The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-01 00:00:00

Congress is to meet on the 4th. It is understood
that the PRESIDENT will make the largest military
and naval demands on the States, and that they are
quite prepared to second them ; that he will assume
the position that the Rebellion must be trampled
out this year, or early in next, and that he will be
vigorously supported in such a policy. Of soldiers
and gunboats there is to be no stint. Half a mil-
lion of the former will render resistance useless, and
one hundred and fifty gunboats and other vessels
will completely take possession of the Southern sea-
board.

To all this JEFFERSON DAVIS, meek and gentle
man, responds by professions of love to the North,
and desire for peace. He tells the Maryland
Commissioners, who had visited him to confer with
him on their misery in having to belong to the
Union against their will, that he sympathises
with the people of Maryland in their being " en-
listed with their whole hearts on the side of recon-
ciliation and peace." He tells them that the people
of the Confederated States, notwithstanding their
separation "from their late sister States," have not
ceased to "feel deep solicitude for their welfare."
Nor is that all; he expresses the hope that one
day the Northern States, " whose people, habits,
and institutions are so closely assimilated to their
own, will seek to unite then~ fate and fortunes with
those of the Confederacy !" He approves, also, the
suggestions of the Maryland Commissioners that
there should be an armistice till Congress meets,
that it may, " if possible, arrange for an adjustment
of the existing troubles by means of negotiation
rather than the sword !" And all this is, he tells us,
almost a repetition of all he has ever said
and done since the separation. His Gene-
ral, BEAUREGARD, however, makes up for Davis's
readiness to hoist the white flag by a most
ferocious proclamation ; the General no doubt feels
himself equal to anything since his reduction of
Fort Sumter; but of course his gasconading fury
is not of the same weight as the cool replies of
his civil superior to the Maryland Commissioners.
It is, we think, quite within the range of possibility
that the cool and cautious, but determined old
veteran, SCOTT, may compel the whole of the
Southern army in Virginia to follow the example
of their comrades at Harper's Ferry. We can
hardly expect a bloodless solution of the problem ;
but the old General appears to be adopting the
means most likely to bring it about. If, whether
by strategy or a battle, he does suceeed in dispersing
the Southern army now in Virginia, and thus in
placing her in the same position in which Maryland
now is, the Southern cause will be not worth fight-
ing for. All the Border States, in which the
Unionists are as numerous, though they have not
been so firm and turbulent as the Secessionists, will
adhere to the Union, and the more Southern States
will then be but a mouthful for the mighty North.
It would be amusing, if it were not mischievous
to see the foolish way in which the American press
continues to write of England. The Herald, a
journal edited, we understood, by Irish emigrants,
shows at length what an easy thing it would be for
the mighty Union to give England again a good
flogging; such a one as the " Rapale" remnant would
like to have given her, if they could have done
it, and which it would, indeed, be gratifying if
they could succeed in provoking the Yankees to
attempt. We are sorry, however, to see that even
such men as Mr. DALLAS and Mr. J. L. MOTLEY
speak of the English Government as hostile to the
North, though they set against it the friendly
feeling of the whole people. Some of them have at
last perceived that all the measures of the English
Government are in reality favourable to the North ;
but, when this is confined, it cannot be done with-
out attributing all the merit of it to the paper
threats of Mr. SEWARD! An able man Mr. SEWARD
is, beyond doubt—an able talker to an American
caucus, but a public man more ignorant of European
affairs, or of smaller influence in European circles,
it would be hard to find. He has great popularity
in America, but the condition of American popu-
larity appears to be unfitness for civil intercourse
with civilised nations.

The account has gone forth in the shape of a
formal prospectus—and we give it here gladly
enough the benefit of our own circulation—that, on
Thursday next, at two o'clock p.m., at the Royal
Opera Colonnade, in Charles-street, St. James's,
there will be given A Breakfast—(it is really quite
refreshing for once mot to read " A Dejeuner")—
in honour of the Eighty-fifth Anniversary
of the Declaration of American Indepen-
dence ! At all times and under all circum-
stances the recurrence of this ever-memorable
anniversary has been a matter of profound interest
not alone to the Americans themselves, but gene-
rally to the race from which they have sprung, to
the whole Anglo-Saxon family scattered far and
wide, north, south, east, and west through both
hemispheres. How profound the interest, then, of
its recurrence now—at this present time, under these
present circumstances ! When American Inde-
pendence is almost, one might venture
to say, jeopardised by the fratricidal war
now raging in the great Transatlantic Republic
—between the United States armies of the North
and the Confederate States armies of the South—
between: the United States men and the Seces-
sionists. Thursday being the Eighty-fifth Anniver-
sary of the Declaration of American Independence,
comes to us as a painful reminder that a century has
not been allowed to elapse since the period of that
renowned event before the Great Republic born of
that momentous Declaration has been compelled to
cast its fortunes into the desperate lottery of Civil
War.