The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-25 00:00:00

peculiarity of Southern winters is their sudden, ex-
treme, and frequent changes of temperature—their
almost constant dampness, and their great quan-
tities of rain, whic'l are the very conditions that
tell most hurtfully upon the health of troops.
Used to the dry, bracing weather of the Northern
winters, and the tight rooms and hot stoves of their
Northern homes, the Yankee soldiers will find our
Southern climate more severe and trying than they
could be induced to believe before actual trial. It
is a source of felicitation with the South that their
foe has taken it into his head to conduct a winter
campaign against her. We venture to predict that,
if persisted in, it wilt prove one of the most disas-
trous campaigns to the invader that can be found
on record.

The invasion of the South overland, we make
bold to say, is a thing impossible. The only chance
of the enemy to injure or annoy us before spring
will be by coming down the Mississippi in boats,
and by keeping up a system of naval assaults upon
weak points along the seaboard. We have little
fear of their getting down the river; and their
naval squads can accomplish little else than now
and then a piece of successful thieving. As to a
second battle at Manassas, it is scarcely practicable
for the enemy to get his army that tar forward un-
opposed. They would be whipped without firing a
gun if required to stand still and wait for supplies,
It is given out that M'Clellan intends to conduct
the war chiefly with artillery. If his strength be-
fore Manassas consists mainly in that arm, there is
no possibility of a fight, for besides the difficulty of
getting a multitude of cannon over 20 miles of deep
mud, the ground is too soft to admit of using them
in battle. Although it has often been attempted, the
South has never been successfully invaded at any
season, and it is not to be supposed that the impos-
sible feat will be performed now in the very worst
season that could be chosen for the purpose. The
enemy might, with much better chance of success,
brave the fevers which protect us in summer than
the impassable roads and pluro-pneumonia which
protect us more effectually in winter.

COLONEL FULLER ON AMERICAN
AFFAIRS.

On Thursday evening Colonel Fuller, a gentleman

well known as a journalist in America, delivered a
lecture on the present state of affairs on the Western

Continent. The large room at St. James's Hall was
taken for this purpose, but the attendance was very

small in proportion to the ample space at command.
There were, however, several persons of high sta-
tion and influence present, and the audience may be
said to have made up in " quality" for what it cer-
tainly lacked in quantity, Mr. Yancy, one of the

Southern Commissioners, was among Colonel Ful-
ler's hearers. The chair was taken by Dr. Charles

Mlekay, who entreated a patient hearing for Col.

Fuller, and said that, so far as he understood the
purpose of that gentleman, it was to state facts
within his own experience and observation.

Colonel Fuller introduced his remarks by saying

.hat the Trent affair had turned attention forcibly
:o the subject of disruption between the Northern

and Southern States of America. He bad watched
the progress of events on both sides of the line of

separation ; but he approached his theme literally
in fear and trembling, and felt that he must begin
with a personal explanation—nay, an apology—for
attempting to discuss so difficult and dangerous a
question. He was an American citizen—a native of

the North; a native of New England ; of a place
near that rock where the little band of emigrants
landed from the Mayflower in the memorable win-
ter of 1620. He had lived i❑ friendship with Web-
ster—had stood by him when he died at Marshfield,
and had seen him laid

" In his sepulchre there by the sea."
Since the destruction of Jerusalem was foretold by
the inspired seer he did not think that words more

prophetic had ever been uttered than those which
Webster had employed in looking forward to the
present period of disorganisation among the con-
stituent pirts of the American republic. That re-
public had been accepted as a type of good govern-
ment and national stability. Pus had been
chanted in its praise, and Longfellow, its laureate,
had thus apostrophised it :

Thou, too, -64i1 on, 0 ship of ,tate ;
Sail on, 0 Union, strong and groat I
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate."
As a journalist of long standing, he could not be ac

cured of Southern predilections. He had belonged to
a party called in derision the " Union-savers," who
followed 'Webster and Clay as their guiding lights,
and looked upon Fillmore, Everett, and other lesser
orbs, with admiration. In Congress and out of Con-
gress this party had laboured to avert secession.
Colonel Fuller then proceeded to review the posi-
tion of affairs as it now appeared. There were
20,000,000 of people on one side and 10,000,000 on
another, the South asserting a right which the
North denied. On the point of abstract right he had
little to say. Enough to know that the people of
the South believed in that right, and fully proved
their faith by their works. (Cheers and hisses.) A
Wain statement of a fact ought not to give offence.
It was his purpose to give a candid record of past
events. The causes of disruption he considered to
lie deep, and to extend far back into the past. In
the first place the American system was an anomaly.
It was inconsistent with its principles, an absurdity
in terms, and a contradiction in fact. In a coerced
Union the very spirit of all union departed and was
lost. He looked back for the cause of the present
conflict to the deed of the 41 pilgrims in the cabin
of the Mayflower. Those men had thought to ar-
range all matters of future government after their
own narrow ideal. While the North, however, had
' been settled by Puritans, the South had been
planted by Cavaliers ; and in this radical fact were
the seeds of perpetual antagonism. The Puritans
were they who had slaughtered Indians, hanged
Quakers, burnt Baptists, burnt witches, got rich in
the slave trade, and then turned abolitionists.
(Laughter, and sounds of disapprobation.) He did
not wish to impeach his ancestors. The Pilgrim
Fathers had among them men of heroic nature; but
there was an original and radical difference between
them and the people who colonised the South. This
difference was one partly of climate. The wines of
different countries did not vary more than their in-
habitants. Look at France and England, only

separated by a narrow channel of salt water. On 1,
one side was a nation, sparkling, piquant, volatile;
on the other a people steady, sturdy, substantial.
As there were temperate, tropical, and frigid zones
of the earth, so were there corresponding distinc-
tions of the human race. Even had the origin of
American citizens been the same, 200 years of
diverse occupation and ways of life would have
placed a bar between them. The North worked hard
to gain wealth; the South led a dolcefar niente
existence, eating their bread in the sweat, not of
their own brows, but the brows of their negroes.
The policy of the opposing sections was as distinct
as their customs. The North was for protection to
manufactural interests; the South leant to free
trade. (Interruption, and cries of Free Trade in
Negroes.) The South demanded free trade for their
agricultural produce. (Renewed disturbance, in the
midst of which the chairman rose and said that no
discussion had been invited ; and that it was not a
practice among Englishmen to get up a warm con-
troversy in the presence of ladies.) It was true that
the democratic party had just one plank of free trade
in their political platform, which saved it from going
to pieces. The severance of the American Union was
attributable in one word, to absolutism. Abso-
lutism had e.tused the war, and secession preci-
pitated it. It was not the principle of abolition
that the Lincoln administration advocated. They
opposed the acquisition of fresh states—why ?
Simply because there would be more votes against
tariff laws, navigation laws, end various other laws
enacted solely for the benefit of the North. As to
the freedom of negroes, that was not much thought
about. The true social abolitionists were insigni-
ficant in number. South Carolina,ato fearstate for herwhich,
from geographical position, had little
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