TOPICS OF THE DAY.
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THE CHANCES OF PEACE IN AMERICA. THE public mind is swinging round again. After believing for nearly two months that the South would ultimately be defeated, that the dauntless persistency of the North would wear out the fiery courage of its opponents, that numbers and will would prevail alike over skill and " patriotism," it has suddenly arrived at the conviction that the cause of the North is lost. Immediately after General Grant's first battle even the Times wrote respectfully of the chances of the invasion, but the check suffered in the direct advance on Richmond, the long pause before Petersburg; the excessive rise in gold, the dismissal or resignation of Mr. Chase, the rumours of an " invasion of Maryland," and the natural recoil of over- excited anticipation, have once more depressed the balance ; the Confederate loan has gone up to 76, the Conservative papers once more speak of " the victorious South," and the wildest rumours, if only they tell to the disadvantage of the North, are received with instant credit. All this while the facts of the case either remain exactly where they were a year ago, or when they have altered have altered with one conspicuous exception to the advantage of the Federals. The military change has been conspicuously in their favour. Last year they were contending in the West for the Missis- sippi, apprehended the loss of New Orleans, were doubtful of the fidelity of Missouri, and wavered in policy for fear lest they should affront irretrievably the " neutral " poli- ticians of the State of Kentucky. This year the army of the Mississippi has quitted the banks of that river, and fought its way steadily and surely to the very heart of the Con- federacy, has traversed such a section of Georgia that mili- tary critics already discuss the possibility of General Sher- man intervening with decisive effect in the Virginian contest. This great result has, moreover, been accom- plished in the teeth of the strongest resistance, of battles so severe that Southerners estimate General Sherman's losses at 30,000 men, of efforts so great that the South is obliged to explain defeat by the Northern device of calling every fresh retreat a new strategical movement. Missouri is either repentant or so completely controlled that the Government can rely upon the action of the State Legisla- ture, and Louisiana has established a Government which, however little it represents opinion, still prohibits the State from exerting any organized force on the Confederate side. Kentucky, which ruled the situation, has just been placed under martial law, and even Southerners have ceased to speak of the campaign in the Far West. In Virginia, where the case seems so much worse for the Fede- rals, it is in reality even better. Those seventy miles between Washington and Richmond which were pronoun- ced so impassable have been traversed, traversed in spite of a resistance rising into the heroic, traversed with such loss to the defendants that General Lee, boldest of all Southern generals, is reduced to a policy of comparative inaction, suffers General Grant to march past him without attacking his exposed line, and leaves his adversary south of Richmond rather than risk another general action. That this advantage has been obtained at an immense sacrifice of life is true, but the very first datum of the struggle is that the North can afford this loss, and that the South cannot. The supply of men in the North is almost inexhaustible, owing to immigration, that of men in the South a strictly limited quantity. Then the Southerners, we are told, are invading Maryland, and going to capture Baltimore. So they were last year, only they did not leave a vast army in sight of their own capital, they had 120,000 men instead of 20,000, and they were commanded by General Lee instead of General Ewell. That was a true invasion, this is only a raid ; that army might have captured Baltimore, this could not take Fort McHenry, which commands the city, or the gunboats which could lay the port in ashes ; that required the sudden return of the whole army of the Potomac, this can be met and defeated by call- ing out the local and neighbouring militia. The struggle is hot enough, no doubt, for these Southerners are good soldiers, they are fighting from the inside, and they have most auda cious and able leaders, but, taking the campaign as a whole, which is as yet the victor? Then take the political situation. In what is it worse than it was last year? Three more States have been reduced, if not into hearty obedience to Washington, at least into a sullen acquiescence, which is comparatively almost as favour- able. Two more have altered their constitutions, so as to abolish slavery for ever, and so establish a community of interests between themselves and the Free States which allows of immigration. The President has given up his last lingering hope of compromise, and accepts a platform which, as regards slavery, is in effect though not in theory abolitionist. His new Congress, which was to have been so democratic, and to have controlled him in the direction of peace, turns out on all questions connected with war or slavery an ultra-repub- lican body. The coalition of Governors which tried last year ' to dictate terms to the President has disappeared, and if Ohio is violent now, Illinois last year openly resisted the troops sent to enforce the draft. The Times has a story that Governor Seymour has refused to send the militia to Washington, which is, we imagine, based on some negotiation as to the State pay of the men ; but granting it all true in the sense its correspon- dent desires to convey, what does it imply ? That the chosen man of the democracy, backed by the only city in the North which is Southern in sympathy, the Governor who last year connived at an armed riot organized for Southern advantage, is this year compelled to confine himself to a purely passive resistance, to use his official power for obstruction instead of for open treason. That is not a worse but a better symptom of the strength of the central power, and there is no proof whatever that Mr. Seymour is supported by his electors, or by a majority of them, or by any considerable mass of men except the immigrants who view the negroes with dislike, as possible rivals in the market for unskilled labour. But the rise in the value of gold ? Is no doubt the very worst symptom in the whole aspect of Northern politics, for it signifies that the war is becoming crushingly expensive. Prices rise with the fall in the currency, until if the process continues a soldier's rations may cost next year as much as turtle soup and champagne cost last. But what is the premium on gold throughout the great cities of the South ? There is no fact better ascertained in modern politics than that when a people is once determined finance will not atop war. The Con- vention had 1,200,000 mon in the field when assignats were at. 1,000 per cent., and Russia drove out Napoleon and raised a new army to traverse Germariy when they were almost valueless. The only effect of the rise on the war is to compel the Govern- ment to take the taxes in kind, and in the end to substitute re- quisitions for taxation. For the few articles required from abroad, such, for instance, tis saltpetre, the North can always pay, just as the South can pay, for it can use its store of corn as the South uses its store of cotton. The rise in wages may derange labour, or even suspend it, but then the effect of suspension may be, as in France, to hurl the labouring class into the ranks, where alone they are secure of food. The North if reduced to a state of barter, with its industry suspen- ded and its commerce paralyzed, its finances non-existent and its private fortunes disappearing, can still if it will, while seed. produces harvest, fight on to the end. The single question for politicians is now, as it was a year ago, the willingness of the Northern people to endure all rather than see the South depart.
If they are unwilling the question ends, but where are the signs of the unwillingness ? The dissatisfaction in New York ? We will admit New York to be officially Southern. The growing panic among the merchants? We will admit that day by day more merchants weary of the war, that within the next six months they may become as a class fanatic in their longings for peace. The hopelessness of the cultivated class? We believe that class has been and remains doubtful, like Mr. Hawthorne, whether the South can by any exertion whatever be permanently subdued. But for the hundredth time we repeat the one fact of American politics which our country- men will never perceive, that substantial power in the United States rests with the country freeholders, that they are when combined and excited more absolutely masters of the policy of their country than the middle classes are of the policy of ours. The electors in England could not defy the non-electors in arms, the Northern freeholders have a complete supre- macy in physical force, could if so inclined reduce the great cities to ashes, and send all friends of compromise to serve against their will in the ranks. There is no power which can control this class, and it is the one of all others ou which the currency difficulty falls with least visible weight. Whatever is wanting without, corn will not be done without. Whatever can be given by the rich will be given to these men first and last of all. If gold be at 1,000 premium bread will still support farmers, and the land ploughed by father and sons does not obey Mr. Fessenden ; woollen will still warm them and sheep yield their fleeces without asking leave of Wall Street; meat will still fatten them, and pigs can be fed on peaches, though gold bo buried out of men's sight. As a matter of fact, these men look on specie only as a means of accumulating their small savings, and the suspension of savings for one year or ten no more means ruin to them than it does to the non-slaveholding whites of the South. Till they give up, nothing is given up, and what motive for giving up has as yet been suggested to them ? Nothing that has occurred this year tends to smooth away the original difficulties of partition, to make it easier to fix a boundary or more honourable to surrender the valley of the Mississippi, pleasanter to abandon an enormous trade, or more possible to surrender the one dream which makes these men's lives bright,—the dream of the mighty continent united under one Empire, in which the exiles of earth may find a home, before which all governments must bend, and in which misery and oppression have no place, and toil at last has ceased to involve the nurse of poverty. Englishmen do not believe in the realization of that dream, thinking men may doubt whether it is well that it should ever be realized, but it is the dream of these independent and griping, honest and obstinate Anglo-Saxons, and the French Jacobins went to the grave bythousands for a dream which seemed even to themselves very much further off. Their leaders may have more power of initiative than we ourselves believe, they themselves may at heart be more careful for cash than they have yet appeared, but they rule the situation, and if they are what we suppose them to be the revolution must run its course, and the North, with Grant defeated and gold at 1,000 premium, press on for another, and another, and yet another campaign. They may not conquer even then, for they are dealing with men as English as themselves ; but if they do not fix the terms of the separation, if they do not so far win as to select their own boundaries and their own conditions of alliance, politics have no meaning, and all discussions on the comparative strength of nations are mere baseless dreams.
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