The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-27 00:00:00

Commons, after the words that fell last evening
from the lips of the Prime Minister of England,
the Prussian Government can, in this particular,
labour under no further misapprehension whatever.
The incident we have here particularised, we can-
not but repeat, on closing these remarks, is worthy
of England, is worthy of Lord PALMERSTON,

There is a story of two lads on board a man-of-
war who were playing the game of " follow your
leader",—suddenly one of them lost his hold, and
was falling from a great height down to the deck
and almost certain death ; in the act of falling, how-
ever, he caught a rope and saved himself, and, with-
out a moment's hesitation, looked up to his com-
panion and shouted, " Follow your lead er !" The
other, it need not be added, did not believein the
possibility of repeating such an exploit with immu-
nity from fatal consequences. Will those who are
now playing tie game of secession and coercion in
America be equally wise ? Or will they try again
whether they can cannonade and bombard each
other for two days without loss of life.
The very full details which at the last moment
we were able to publish yesterday of the attack
and surrender of Fort Sumter, confirm what was
only reasoning and probable conjecture when
we wrote our remarks, that no one on either
side was killed! After a bombardment and
cannonade between a fort and seven or
eight batteries, after the firing of above two
thousand cannon balls and bombs at each other,
there was no bloodshed ! Chimneys were knoeked
down, embrasures were destroyed, combustible
buildings were fired, smaller magazines were
blown up, but no one on either side was killed !
Spectators from a safe distance gazed on the sport ;
as, at the siege of Antwerp, Englishmen went
over and sat astride on housetops to witness the
fight from a safe distance ; and it would seem
that humanity needed not to revolt at the spectacle,
for it was artillery practice only—it was not an
affair of life and death. Well if all the quarrels
of the world, as well as in America, could be settled
in this way. It is a very reasonable one. The
best shot's the winner ! Why not ? Justice
would be done quite as certainly by giving
the decision in favour of the best marksmen, as by
giving it for the stronger and richer of two nations.
It is of CURRAN, we believe, the tale is told, that
having received a challenge, he sent back the pro-
posal that a man should be chalked on a barn-door,
and that whichever of them hit it first or oftenest
should apologise to the other. There is as much
philosophy and equityat least in this, as in appealing
to that Supreme Court which the folly of our race
has made the ultimate arbiter in international dis-
putes; only it needs two parties equally philosophi-
cal or equitable. CURRAN'S would-be antagonist
laughed, met him, and shook hands. But if the
challenging nation persists in a trial of gunnery,
not on inanimate matter only, but on the living men
who are behind it, why there is nothing for it but
to fight it out. It is not at the option of one side
only whether it will appear in the court of war.
Were the New Englanders a little nearer the
days of their Puritan ancestors, they would cer-
tainly, and with most undoubting faith, believe
that the bloodless defeat and victory at Charleston
were the special work of Providence. They would
I say as the Hebrew Monarch did, " The LORD hath
kept me from coming to shed blood," and they
would see in it a lesson to both sides. As a mighty
triumph by the little band in the fort, would have
taken as a commission from Heaven to go forth
and utterly destroy or subjugate " those sinners
the Southern Amalekites," so a tremendous fire,
destroying all around without mischief to life on
either side, would have been interpreted as
a warning to pause before they came to
actual bloodshed. We much fear the modern
unbelieving descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers
will not be so ready at peaceful interpreta-
tions. They are the beaten party. Their officer
has surrendered ; without the slightest impeach-
ment of his military honour, it is true ; but as
matters now stand, the populous rich and ener-
getic North has been beaten by the despised
South. We fear it is not in Northern nature to
sit down by such an open defeat. The merry
bells of Charleston which welcomed Major AN-
DERSON and the garrison as prisoners of war
into the city, will be a tocsin to the whole
North. Feeling must be strong indeed when the
man of commerce forgets his gains; yet we are
told that 'nothing could be thought of on 'Change
at New York but the war. An inquiry about
the price of cotton would be answered by,
" Cotton be hanged, what is the last news from
Charleston?" A shipowner spoken to about
freights would reply, "Let freights go to Halifax.
Has the fleet arrived off Charleston ?"
The spirit of the South is, of course, even more
warlike than that of the North. WALKER, the
Secretary of the Montgomery Congress, told the
people not only that the flag of the Southern Con-
federacy would, in a few hours, float over Fort
Sumter (from which, it seems, that the attack was
a concerted thing on the part of the Government),
but that before the Ist of May it would float over
the dome of the Capitol itself; and if the North
dared to "try Southern chivalry, and test Southern
resources, it might float eventually over Fanueil
Hall itself." We have seen that the PRESIDENT is
really alarmed for Washington; and situated as it is
with the small district of Columbia, in the midst of
a Slave State, and with the powerful old Slave
State of Virginia close at hand, ready to secede by
the last advices, and not improbably gone over by
this time to the South, there is, probably, real
cause for fear. Ail has been done yet with
promptitude and by surprise in the Snob.
Action there has not, as was at first
somewhat reasonably expected, relaxed, and cooler
eounsels returned. And, as it is known that Presi-
dent Davis has called for 25,000 men, popular fear
in the North Points to Washington as their pro-
bable destination.

That the North will be, in the long run victorious,
with the command of the sea, and- double or
treble the free population, no one can doubt. But
that the North can conquer and retain the South
seems equally impossible. It is plain that the
South has long laid its plans, that it possesses
numerous clever practical men of great determina-
tion, and, above all, it knows its mind. It means
to form a Southern Confederacy ; nothing will con-
ciliate it. When ejected from supreme power at
Washington, it determined to assume supreme
power in its own district. It will be master, if not
in the union, then out of it. The North hesitates. It
naturally, at first, took Southern threats for mere
bullying. It could not believe in such folly as
secession. Few Englishmen could believe it; Mr.
SEWARD especially did not, and even the more
decided Mr. LINCOLN thought that by a fair and
legal course the South must be brought to see its
untenable position. The result, however, may be
very different when the South forces the North to ,
united sentiments and action. Pennsylvania has
already obeyed the PRESIDENT'S summons to arm—
and the other States seem to be rapidly taking the
same course. And, if the present excitement goes
on, a few weeks will see the two sections of the
late United States converted into two vast camps
of hostile. brothers; each side confident is its'