The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 27, 1868,

held when tbe telegram from the riovisional Government
was received ; but, fearing to alarm the populace, the
Governor allowed the festivities in honour of the fallen
sovereign to proceed without interruption. The next day
a council of the chief men of the island was held, when it
was determined to accept the new Government, stipu-
lating only that emancipation of the negroes should not be
immediately proclaimed.

TEE AMERICAN MINISTER:

- ,
A great deal has been said as to the probable Sian of
kr. Reverdy Johnson on account of his fraternising with
Mr. Laird and others. Several of the papers have hinted
very plainly that his conduct was being thought very
reprehensible by the party dominant in the State. 4,t is
evident, however, that he himself has no such fear. The
American Minister was entertained at Liverpool on
Monday evening at a private banquet by the Mayor,
Mr. E. Whitley. In reply to a feeling address by
his worship, who rejoiced in the prospects of perfect
peace with the United States, his Excellency, in an
eloquent address, said that, in substance, the differences
between his country and this were trifling in comparison
with what they had passed through in America. Not-
withstanding the generals who commanded during the
civil war, North and South were now intimate friends.
He did not come to this country to keep up animosi-
ties, and he did not fear censure for being friendly with
those who had formerly been looked upon as enemies.
Alluding to a remark regarding a change of Government
in England, he expressed a confident belief that all pend-
ing questions would be adjusted before Lord Stanley's
retirement from power, and said he had never known a
man more indefatigably industrious than his lordship.
Mr. Johnson also spoke of the benefits of free labour,
and predicted that ultimately the growth of cotton
would be more than double what it ever has been. The
establishment of friendly relations between the two coun-
tries, he said, would at a future time teach the world that
war could be avoided by honest diplomacy. In conclusion,
the Minister said he did not know what his country would
think of the manner in which he was executing his mission.
He was sanguine, however, that his policy would be
approved ; but if he failed to give satisfaction he would
accept the censure with Christian resignation.

THE ETIS7ING FEELING BETWEEN
ENGLAND AND AMERIIM.

( From the Anglo-American Times.)

The discussion which has arisen in America from
his Excellency REVERDY JOHNSON'S speeches in
England have again brought up the nature of the
existing feeling between America and England. In
a temperate article, Ilarper's Weekly condemns the
course as well as the words of the American Minis-
ter. The warmth of his language, as expressive of
the kindliness of his countrymen towards the British,
it considers exaggerated; while it censures his meet-
ing at a social board, and publicly announcing his
friendship for two such notorious enemies of the
Government he represented, as Lord WHARNCLIFFI,I
and Mr. ROEBUCK. That sentiment is made up of
so many, even contradictory, elements that those
who take any position are enabled to cover their
assertions with facts. Thus the man who maintains
that the Americans hate the English, or vice versa,
can almost overwhelm his opponent who holds the
contrary opinion by undeniable statements. Not
only can either bring forward historical instances,
but he can show by his own an 1 the experience of
friends, what certainly is the case, that in either
country there are men who bitterly hate the other, or
who love and admire America or England, bringing
either country for ward for example. This is simply
the common lot, the experience realize 1 not only by
nations but by individuals. Though one man may
be hated and liked more than another, yet no
man ever rose to distinction who had not his
detractois as well as his eulogists. To ascertain
the general feeling towards a statesman, his per-
sonal enemy should as little be referred to as his
friend; nor is the Anglophobist the authority to
consult regarding American feeling towards Eng-
land. England may be more frequently discussed
across the Atlantic than America is here, while the
feeling may largely partake of indifference, but it is
a mistake to describe it—unless under exceptional
circumstances—as actively hostile. Mad it not been
for the necessities of the politicians, England would
have become the country of travellers' tales and
story-books, known to literature more as Western
nations knew Greece than as a political entity in
the mind of the prairie farmer, who raises his crops
where American dominion is rapidly centreiug.
But, unfortunately for England, she has furnished
the stump speaker with his trump card. When the
eagle begins to scream, when the orator soars off
into his wildest flights he wants a foil, and he has
it in the British lion. There is no use in giving him
the Gallic cock, the Russian bear, or the other
eagles with divers heads and denominations, as he
can extract no point out of them, for it is the sulky
old lion his hearers know, recognize, and delight iu
seeing the speaker after with a sharp stick. Eng-
lish history is familiar as the forerunner of Ame-
rican ; the island is comparatively familiar ; from
it came the language, the institutions, religion,
laws, and there a precedent is sought in a dis-
pute. When told of the degradation of an llindoo
the American cares not a rush, no more than if a
tribe of monkies had suffered from the failure of a
nut crop. Poles under the heel of Russia, Italians
beneath Austrian military rule, only call forth
sympathy when they rise in arms against the op-
pressor, and then it is the contest, not the sorrows,
which interests. But it widely differs when the
degradation of men is described, employed in the
same labour, who bear their names and speak their
language, for it is easy to attract attention where
the pictures in contrast are quickly realized. Thus it
happens that England has become the foil for the gb-
rification of theßepublic, andEnglishm en to show how
is the wide difference between the free and enlightened
citizen, and the ignorance, the poverty, and the serf-
dom of the British labourer. Is it in the nature of
the stump orator to refrain, when this kingdom
comes before his mind's eye as the hotbed of
Toryism, the paradise of the oligarchists, and there-
fore, politically, the enemy of the Republic, whose
mission it is to uphold and to propagate the doctrine
of the Rights of Man ? Thus he could most readily
touch the sensational chord while the strong con-
trast allowed him the freest flights of fancy. At
once he elevated his hearers and sank beneath them
to an unmeasurable depth the men they best under-
stood. One of the strongest feelings in the States
is the dislike of a ruling class, and how else
could it be so well gratified as by a hearty abuse of
the bloated British aristocrat. The mind of an
American responds readily to the touch of the
grandeur, the magnitude, the boundless nature of
his territory ; how better could the dimensions be
shown than to contrast its porpartions in moun-
tains, lakes, and plains endless as the sea, with the
narrowness of Britain, where, like the fisherman's

boat upon the ocean, it is two steps and over-
board. To illustrate the military glory of the Union,
his English cousins fUrnished the orator with the
most appropriate illustration, for had they not
whipped the world, but hal not the States whipped
them. England's vast provinces he represente I as
groaning under a selfish,treacherous, narrow-minded
imperial policy, which wrang from the toil of hungry
millions the gold expended in the sickening extra-
vagance of the gorgeous palaces of London. But
what did the American with the magnificent domain
HEAVEN had given him ? He invited thereto
the oppressed of all nations ; he smoothed away the
difficulties and made their path easy into the waste ;
he threw open with a lavish hand the rich soil of
the prairies ; he fed the hungry and carried out in
his administration of the continent entrusted
to his care, the true precepts of Christianity.
There is too much of truth for Englishmen
to relish in these comparisons, and although the
orator flaw away with his screaming eagle into wild
flights, his words hit hard. While, then, they
affected English feeling unfavourably, as the tune
from year's end to year's end sang over the Union,
they could not fail to leave their impression on the
American brain. Hence an apparent if not a real
political hostility, which differs widely from the feel-
ing entertained for Americans in England, for here
the dislike is social, though, at least in part, gene-
rated from the same cause. The English reply, to
the highfaluten and spread-eagleism of the Ame-
rican orator, was ridicule and sarcasm, which found
a daily expression in the papers, and frequently in
such works as those of DICKENS. The Upper Ten
Thousand, who gave point to the orator's moral,
set the fashion in England, and it was natnral for
the bloated British aristocrat to notice with super-
cilious disdain the peddling Yankee stump speaker,
who pictured him in such an unamiable light. As
a rule, literary men who live by the fruits of their
labour have to write to suit the taste of their
readers ; and as a demand existed for this ridicule
it was readily supplied, even by such authors as
DICKENS. Unfortunately it hit the wrong class, for
it scarcely reached, or only in the most super-
ficial way, the men who had been in-
dulging in the offensive buncombe, while
it repelled and bitterly annoyed the true friends of
England—those into whose hands such works at
once passed. Among a very large section, Eng-
land is a model country. The " bloated aristo-
crat" is the hero of tales read by their firesides,
and he is received with a hearty and generous wel-
come when he sets his foot in the United States.
American authors wrote and poets sang of the old
country, its green fields and hawthorn hedges, its
ancient ruins and cathedrals, while tourists rum-
maged its mossy graveyards, its heralds' offices,
and musty parchments. The traveller on his re-
, turn spoke of England, and his audience listened
with an ever-green interest in its society, scenery,
manners, and customs, the speeches of its public
and the writings of its literary men. Thus Eng-
land which served as the political foil for one class
served as a social model for the other, and inter-
woven through both were strangely mingled these
conflicting sentiments. When England then re-
plied to political buncom'ae by social ridicule, in-
stead of meeting the real point of attack she left
it open and unguarded, and struck the friendly
bosom, repelling the very sentiments upon which
she might have played so as to raise up in the
enemy's citadel a most powerful ally. Nor was
this all these wise people—the bloated aristocrats—
accomplishe,l. They generated a social anti-
pathy which no others more readily conceive
than the English, and quickest, where the thing
to be disliked is stigmatised as vulgar. Accord-
ing to former English notions, all Americans
were tobacco-chawing, spitting, whisky-swilling

Yankees," whose ideas never soared beyond trade,
who spoke a peculiar jargon through the nose, whose
hair was unkempt, and whose beards fell under their
chins in tufts like those of the goat. This Yankee
wore striped trousers and a swallow-tailed coat with
brass buttons ; a diamond pia in his shirt-front,
and a heavy watch chain of pinchbeck gold; he
addressed every one as " stranger" with the utmost-
familiarity, questioning and guessing. England
had totally misunderstood the American charac-
ter, but it is a positive and acknowledged fact, that,
gross as was English ignorance, the Southerners
themselves knew little more about their Northern
brethren. To them the Yankee was a sniffling,
peddling, fanatical trader, whose object was at the
same time to realize treasure in this world and the
next, and to do both from the most sordid of motives.
Such a creature, he argued, will not fight, but he
started ou a wrong basis, and quickly arrived at
the most awful grief. If PROVIDENCE saved the
American Union, and with it the bond of freedom—
for we shudder to think what might have happened
to mankind had it gone down before its foes—it
did so with lessons we ought to lay to heart.
The ceaseless attacks on England merely for
rhetorical effect produced al apparent political
hostility in America against England, and a
genuine social dislike in England for Americans.
That dislike led literary men to paint a typical
Yankee, which produced a grossly untrue ideal
in the English mind. That caricature and a belief
in the hostility of the States induced Englishmen
to wish for the success of the rebellion—that wish
led to covert countenance and aid, which materially
strengthened the power of the Confederacy, and
nearly led to its recognition by England and France,
a combination which might have destroyed the
Union. This countenance and aid generated feel-
ings of bitter irritation in the Northern States
which almost forced the Washington Government
into a war with England after the suppression of
the rebellion. Thus great effects are produced
from small causes, and were it not that Americans
are of all people in the word I the most forgiving
we might nit soon see the end of so miserable a
muddle. What we maintain is that ignorance is
at the root of all this mischief. The " bloated
aristocrat" of the American stump speaker is gene-
rally a highly cultivated, liberal-minded, and very
unpretending- English gentleman. To represent
him as grinding up the bones and blood of Ilindoos,
or wringing from the poverty of Ireland the wealth
which supplies his gorgeous palaces, is similarly to
falsify facts as the English did in the " typical Yan-
kee." That he has class prejudices no one cleni:s ; and
many honest men think he should be deprived of
his class privileges. But every American who ob-
tains an entree into his society knows, that there of
• all places in England, liberality of sentiment has
the freest expression, and is best expressed. It is
impossible to treat this subject in a single article,
and there are points connected with it to which we
will next week draw the especial attention of our
readers, as we think they supply the data whence
we can gather the true drift of international feeling.