The Sun. — 1863-01-26 (London, England)

EXAMINER—In the " Wreck Ashore," when Magog the beadle is prostrate on the stage in:helpless drunkenness, his friend urges him to get up, upon which Magog hiccups out, " It is all very easy to say get up, but the question is, how do you do it ?" And in this will be Sambo's question upon the President's exhortation to him to rise and take his liberty. The problem is made the more perplexing by the injunction to abstain from violence. So in the French illustration of barren gifts; the father makes his little son a present of a drum, saying, "Go and amuse yourself with your toy, but only mind to make no noise." But there is an important qualification to the injunction against violence, and it is the permission to resort to it in self-defence, a case that must arise whenever the slave, in assertion of his freedom, refuses obedience to his master's command, and is threatened with punishment for his rebellion. And here we come to the object of the Proclamation, an object, however, which does not seem a jot promoted by it. For if slavery be the bitter condition we believe it to be, the slave with power to break his bonds will not wait for a permission. If he feels his wrong he will seize his rights, when he has the force to do so, without leave or licence. He did so in St. Domingo in a way that horrified the world. But in St. Domingo the black population immensely outnumbered tho white. In the Southern States the case is reversed, and the white population almost as three to one to the black, and superior even more by the habit of domination than physical force. What, then, does the Proclamation for the slave ? It gives him no assistance, no sanction for seizing his liberty, for he wants no sanction if he believes himself as a human being entitled to his own body. To borrow a French metaphor, it forces an open door. Where there are the disposition and power to rebel they would have their course without the President's instigation; and where those things are not the Proclamation will not create them. No slave will feel himself a jot the better for the President's Proclamation of his freedom, which to him is a practical lie. " Thank you for nothing" will be his sentiment ; but, on the other hand, how bitter must be the feeling of the blacks in the loyal States whose bondage is rivetted expressly to reward their taskmasters. These are the people to whom lessons against resort to violence should be addressed, for they must need them, unless their patience and endurance exceed those of the fabled Uncle Tom. The philanthropic Mr. Sumner's view of the purpose of the Proclamation is doubtless the true one —" to light a fire in the rear." So some years ago, in Ireland, rapacious savages would put a woman on the red-hot grate to extort the secret of her hiding-place for valuables. And though the Proclamation may not serve to instigate an insurrection, for which the blacks are not strong enough, it may serve here and there to incite to domestic treachery and occasional rape, robbery, and murder, which will shake the security of the Confederates, oblige them to look at home, and dispose them to distrust of their negroes, and proportionate severity in the treatment of the suspected. Whatever there may be bad in the feelings and dispositions of masters and slaves will be rendered worse by that malignant document. It will fall far short of its aim, but not without much revolting mischief.