The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-02 00:00:00

Mr. BRIGHT has at last given us his mind on
America. In the populous north—the West Riding
and South Lancashire especially—canvassing is
almost entirely carried on by public meetings, the
vast number of electors rendering individual appli-
cations nearly impossible. Mr. JOHN CHEETHAM,
the Liberal candidate for the new seat for
South Lancashire, paid, of course, a visit to
Rochdale, the proper home of the honourable
orator for Birmingham; and of course, Mr.
BRIGHT was there to take his part in demolishing
Mr. TURNER, the Tory candidate, and in backing
Mr. CHEETHAM. He had an easy task, for Mr.
CHEETHAM is a known and sound man—and Mr.
TURNER he attacked through his party, firing at
him, certainly in most amusing style, and with
great good nature too, all the blunders of
the Tory party for the last thirty years,
and logically drawing the inference that the
associate of blunderers must be presumed to be a
blunderer himself. Ergo, since the country had re-
jected as folly all that Tories had fought for to
desperation as wisdom, the electors ought to
reject the candidate who had been on the side of
the rejected folly, and to choose the one whose
views the nation had accepted as political and
commercial wisdom.

Mr. BRIGHT alluded very happily to a kind of
plausible representations which are becoming very
common with a certain class of writers more
than of speakers—" There is," he. observed, "a
curious kind of trick being played upon the public,
and it is not played upon us only by the Tory
party, mind—there is a little of it in another
party, which we are not allowed to say much
about to-night. We are being told that now
nearly everything is done; that there is nothing
for anybody to ask for ; that politics are coming
to an end ; that it doesn't matter very much what
sort of a man you return to Parliament ; and that,
therefore, it does not matter very much whether
Mr. TURNER be returned for this division of the
county or Mr. CHEETHAM. I utterly repudiate
that doetrine. According to certain people in this
country, including nearly everybody of the ruling
class, the time had always been unfavourable for
further advances, and they have generally been
quite satisfied with what has been done. But the
people have never hitherto been satisfied, and I
hope there are a good many things to be done yet
before they are satisfied."

But let us glance at our sturdy peace champion's
views on America. He is in a rather awkward fix,
as his Yankee friends would call it. He cannot
praise the war spirit, and the war preparations,
and the war loans of the North, and yet he warmly
advocates their cause, and warmly opposes seces-
sion. He identifies the integrity of the Union with
the existence of Government at all in the United
States—and compares the Southern secession with
a secession here of Yorkshire and Lanca-
shire. He shrinks from the actual defence
of their fighting, yet cleverly adds :
" At any rate, they have never fought for ' the
balance of power' in Europe. They have never
fought to keep up a decaying empire. They have
never squandered the money of their people in
such phantom expeditions as we have been en-
gaged in. And now at this moment, when you are
i told that they are going to be ruined by their vast
expenditure, why the sum that they are going to
raise in the great emergency of this grievous war
is no greater than what we raise every year during
a time of peace?,

Mr. BRIGHT is as gentle on the slavery question
as Mr. LINCOLN himself,and is quite satisfied that
the North should fight for THEu UNION AND SLAVERY.
“ They say," he exclaims,
tat they are not going
to liberate slaves. No ;
the object of the Washing-
ton Government is to maintain their own consti-
tution, and to act legally, as it permits and re-
quires." Yes they are going to act legallyenough if it Mr. BRIGHT thinks that
pro-
slavery constitution can be a legal thing
were Mr. BRIGHT'S heart as right on this
subject as Lord SHAFTESBURY'S, we are sure
he could as much surpass his lordship in the elo-
quence of his invective against paper legality in
as
defiance of the laws of God and human natare,
his lordship now surpasses Mr. BRIGHT in the noble-
ness of his position. Yet, further on, when he desires
to excuse the North for warring on the South, and
claims our sympathies for the North, he says " that
the people of England, if they are true to their own
sympathies, to their own history, and to their own
great Act 1834, to which reference has already
been made, will have no sympathy for those who
wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual
bondage of millions of their fellowmen." Why,
President LINCOLN pleads for a Constitution and a
fugitive slave law designed "to perpetuate the
bondage of millions of their fellow men !"

On the general question of the war our belli-
gerent peace friend is very ingenious—he stands
upon the ground that it is a war for Government
merely, and he appeals to those therefore who would
' uphold any Government. "No man," he says, 4! is