The Sun. — 1863-08-03 (London, England)

THE GORDIAN KNOT.  All reform must grow ; it cannot safely be made. To lecture a man upon the nastiness of chewing tobacco, while taking a pinch of snuff, seems to him unreasonable and impertinent. We in the Fres States must treat the black as a man before we have any right to ask the Slave States not to treat him as a chattel. It is this inconsistency which makes the South look upon our anti-slavery feeling as the simple arrogance of the pharisee, and indisposes it to give that respectful attention to our opinion which it would otherwise receive. The Southerner points to that unerring index of content and wellbeing, increase of population, as a proof beyond declamation or assertion that the black face is more happy in its state of slavery than in its condition of freedom. It points to the record of crime in the Free States, which shows the white race with a far larger average of criminality than the black race, and asks us if that condition is to be preferred which brings such results. It points to the legislature of States which exclude the free blacks from their soil, and asks why it should be subjected to that curse which other States so sedulously guard themselves from. IN hat honest answer is there to such questions ? The idea of the Tribune is to make all the blacks of the United States American citizens, but is the notion practicable ? Before entering upon so vast an experiment would it not be advisable to make the experiment upon a small scale ? Can it get the State of New York to look upon the black as a man equally entitled and equally capable as the white to exercise the right of self-government ? We very much doubt it. It will not do to say that the negro is considered inferior in New York because his race is slave in the South. No white race would have remained slave at the South. That this is true can be seen from our treatment of the Indian. That race is a noble race, a far superior animal to the negro, and yet the common sense of this country sets them apart. Since the whites landed they have murdered and cheated the Indian eternally, and will do so until not a red skin remains. As the Indian cannot be white, he dies. He will not serve. You can as easily yoke a lion. Bat the basis of the negro's mental characteristics is self •enjoyment, and consequently he serves and finds not much aspiration beyond comfort. He does not long for liberty, except as synonymous with exception from stated toil. That the negro is capable of improvement, that in the course of time,, by contact with the white, his physical nature and consequently his moral nature will be changed, is inevitable. When that change is effected his social condition and political status will be changed also. This, however, is the work of generations, and will be the result of natural laws as slow but as certain as those which govern the formation of coral islands in the sea. From not perceiving this great truth, from too eager aspirations that the good which generations are needed to effect be completed in their day, men are abolitionists, and have inoculated the people of the North with their unreason. There is slavery at the South, not because men there differ from men here, but because the South has an immense black population, which it fears to keep in any other condition. It has seceded because it believed that the North attempted, through the agency of a common government, to compel the adoption by the South of its views upon the question. In other words, it believes that it is vindicating the great principle of self-government. With this belief it is idle to suppose that the war will be ended either by the taking of strongholds or the beating of armies alone. Such is the intense love of liberty in the American nature that all physical power will have to be completely crushed before opposition ceases. It is not the will of the South we have to subdue, but the convictions of evil which we have to dissipate.--New York World.