The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-25 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JAN. 25, 18e1.

The task of restoring the Union and averting
Civil War is now thrown upon Congress. In this
country we should in any great emergency expect
the Head of the Executive, as Mr. BUCHANAN
terms himself, to consult with his Cabinet, and come
down to the houses with his own propositions.
Not so our American PRESIDENT ; he throws the
entire xesponsibility on Congress. "The dangerous
and hostile attitude of the States," he says, "to-
wards each other has already far transcended and
cast into the shade the ordinary executive duties
already provided for by law, and has assumed such
vast and alarming proportions as to place the subject
entirely above and beyond executive control. The
fact cannot be disguised that we are in the midst
of a great revolution. Therefore, I commend the
questio n to Congress as the only human tribunal
under Providence possessing the power to meet the
existing emergency. To them exclusively belongs
the power to declare war or to authorise the employ-
ment of: military forces in all cases contemplated by
the constitution, and they alone possess the power
to remqve all the grievances which might lead to
war, and to secure peace and union to this dis-
tracted country. On them, and on them alone, rests
the resit' ansibility."

The picture drawn by the PRESIDENT of the
disastr)us effects of the secession movement, so far
as it has already gone, is dark enough. The
consepatmces of only the first alarm were suf-
ficienti y serious. He tell us that " the imports fell
off witli a rapidity never known before, except in
time or war, in the history of our foreign commerce.
The Tt.casury was unexpectedly left withent means
which 'it had reasonably counted upon to meet its
public engagements. Trade was paralysed, mann-
facturus. were stopped, the best public securities
sudden ly sunk in the market, every species of pro-
perty depreciated more or less, and thousands of
poor liken who depended upon their daily labour
for their daily bread were turned out of employ-
ment lid, of course, matters have not improved
At :first when Congress met there was a
genera 1 hope that some amicable mode of adjust-
ment could bo found. And the timid President,
doubt) 'lss, thought, and indeed says he still thinks,
that ho was,
right in proclaiming as the best basis
-
of conciliation that no State had a right to secede
by it 4 OVVII voluntary act merely, while, on the
other Int.,d,riro means existed of enforcing its con-
tinuance in the Union. Mr. BUCTIANAN', however,
stlonlknot forget that he enumerated reasons which
he conside red would justify secession, and that these
reasons we re found in what had already been done
by the Northern States.

since.

His olive branches, however, held oat to both
parties seem rather to have been accepted as stan-
dards of w3r, for the President now seems to anti-
cipate the worst. " The hope of aceommodation,'
he says, "has been climin.ished by every hour of
delay, and as the prospect of a bloodless settlement
fmdes away the public clistress becomes more and

.

more aggravated. As an evidence of this it is only
necessary to say the 'I reasury notes authorised by
the act of the 17th December last were advertised
according to the law, and that no responsible
bidder offered to take any considerable sum at par
at a lower rate of interest than 12 per cent. From
these facts it appears that in a Government orga-
nised like ours, domestic strife, or even a well-
grounded fear of civil hostilities, is more destruc-
tive of our public and private interests than the
most formidable foreign war."
He maintains that he is bound to employ force
to compel obedience to the Federal revenue laws,
and that he will do it—it is his " undeniable right
and duty." His opinion, however, remains un-
changed, that justice and sound policy alike
" require us still to seek a peaceful solution of the
question at issue between the North and the
South." This has been his reason for avoiding
any military movements, even in defence of the
Federal arsenals, which could be regarded as indi-
cating anything like hostility by the South. His
instructions to Major ANDERSON himself, whose
determination in retiring to Fort Sumter has won
such general applause, were such as to throw
the chief responsibility on that gallant officer.
Throughout it would seem as if Mr. BUCHANAN
wished to shirk any responsibility in dealing
firmly with South Carolina and the Slave States,
and to throw it as much as possible on others.

His remedy now is, in general, to appeal to the
people, and in particular to submit to them the
proposition of a division of the territory belonging
to the Union by a geographical line—the celebrated
Missouri compromise he means—which the Slave
States Government repealed before, when it stood
in their way, by the help of that clever Democrat
Mr. DOUGLAS. He thinks popular opinion would
be in favour of some such compromise. In an
appeal in which he appears a declared partisan
of the South, speaking of its " Severe grievances,"
when he had better reason to denounce its
tyranny, he says, " Let the question be removed
from t the political assemblies to the ballot-box,
and the people themselves would speedily redress
the serious grievances which the South have suf-
fered. But in Heaven's name let the trial be
made before we plunge into an armed conflict,
upon the mere assumption that there is no other
alternative. Time is a great conservative power.
Let us pause at the momentous point, and afford
the people both of the North and South an op-
portunity for reflection. Would that South
Carolina had been convinced of this truth before
her precipitate action. I therefore appeal through
you to the people of this country, to declare in
their might that the Union must and shall be
preserved by all constitutional means."
What will be the effect of this Message, pro-
bably, as Mr. BUCHANAN says, the last he will
have to deliver ? We fear very very little. He
has tried to please both parties, and has conse-
quently lost the respect of both. JAMES BUCHANAN,
however, was in a difficult position. He is the
representative of the worst of causes—Slavery.
His affections are with the Slave States ; yet,
while he is eager to support them, they are taking
the course which he dare not acknowledge, and
one which will bring his presidentship to the
grave with infamy. Between his love of slavery,
and his concern for his own reputation, he has been
no doubt almost distracted to find a safe way out.
None was possible. He vacillated, therefore, till
it was too late, and what might have been stopped
at first by a little uncompromising firmness, is now
become an unmanageable power.

It will be seen that all looks rather warlike. In
Congress itself, a committee has been appointed to
ascertain who were the authors of the assurances
given to South Carolina, that the military state of
things there should not be altered—an assurance
which was violated by Major ANDERSON'S taking
possession of the strongest fort in Charleston harbour.
The presumption at present is, that Secretary
FLOYD, who resigned whenMr.BUCIIANAN would not
require ANDERSON to return to the weaker forts,
was the man who had given the South these assur-
ances. Still the vote looks as if Congress had a large
majority against those who objected to coercing the
South. Meantime it is now certain that the
Charleston people have begun the fray. The details
of the attack on the Star of the "West are before
us. An attack for which there would not seem to
be a shadow of legal justification ; since the Federal
authorities had surely the fullest right to reinforce
any of their forts. Seventeen shots were fired at
the vessel, two of them actually struck her,
happily without killing any one. A warm
correspondence ensued in consequence between
Major ANDERSON and the State Governor, which
ended in the Major's referring for instructions to
the central Government. The latter, it is said, have
already despatched the Brooklyn sloop of war, and
the Carolinians are preparing to give her a warm
—that is—a bloody reception !
The other Slave States are also rapidly joining
the secession movement. Alabama, Mississippi
and Florida have completed the formal act of seces-
sion ; other States are on the eve of doing it, indeed
they have, in preparation for it, seized on the
Federal ports and arsenals within their tern tory.
Virginia alone, as the great border State, has
passed a resolution aiming at the preservation
of peace. In South Carolina and Georgia the
leading men are devising plans which betray as
much as anything the animus of the movement
there. It is a scheme to get the Free-trade States
and the commercial men of Europe on their side.
They propose to raise all the revenue by direct
taxation, to repeal all duties on imports, and then
they say the North will see whether Europe will
not enforce her right to trade in a perfectly free
port ! They say openly that they calculate on the
"cupidity" of our commercial men. Do they calculate
wrongly ? ,If the Southern States offered Free
Trade, would not England and France insist on
having it ?

The intelligence just received from China is
altogether satisfactory. Even that portion of it
which would probably have received the first con-
sideration of the late Lord RAGLAN, the news
relating to the state of the temperature, is to a cer-
tain extent suggestive to us rather agreeably of
reasons for hearty self-gratulation, " The winter
is intensely cold," says the telegram, "and
the river (the Peiho) is covered with ice." Imme-
diately upon reading which, one instinctively
rdoices that the war was so well got through
betimes—that it was so very opportunely before the
frost set in brought to its welcome termination.
Leaving tidings like these just given, in regard to
the contracted condition of the t:2l-talc ra-oaning in
the thermometer, whether exhibited in the French
or in the English camp, by Reaumur or by Faren-
beit—it is impossible not to exult at the obvious
and inevitable reflection, that the Allies have run
no risk now of passing through a wintry ordeal in
China such as might have furnished anything at all
like that terrible picture presented to mind six or
seven years ago, when the Anglo-French forces
had to traverse a kindred ordeal—an ordeal far
worse than any crossing over the burning plough.
shares of old—during that deadly winter cam-
paign in the Crimea under the beleagured walls of
Sebastopol‘ Not that the hazard of wintry ma

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THE SUN.