Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1864-12-30 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CONFEDERATE PRISONERS IN THE NORTH.  Some few weeks since the sum of £17,000 was raised in Liverpool on behalf of the Confederate prisoners, who arc being starved in Northern islands and prisons during the cold of winter. The Federal Government refuse to let the prisoners have the money, although they encourage the inhabitants of England to send out money to the blacks in the North. Mr Seward has given England a lecture on the subject. Nothing could be further from his thoughts than to-allow relief from England to reach his prisoners. The barbarities which they have suffered have been indicted on purpose and of malice aforethought, not for want of nwans or through the mere carelessness of subordinates. The practice of capturing defenceless citizens has no other purpose than to indict suffering. The choice of Johnson's Island as a prison for Confederate officers was dictated by pure malignity. It is, perhaps, as unsafe a place as could be chosen ; but it has the merit of being terribly cold and entirely unsheltered, and therefore calculate(' to cause extreme suffering, and sow the seeds of mortal diseaso among the natives of a genial climate. It was of deliberate purpose that no warm clothing, nor tobacco, nor spirits were furnished to the captives; that they were refused perinission to Purchase these things for themselves ; and that, when such comforts were tendered by kindly citizens of the North, the gifts were refused, and the givers marked for persecution. It is a part of the system of the Federal Government to murder its captives in cold blood ; for if it were not, Burri4e, and Paine, and Burnside, and one or most or all of "them, would have been brought to a court-martial long ago. Three of them are certainly murderers of unusually atrocious guilt, and would be hanged by any Christian government, except their own, without mercy or delay; Burnside's act was only excused by a pretext yet more frivolous than that which was pleaded for the dastardly murder of Major Attire. The insults and outrages offered to distittguished soldiers —the felon's treatment inflicted on Morgan fuel his officers - have been fully approved by Mr Lincoln. The scoundrel who caused a number of c.oifeflerate prisoners to be frozen to death was never punished or even reprimanded. How could any one expect that the government which has sanctioned or ordered these atrocities would allow the condition of its victims to be ameliorated by the charity of England? How could any one suppose that Mr Seward would let slip the opportunity of lecturing us upon the encouragement we have given to the "insurrection" by selling to Southerners about a tithe of the powder, rides, clothes, and other necessaries of war that we have supplied to tin North ? It might have been predicted that he would taunt the • subscribers with having made large profits with blockade-running--a charge which, if true at all, assuredly is true only with regard to an insignificant fraction of their number. But we were hardly prepared to be told that the munitions supplied_ to the insurgents were paid for "by the coveted productions of immoral - and enervating slave labour." This is a little more than could have been anticipated, even from Mr Seward. It is. then, in his eyes, a crime to make calico out of AlthliCall cotton ; and if he wears a shirt at all, it is woven either of linen or Surat. It is a crime to use Brazilian coffee; and Mr Seward is careful to use none but Mocha and Jamaica. He has for many years abstained altogether from sugar, Unless when some Abolitionist friend presented him with a barrel from Jamaica or the East Indies. But he ought to convert his own countrymen to his practice before he insults, on this ground, the blocks-de-runners of Great Britain.