The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-28 00:00:00

it. It will not be saved by mutual recriminations, I legislate on all subjects whatever, in the common
or by debates in Con re like that of the k territories of the United States, and I certainly
poweretWess over the territories, topics on
which the opinions of parties have become dog-
matic ; it cannot be saved by proving secession to be
illegal or unconstitutional, since persons bent on
it have got beyond all concern for legality—nor,
by discussing the right of coercion ; for the practical ,
question will become this—whether secedin g
States have a right to coerce the remaining ones to
acquiesce in a dissolution ; nor would a Union pre-
served by the sword be worth preserving. Con-
gressional compromises also will not save the
Union ; on this important point we quote his
reasons verbally—" I know indeed, that tra-
dition favours this form of remedy. But it is
essential to its success, in any case, that there
be found a 'preponderating mass of citizens,
so far neutral on the issue which separates
parties that they can intervene, strike down clash-
ing weapons, and compel an accommodation.
Moderate concessions are not customarily asked by
a force with its guns in battery ; nor are liberal
concessions apt to be given by an opposing force
not less confident of its own right and its own
strength. I think, also, that there is a prevailing
conviction that legislative compromises which
sacrifice honestly cherished principles, while they
anticipate future exigencies even if they do not
assume extra constitutional powers, are less sure
to avert imminent evils than they are certain to
produce ultimately even greater dangers. Indeed,
Mr. President, I think it will be wise to discard
two prevalent ideas or prejudices, namely, first
that the Union is to be saved by somebody in par-
ticular : and secondly, that it is to be saved by
some cunning and insincere compact of pacification."
Mr. SEWARD would certainly appear to have all
American experience on his side ; for the Missouri
compromise,and the Fugitive Slave Law compromise,
and others, less or greater, between slavery and
freedom, have been but the occasion of increased
bitterness on the part of the outwitted North, and
of attempts at further extension of political power
on the part of the South.

Mr. SEWARD strongly holds, however, that the
right of Secession is inadmissible. It was not tole-
rated by JEFFERSON in the face of war with Eng-
land, when some of the New England politicians
set rip the principle, and if inadmissible in one case,
it is necessarily so in all others. " I fully admit,"
he says, " the originality, the sovereignty, and the in-
dependence of the several states within their sphere.
But I hold the Federal Government to be equally
original, sovereign, and independent within its
sphere. The Union can be dissolved, not by seces-
sion, with or without armed force, but only by the
voluntary consent of the people of the United
States, collected in the manner prescribed by the
constitution of the United States." His view is
that after the present excitement has cooled down,
"When the angry excitement of the hour shall
have subsided, and calmness once more shall have
resumed its accustomed sway over the public mind,
then, and not until then—one, two, or three years
hence—l should cheerfully advise a convention of
the people to be assembled, in pursuance of the con-
stitution, to consider and decide whether any and
what amendments of the organic national law
ought to be made."

Nor is Mr. SEWARD backward in indicating
generally what he thinks might be proposed as
amendments of the constitution, which should be
fair between the contending parties, and give some
hope of permanent satisfaction. He acknowledges
the principle of the extradition of the fugitive from
slavery. No doubt it was on that principle that
the slave states first entered into the Union ; but we
conceive the principle to be the curse and bane of
the free states. If they cannot form a Union with-
out it, they had better separate. A fugitive from
slavery is, to all intents and purposes, a political
refugee; he ought not, by all the laws of nations,
to be dealt with on other grounds. He flees from
a political constitution under which he cannot
have the freedom to which he aspires; he was no
party to the infernal oppression which uses him
as a beast of burden in cultivating cotton, sugar,
rice, or tobacco ; he has the same right to flee as
Poles, Hungarians, or Neapolitans have had—
indeed, infinitely stronger reason, if not stronger
right, to do so ; and in amending the constitution, if
the Northern " Sovereign States" took counsel
with their " sovereign" dignity and their future
position in the world, they would strike out that
accursed compromise inserted in the constitution,
which declares that " persons held to labour by
the laws of one State" shall be delivered
up if they escape into another. Indeed,
as has often been urged, though the meaning
of the clause was well known when presented,
yet as the word "slave" was firmly repudiated, it
might be fairly argued that the escaped slave was
not a "person" held to labour. The claim on him
is made as on a chattel, a property, not a person.
If the idea of person be introduced, the slaveholder
might be asked to produce the proof that the per-
son had ever acted as such—had ever made any
agreement to work on any such conditions, as the
humblest person would make with the claiming
party. If the Union be dissolved, the Northern
States will not be slow to find out that negroes
are persons, and the Southern States to discover
that their slaves will be free by crossing a portion
much nearer than that of Canada.

We regret therefore to find Mr. SEWARD appeal-
ing to the constitution as a satisfactory basis of
action in this style—" So far the abstract question,
whether, by the constitution of the United States,
the bondsman, who is made such by tha laws of a
State, is still a man or only property, I answer
that, within that State, its laws on that subject are
supreme ; that when he has escaped from that State
into another, the constitution regards him as a bonds-
man who may not, by any law or regulation of
that State, be discharged from its service, but shall
be delivered up, on claim, to the party to whom his
service is due." He acknowledges, indeed, that
the Fugitive Slave Law is too bad—he would
amend, not abolish it, but would also repeal the
' personal liberty acts of the Northern States.
This is what he means when he says, ~ iv
/
prudence and justice would combine in
persuading you to modify the acts of Con-
gress on that subject, so as not to oblige pri-
Tate persons to assist in their execution, and to
protect freemen from being,ls States
er
set
ehoert
ha
slaveabtus e
all
sotflaattwehses,
laws, carried
the
States, intowhe
whether
aevrefrrye,e
which relate to this class of persons, or any others
recently coming from or resident in other States,
and which laws contravene the Constitution of
the United States, or any law of Congress passed
in conformity thereto, ought to be repealed."

shall never, directly or indirectly, give my vote to
establish or sanction slavery in such territories, or
Anywhere else in the world." This is the grand
point of contention between the two great parties,
and if the Republicans be firm on this point they
will attain their great object. They are ' masters
of the situation," for if secession be completed,
they are so much the stronger side that they will
take the territories into their own hands,
whether the South likes or not. But if it
be finally renounced, slavery limited, as: it
must be, to the States where it now
will in time be overpowered by surrounding free-
dom, or die out of itself.
Whether Mr. SEWARD'S speech will produce
much effect remains to be seen. The President
recommends the old Missouri compromise; Mr.
SEWARD, only what we have just seen. At
present, neither proposals will be accepted by
either party, and corrupting and enfeebling as the
vicious principles of the South must even be on
the North, if accepted by it, we begin to think
that peaceful secession may be the best thing for
the only part of America, in which England feels
any social and political interest—the Free States.

Intellect, we all know, is in France under the
ban of the iron despotism of the Imperial Govern-
ment. It has been thus ever since the overthrow
of the Republic of February. The Tribune was
broken up and burnt as effectually by the cavil
d'etat as ever was that throne of Louis PHILIPPE
which, in the early spring of 1848, was torn
from its dais in the Tuileries, and carried in
triumph down the Boulevards by the insurgent
Democracy. And not only was the French Tri-
bune thus virtually destroyed as an institution
ten long years ago by that dominant BONAPARTE
of our age, who has been since then reigning
there as Sovereign, but the French Press under
the same inexorable regime has been put under
lock •and key, under the grim and gagging pad-
lock of the Imperial censorship.
With a Free Press ourselves and the most
perfect liberty of Speech as well as of printing
—we have been looking on, all this while, not
without emotion, not without profound sympathy,
at the painful contrast presented to view in both
these particulars by the condition of our Gallic
neighbours. During ten years that condition has
to all intents and purposes remained identi-
cally the same. It is the same at this
present moment—undiminished, unrelaxed, un-
mitigated. During ten years France has been,
France still is, altogether without a living litera-
ture. Her journalists, once so powerful, have
lapsed into comparative insignificance. Her orators
have remained dumb all this while almost unin-

terruptedly. If a voice has been heard for a brief

interval now and then from the Tribune of the
Imperial Chambers, it has been that of one of the
liveried Senators or of the Count DE MORNY
(uterine brother of his MAJESTY) their President.
Has a hybrid literary success been achieved for a
moment at rare intervals—it has been some flippant
prose-pasquinade from the pen of M. EDMOND
ABOUT, in which sarcasm has merged into
scurrility, in which pleasantry has been
exaggerated into caricature ; or, on the other
hand, it has been some honeyed effusion of
elaborated loyalty authenticated with the
timbre of the Imperial Government, and signed by
the pensioned and decorated Count DE Lk GUER-
RONIERE.

Tie are not alluding to facts in any way
merely surmised or vaguely rumoured—we are
writing about what has all this while been matter
of absolute notoriety. And while such and such
only has been the " situation" in Paris, throughout
France, for ten long years—how have the great
literary celebrities of France been all this while

occupied ? Is not that also matter of equal noto-

riety all over Europe ? Don't we all know that
during the last few years of his life the voice of
BERANGER was completely hushed as a chem.
sonnier 1' Moreover—how many years is it now
during which M. DE LAMARTINE has been strug-
gling in noble obscurity against apparently
interminable pecuniary misfortunes, without
the heart to give to the world another
of those great products of his poetic imagination
which originally won for him his resplendent repu-
tation ? True, it is, no doubt, that the historic mas-
terpiece of M. THIERS has in the meanwhile been
gradually approaching its completion volume by
volume, until the last volume is now actually upon
the eve of its appearance. But then the very
nature of that great work sufficiently explains how
it has come to be continued thus exceptionally
—is it not the literary and political apotheosis of

NAPOLEON the GREAT, is it not consequently
thereby the extenuation, and, still more, the glorifi-

cation of Bonapartism ? Yet simultaneously with
the unrolling by M. TIIIERS thus uninterruptedly
of the magnificent historic scroll of his an-
nals of the Consulate and the Empire
under NAPOLEON, under the NAPOLEON—how
has it been with others of his contemporaries ?
Say with the most popular class of all among them,
with the class the most generally read, the gay
romance writers, the feuilletoniets, Ah, well with
them—how has it been ? Did not EUGENE SUE
die in exile with all the romance taken out of
him ? Has not ALEXANDRE DUMAS been striving
almost in desperation one might conjecture, to
keep his hand "in" as a public writer by editing
a little journal at Naples, and seeing through the
press the romantic narrative of Gen. GARIBALDI'S
autobiography ? Another famous writer of France
--not a mere ephemeral novelist either, like the
Gallic Alexandre le Grand, whose greatest mas-

terpieces of fiction, such as that wonderful " Monte
Cristo," can scarcely be regarded as literature
—Another celebrated author of France, an
author in every way far beyond DUMAS
pere et jils together —an author great at once
as a Romancist, as a Poet, and as a Dramatist—

a gorgeous romancist, an exquisite poet, a play-
wright of lofty and impassioned genius—who will
not recognise him under those truthful designa-
tion ? Yes—there is yet unmentioned that great
man of letters—there is VICTOR HUGO. And is it
not familiar to us all how long lie, too, has been in
exile, eating his heart out in the Island of Jersey ?
M. DE MONTALEMBERT, without doubt, has once
or twice ventured to break through the general
silence, and, through the unambitious medium
of a luminous pamphlet, not unworthy of him as
aLibera p
Liberal or as a Christian—but he has
paid the
as tnadt e
worst pr prosecution, s
ne cf uatlilo
inn,of his rashness in a
a a in
Imperialan
pa
adrvdeoras
Another verdict,
European writer and orator of France has yet to
be particularised—one whose voice has long been
hushed, whose pen has chiefly during these ten
years past been busy for the London publishers
—in a word, there is M. GUIZOT, latterly con-
tenting himself with enditing historico-political
treatises upon our English Statesmen, coming down
as recently in his survey as Sir ROBERT PEEL, and
going as far back as His Highness OLITER CROM-
WELL. Later, however, than this—M. GUIZOT has
been penning the Memoirs of his Own
Times, recounting in them his personal recollec-

He is willing to vote for an amendment of the
Constitution, which shall make it impossible for
Congress ever to abolish slavery in any of the
States which have legalised it. We thought, how-
ever, that Congress had not now that power.
Certainly the free States have always declared
themselves, hitherto, free from the guilt of
slavery on this particular ground. On one
point he seems, however, to speak very
decidedly. " I think," he says, "that Con.
Igreys has eielotive And sovereiga authority to

N, •
THE SUN, LONDON, MONTIAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1861.

tions, under another title, compiling un
ostentatiously enough his autobiography. Latest

f I

of all—M. GUIZOT has spoken again in
France in the hearing of a great assembly of
Frenchmen—he has mounted the rostrum once
more in the midst of Paris, and has there (after
how low an interval of silence ?) delivered an ora-
tion, half literary, half political, has spoken
eloquently and effectively in his capacity as one
of the forty French Academicians. No wonder all
Paris has, during this last week, been in a state
of feverish excitement. After so prolonged an
intellectual stagnation even this momentary re-
laxation of the grim system of silence—silence
both of the Press and of the Tribune—must have
about it something exquisite in the mere
sense of relief ! One can only compare it

—this rapturous sense of relief—to some
such touting incident in the life of genius,
touting
as that related towards the close of Lord BYRON'S
career at Missolonghi. When the bandage fastened
tightly round his aching temples—that bandage,
like a tourniquet, which he had long vainly sought
his attendants to unfasten—when that agonising
bandage was at length unwound, and the dying
poet shed tears of gratitude at the mere sensation
of its loosening ! It has so happened now during
this last week at Paris that the tyrannous ban
placed by the Empire upon the Tribune has been so
far withdrawn for the moment that, within a very
few days, throngs of Frenchmen have listened
with breathless delight to the voices of three great
living orators of France speaking to them—one in
a court of justice, two in the rostrum of the
Academy ! Paris was thrilled to hear
France (England, too, by sympathy) is
thrilling to hear the echo of those three
renowned and potent voices, the voices of the
great avocat, M. BERRYER, of the great statesman
and Homme de lettres, M. GUIZOT, and of the
great Dominican Monk, the PERE DE LACORDAIRE.
When they are hushed again—the echoes of those
three wonderful voices—when there comes back
once more over Franee the cold deadening silence
of these last ten years, that double silence of the
Press and of the Tribune, will there not lie deep
in the hearts of every Frenchman who can think
and feel a pang of bitter recollection !)
Does NAPOLEON 111. ever think of this—as not
by any means the least recognisable result of his
rigid despotism, as not by any means the least
depressing and tormenting result to France and to
Frenchmen, as not by any means a result calculated
to prove the least perillous eventually to his own
imperial and imperious Government I'