The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-01 00:00:00

1 CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE.

The numerous reports and the strong denuncia-
, tion affecting Mr. Chase have moved him to write a
L letter, which has found its way into print. The
! country desires to know what position he has de-
i tided on taking, in view of the unconcealed desire
of many leading Democrats to run him as their
.1 candidate for the Presidency. His letter reassures
1 his Republican friends as regards his principles, but
I will scarcely aid the Chief Justice in securing the
Democratic nomination. A negro, who went to
Washington to see the Chief Justice on the subject
of Negro Suffrage, gives this as the result of the in-
terview :—" He had always been an anti-slavery man
and always expected to be ;he had never gone down
to any man or .party. In 1818, in Ohio, neither of
the great parties could elect a Senator without the
aid of the liberty party. The Democrats made a
proposition to its members, and agreed for their
snpport to repeal the black laws and elect a Free
Soiler to the United States Senate. He was him-
self elected on that condition, and the bill repealinf,
the black laws passed as he had himself drafted it.
He had not gone down to them—they had come up
to him. If his friends placed him in a similar posi-
tion now, he was in their hands." He and Pendleton
are now most prominently spoken of ; yet it is hard
to believe that eii her has a chance. Pendleton unnine
repudiation—Chase, negro suffrage. If the Demo-
crats choose the former, they go in weighted, so as
to have no hope in the race, and they will bring on
their party not only defeat but disgrace, for it
would be stigmatized henceforth, both at home and
abroad, as the party of dishonesty. If they take
Chase they throw away their trump card as a party,
although the Chief Justice may cast a heavy
weight into their scale. If the Democrats can win,
it will be by working on the Northern prejudice
against the Negro. This is the shoal the Chicago
Convention so skilfully steered to avoid, but
could only pass by heaving overboard the
ballast of principle, and they will find when
again in deep water that their craft is all the more
cranky and liable to be capsized. Tha Democrats
have got no principle, and they can take short cuts
over any shoals to the haven of office, the harbour
they desire. Therefore if they throw away their
power of working the prejudice of the white against
the black, they throw away their best chance of
success. We would be well pleased to see Chase
nominated, and the struggle narrowed to two such
good champions as he and Grant. But we fear that
his unqualified declaration of principles will destroy
his chance, for it is notorious that with such a
programme hundreds of thousands of Democrats
would refuse to vote or would support Grant as the
better Democrat of the two.
" WASHINGTON, D.C., May 25, 1863.
" My dear Sir, —You are right in believing that
I shall never abandon the great principles for the
success of which I have given my entire life. I ad-
here to my old creed of equal rights without one jot
or tittle of abatement. I shall be glad if the new
professors of that creed adhere to it as faithfully. I
am amazed by the torrent of invectives by which [am
drenched; almost everything alleged as fact is false-
hood, out of the whole cloth. Where an allegation
has a little fact in it, the fact is so perverted and
travestied that it becomes falsehood. I know no mo-
t the disappointment that Im-
tive for all this, excel)
peachment has not thus far proved a success, coupled
with a belief that I have done something to prevent
its being a success. I have not been a partisan of
Impeachment, certainly ; but I have not been a
partisan on the other side. As presiding officer
over the trial, my conscience testifies that I have
been strictly impartial, and I am sure that any one
who reads the report will say so. Individually, I have
my convictions and opinions, but I have very seldom
give an utterance to them. Indeed, Ido not think
that the case, in any of its aspects, has been the
subject of conversation between myself and more
than four or five Senators ; aul then only casually
and briefly. No Senator will say that I have sought
to influence him. The real ground of denuncia-
tion is that I have not been a partisan of convic-
tion, and his denunciation I am willing to bear.
They may denounce and abuse me, and real me
ont of the party if they choose. I follow my old
lights, not the new. What the developments of
the future may be I know not. I neither expeet
nor desire to be a candidate for office again. It
would, however, gratify me exceedingly if the De-
mocratic party would take ground which would
assure the party against all attempts to subvert
the principle of universal suffrage, established in
right, and to be established in all the Southern
Constitutions. Then, I think, the future of the
great cause for which I have laboured so long
would be secure, and I should not regret my ab-
sence from political labours.

" SALMON P. CHASE."

THE LONDON PAPERS ON AMERICA.

The Times occasionilly, once a month or so,
gives some American news. It has an American
correspondent at Philadelphia! whom, we presume,
it has picked up casually, and who when in the
humour drops the Times a line. His letter pub-
lished on Thursday was dated June 12th, and
although REvEttny JOIINSON'S appointment as
Alinister to England had been unanimously con-
firmed by the Senate on the 11th, the corre-
spondent did not consider it worth while to men-
tion the circumstance. Whole weeks pass without
the publication of a word of American intelligence
written for the leading journal of Europe, and
when it does condescend to notice the Union it i 3
from an occasional writer loc del in Phila
who gives little more than a column, and omits all
mention of such an item as the selection of the
Ambassador to St James's. It is no won ler that
the English are culpably ignorant to their own
great detriment, of American affairs. It is impos-
sible for people to be interested in news who know
nothing of the bearings of the questions discussed,
and of all the educational means in that way the
'limes ought to be the most powerful. Englishmen
acknowledge the overwhelming importance of their
relations with America. The Times itself has often
asserted that given the friendship of the Union
that of all other nations is immaterial ; yet it does
nothing to forward an object it professes so highly
to appreciate. No American papers are circulated
in England, and the people are wholly dependent
for their knowledge of America on the great London
dailies, looking more especially to the Times. If
they see nothing of the news of the country they
know nothing of it, and think nothing of it, until
circumstances force-it on their attention, when they
have suddenly to judge questions of which they are
profoundly ignorant. Then they make gross mis-
takes, to the annoyance and disgust of Americans,
who scarcely know whether to attribute them to
stupidity or malignity, for they cannot understand
the extraordinary ignorance. Even American
newspapers in small towns have London corre-
spondents ; and although the Times the other
day sneered at an item of English news
from America wherein it was announced that
the PRESIDENT was to be prayed for with
the QUEEN, yet, as a rule, the information •
is not only full, but accurate in a high degree.
When reviews like the Spectator write articles on
American subjects, they are usually skipped, for
what is the use of following the reviewer in the ela-
borate discussion of a matter the alphabet of which
is unknown. And when an article is read, as it pro-
bably runs wholly counter to the ridiculous preju-
judices entertained by the realer, it only excites
irritation. Thus, from beginning to end, the great
American war was fought, the English people
knowing little more about the real merits of the
question; the objects, and the relative powers of
the combatants, than they do of the Russians in
Bukhara. But no matter what may be the want
of knowledge, it in no way prevents sides being
taken. Had the Englishmen who got red in the
face, and felt inclined to fling off their coats, effec-
tually topuniih those who differed about the war, been
questioned, they would have been compelled to
acknowledge their ignorance. True sympathy can-
not exist where the one is so unacquainted with the
other, and the first step towards the cultivation of
kindly relations is to dissipate this ignorance. Not
long ago we discussed the desire of the British clod
to 'cave 'alf a brick at a stranger, and we know that
this feeling is general not only through the nation,

' but throughout mankind. It is impossible to secure
an interest without either seeing or bearing, and while
the Times does not even maintain a regular corre-
spondent in that vast country, where the most inte-
resting problem regarding the human race is being
solved, Englishmen will go drifting into a Republic,
or into chaos, not knowing where they are going, or
what it is that moves them. They know that all
Europe, but more especially themselves, are influ-
enced by the Great Republic, but they seem deter-
mined to learn nothing of the nature of the influ-
ence—at least if we are to judge from the action of
the Times. A question of vast interest deeply
affecting England is about to be fought out in the
United States—Free Trade versus Protection—•yet
they know little about it, and we fear that the
Times is •very ill qualified to teach them. Surely
that great organ of public instruction and opinion
might employ an American well vers3d in suc!l sub-
jects to write from New York or from Washington.
It ought to have a correspondent in each of those cities!
one to discuss political, the other social questions.
By attention to such points the Standard obtained
a circulation that extends over England. It ryas
" Manhattan" that gave the great impetus to theTorY
journal ; an eccentric, sensational, but really Ameri-
can writer, who, had he not drifted into extravagant
Copperheadisra and died, would have become a
celebrated man. No mail reaches England without
a letter instantly appearing in the Standard, which
unfortunately is too one-sided not to convey false
impressions. We would not object to the Standard.,
correspondent if the readers thoroughly understood
the questions discussed ; but as they do not, the
impression conveyed is that America is a land of
jobbery and corruption, violence and rowdyism,
lawlessness and vulgarity, with but a thin slice of
good in the extreme Democrats. Thus the millions
of the most industrious, ingenious, law-abiding,
brave, generous, and patriotic people are included
in the sweeping censure which bas reference only to
the professional politicians, and the most ignorant
and brutal of the imported element. The Telegraph
does not much discuss American subjects ; the Pot
avoids them ; the Daily News has but the other day
come down to the penny, which will insure its wjdC
circulation ; and the Star is not read by the classes
most ignorant on American subjects, and among
whom it is most desirable that correct information
should be circulated.—Anglo-American Times.

BUTLER UNRAVELLING THE “CON-
SPIRACY."

On the Bth June Woolley appeared with his coun-
sel at the bar of the Representatives, summoned on
the House refusing to receive his petition from the
Speaker, which Woolley asserted would clear him
of the charge of contempt. Mr. John Covode de-
scribed him as a perjurer ; Butler called his counsel
a co-conspirator. Woolley agreed to answer the
questions, and it transpired that he and Shook, a
revenue collector of New York, were drunk in a
Washington hotel, and that Woolley offering to bet
$20,000 that the President would be convicted,
took out of his pocket a roll of notes, which be
threw on the table, and a gentleman who was pre-
sent, seeing the state of the men, counted the
money, and finding $17,000, took the sum to the
master of the hotel, who locked it up in the safe.
The money was produced in the inquisition-room,
where the Washington Express describes the General
as re-acting his old part at New Orleans, and give
the following scene :—When a respectable and well-
known gentleman appeared in the room, Butler,
walking the floor rapidly, asked in a gruff voice,
" What have you been doing in Washington so
long ?" The witness, looking at him a moment,
answered quietly " None of your business, sir."
Butler at once became excited, and, stamping his
foot on the floor, said that no impertinence would
be allowed. After the victorious General had rested
for a few moments the following questions were pro-
pounded : Butler—What became of the money that
Mr. Woolley left in his room on the centre table ?
Answer—l have it in my pocket. Butler—Will
you produce it and the envelope containing the
other papers ? Answer—l will produce the money,
but the papers you shall not have. The money
was then laid on the table, amounting to $17,100,
in seventeen one thousand dollar notes, and small
bills making the one hundred dollars. Immediately
after Butler received the money he ordered the
witness out of the room, but he declined to leave,
giving as a reason that he (witness) was respon- _
sible for the money, and he could not leave it in his
(Butler's) hands. Butler insisted on the witness
leaving the room, but the gentleman refused un-
less he coati take the money with him. At last
Butler was forced to succumb, and the money was
counted in the custodian's presence. Butler counted
the money, the clerk of the committee taking the
numbers of the notes. After the counting Butler,
looking sideways, said to the witness-1 find, sir,
here sixteen thousand one hundred dollars. Wit-
ness—Mr. Butler, if you will take the trouble to
look under that piece of paper near you, I think
you will find a one thousand dollar note, which I
have no doubt was placed there through mis-
take. General Logan, rising from the sofa, said
—" Yes, Butler, I see one corner of it sticking
out." Butler—" Oh, yes ; 1 did not notice it before.
Were you ever indicted for perjury ? Have you
ever been arrested for swindling ?" These were the
questions put by the General, and he actually took
upon himself to imprison a witness for contempt,
supposing, we presume, the days of military des-
potism had returned—but he was released on the
General discovering that he could not thus act with-
out an order from the House. The evidence given
.by Woolley on the 11th instant has not transpired,
but it is known that the funds were intended to
affect the Whisky Tax, and had no connection what-
ever with Impeachment, Woolley denying emphati-
cally that he ever even discussed the subject of cor-
rupting Senators. He was released by order of the
House. But Butler, having still the powers for
ferreting out the conspiracy, has been actively en-
gaged in seizing telegrams, searching for evidence,
and directing slanders against the characters
of leading men in Washington. Two schemes
are now attributed to him. Some assert
that he is collecting evidence to sustain a neW
charge of Impeachment ;--others, that still cherish-
ing his old grudge against Grant, he intends to drop
down on him, in the hopes of crushing him, no
matter what the risk to his own neck. He has in-
dicated his intention of ceasing to act with the Re-
publican leaders, at least for a spell, under certain
circumstances, which means that he intends to
oppose Grant tooth and nail. We have not heard
that Miss Vinnie Ream has got back the room taken
from her for the incarceration of Woolley. Much
annoyance and uneasiness is caused by Butler's
action, and the House is beginning to desire that
this fertile source of mischief should be checked in-
stead of as hitherto encouraged. They know him
to be unscrupulous, not only in his means of using
the powers entrusted to him, but of using the in-
formation collected. • They cannot tell when he
may suddenly wheel round on the party, and fire
the very shells at them with which they have fur-
nished him, and, to say the least, he is as dangerous
as slippery.