
how seems to have been on the side of the South.
Thus in this last affair at Summerville, reported a
little more accurately to-day, Col. TYLER'S Ohio
regiment was caught at breakfast ; was attacked
on two sides ; the Colonel was, in fact, out•gene-
railed ; but then his men fought with desperation,
probably did inflict o❑ the more numerous forces
of the Confederates greater loss than they suffered
themselves; and though separated, in their endea-
vours to cut through an enemy which attacked
them on both flanks and in front simultaneously,
have yet been able to re-unite, while by
a timely warning the Colonel saved his waggon
train. Except while M'CLELLAN was acting so
successfully in Western Virginia, in a subordinate
capacity, the Confederates have almost always
shown the most skill in surprises, and in bringing
forces from several points to bear on the point for
action. In the affair at Missouri, near Springfield,
where the bravo LYON lost his life, FREMONT was
prevented from following to his support by a de-
monstration of General PILLOW'S with 25,000 men,
as it was given out, who yet afterwards appeared
to be but a kind of rabble army.
The season of skirmishes will, however, soon be
over. October was the month always fixed,
by the military men, for the commence-
ment of decisive operations, as soon as it
beearne evident that a serious war was the only
settlement of the controversy. The three months'
voluntßers Mr. LINCOLN himself could hardly hope
would avail to bring the South to bow to Northern
authority, when its leaders had once tasted the
Ploy soon showed how incom-

stets of power.

petetit they were—how wanting, at least, in pub-
lic crpirit, Their marching off the field of battle
at Bull's Run, combined with their quitting PAT-
TISON at Harper's Ferry, and thus liberating
JOHNSTON'S corps to leave that position and come
fresh up by the railroad to the conflict, had more
than anyth ing,to do with the root and panic of
that day. The army now is an army enlisted for
the war. Its time for training has been short
enough, but the Bull's Run affair has had one
good effect which we naturally anticipated—
it has made the independent Northerners
feel that drill and obedience are essential
not only to victory but to safety, and the thousands
of sovereign elect ore, each of whom thinks himself
as good as his officer, have learned that, on duty,
they must as implicitly reaTect their officers' autho-
rity as if the latter were absolute monarchs. There
can be no republicanism in an army before an enemy
—a truth known to be true from all antiquity ; but
Yankees despise antiquity, and have probably
needed the lesson at Bull's Run tcr teach them what
every schoolboy learns from his " Xenophon " and
his " Czesar."

But what will be the result when the autumn
move commences in earnest ? We almost shrink
from the conjecture. The South, encouraged by its
great success, and the in-gathering of the cotton
and other crops having liberated great numbers,
must, as well as the North, have been both increas-
ing its numbers and perfecting its drill. We quite
expect to find it superior in this latter respect, but
also that the North will have the superiority in
numbers and a still greater superiority in artillery
and the -munitions of war. It would seem as if the
first
'hock' of renewed war must be a fearful one.
wo can ha.,,111
O
the NortaY expect now such strategy on the part
will compel a speedy retreat of the
South without much. deadly conflict. It will re-
rcain, too, tobe
being defendiars on
'ell hew far the advantage of
their own soil will neutralise
the pr obable superiority of the
ti:e* North in men and
artV le xy, and, -we may add, inu l"On the whble,
While ,we hope for a few No.
rthern vieton •
es, yet

we should, with our present means of conjecture, )3e
in no way surprised at a few serious repulses.
We must still think, however, that all turns
on the greatest of all the questions involved, and
the one so studiously kept by Mr. LINCOLN and
most Americans in the background—the question
of dealing with slavery. An influential contem-
porary, who always contrives to take the view
which shall spare slavery and slaveholding, speaks
of the Emancipation party in America as a san-
guinary one ! And but for some names, on which it
is useless to cast dirt, would doubtless honour the
whole of them with its most dignified contempt.
Yet we have seen no sanguinary proposals
on the part of Abolitionists, and the probability
is that they think as we do, that a well considered
plan of declaring abolition of slavery as the policy
of the Government would save both blood and
money. It is silly nonsense to talk of Abolitionists
encouraging a servile war. A great number of them
in America itself are actually Peace Society men;
those who so talk and write doubtless calculate on
the ignorance of their auditors and readers. The
basis of Abolitionist plans is, an equitable
compensation for the present Slaveholders.
Not one fixed, indeed, by the prices current
for human beings in the South prior to the Seces-
sion, but one that should he fair under all the cir-
cumstances. The value of slaves must be less than
it was, and will become less every year the qUarrel
continues. Part of the news of this morning is that
within a trifle of £lOO,OOO is just gone to Bombay
to pay for Cotton. Every such remittance is the
sure precursor of other large remittances. Our
East India free labourers are as fond of money
as any of us at home—and as the
rupees for cotton begin to circulate
among the ryots and native estate holders, they
will call up increased supplies as if by magic. The
value of negroes will fall with every hundred
thousand pounds sent to the East, with every
thousand pounds of capital—the only thing wanted
in Jamaica—invested in cotton-growing there. It
will also fall owing to the war and unsettlement of
things in America itself. A moderate compensation
is all that equity requires for another reason.
The whole thing is a system of crime,
and the compensation for a legalized crime ought
never to be equal to the full extent of the loss inci-
dent to geting rid of the crime. To be rid of such
an infernal institution as personal slavery, is itself
an immense part of the compensation.
The North ought, therefore, if it means to suc-
ceed, to take its course at once. It should declare
that slavery is abolished—that it is advancing
South to enforce its abolition—that all owners
who quietly and peacefully renounce the crimi_
nal relation of master and slave will receive an
equitable compensation, to be afterwards arranged ;
that the emancipated slives must work peacefully
for wages, and will not be allowed to squat on lands
they have not purchased by their own earnings,—
that anything like negro risings will be visited
with severe punishment—but that every black "has
rights which every white man is bound to respect"
—and among those rights are " life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." Such a policy would
compel Kentucky and the border states to
yield at once—the rest must soon follow ; and the
fons et origo mali to the American Union would be
dried up for ever.

That strikes involve enormous losses to the
working men themselves, with frequently almost
ruinous damage to their masters, no one now denies.
We did not need Dr. WATTS' well-arranged figures
to convince us of that. He had no difficulty in
showing what probably Mr. POTTER himself kxows
enough to calculate, that thousands who strike for
wages, or time, which is the same, will not re-
cover for years, sometimes not for a lifetime,
the clear losses of refusing to labour. Nor does
the result strike us at all more than we should have
expected, that the direct loss to the men from
seven strikes in the cotton districts, and that of
the London builders, amounted to more than a
million and a half sterling. Every reader at once
observes that he has no doubt of it ; he would not
have been surprised to find the total larger.
The problem is to detect the real cause of strikes,
if there be any general cause or causes, and to
apply the appropriate remedy. It must not be
snpposed that because the loss of the vast sum
above-named is distributed amongst so many per-
sons the loss is lightly felt ; the reverse is the truth.
The sum lost by each is his livelihood. It is
not the diminution of a balance at the bank, or the
failure of a superfluous investment, but the loss of
his daily bread. The suffering, notwithstanding
what clubs and societies can do, is commonly ex-
treme. The aspect of the man himself too fre-
quently reveals the sad truth ; a visit to his home
would tell a yet more melancholy tale. We have
known article after article of furniture parted with
to meet the urgencies of the hour, and we have
admired the cool courage of the sufferers when they
have been really convinced that they were acting
for the good of their class ; for their own good they
have known they were not acting. But they were
not going to be beaten by their masters, or they
should secure ultimately work for all, and on
better terms ; or, if the folly of such reasons or

hopes could be all but demonstrated, yet the un
answerable argument remained, that they could not
desert their fellow-workmen, they must all act
together. A similar feeling would have prevented
the catastrophe at Ball's Run.

That, except by the merest chance, the workman
I
is a tremendous loser by a strike can need no
Idemonstration, but is it possible he should be con-
vinced of it ? One thing makes it difficult. He is
accustomed to live from week to week, and if he
does but scramble through he is too apt to resume
work, when he does so, looking on the time lost as
lof little consequence. And, perhaps, in so far as it
lis merely a loss of food or clothing, when he can live
again as well as before, it does not make much dif-
ference to him. Too frequently, however, his own
health and that of his family, and the furniture of
his house, are sad memantos of the conflict. But
what as much deludes him as anything is the
receipt of money from his club. Notwithstanding
the exhaustion of its funds in a strike, he thinks,
while he gets in this way the money, which he and
others have subscribed, that enough will still be
left should he be laid aside by sickness. Hence he
has lost nothing ; the chief pecuniary benefit of the
Union will still be eantinued to him. Yet this
is but partially true. But for the madness of
wasting in this way the funds which
ought to have been a life or health in-
surance, his relief in sickness, or payments
at his death to his family might have been
very much larger. It is painful to think, in
iaddition to all other evils, of the difference to
Ithe benevolent payments of the unions which in-
evitably must have resulted, had the splendid
sum of half a million not been ahiolutely wasted,
for no return whatever, by the Amalgamated Engi-
neers, and had it been retained in the treasuries of
the societies. Unhappily the loss is never brought
directly before the men, and they suffer the cur-
tailment of payment in time of need, with)ut
recollecting how much better pay they might have
had.
The Unions have, of course, been the chief
causes of strikes; their working is, unhappily, 1