The European Press on American Affairs.
The New York correspondent of the London
Times, writing on the 12th ultimo, says that
Mrs. Lincoln is suspected in
Washington of treason, and ‘"so strongly suspected that when
Gen. Halleck took command he made it a
sine qua non that she should go to her home at
Springfield, Ill., which she has done."’ The New York
Herald, commenting on this, advises that
MacKay, the correspondent, be mobbed, and suggests, as he lives on
Staten Island, near a camp, that it would be a good opportunity for the troops there to distinguish themselves in that line of business.
The
London Saturday Review (organ of the Literati) has a strong article on the ‘"
Lincoln tyranny."’ It says:
‘
Mrs Lincoln has suppressed some newspapers, and so overawed the remainder that they will publish nothing but what he permits.
He has sent a military force to superintend elections, and has arrested the members of a Legislature for the votes it might be supposed they would give.
He has arrested a Judge for belonging to a Court which is constitutionally his own superior, simply because that
Judge uttered a decree distasteful to him. He has been consigning men at the rate of five and twenty per day to the cells of a military dungeon for offences wholly unknown to the
American law — for opposition speeches at public meetings, for words of ridicule or censure uttered in private conversation — pay, for simply offering to procure substitutes for persons liable to draft.
Nor has he confined his measures of illegal violence to single individuals.
He has created a system of conscription on a model severer than that of any Continental State, and has sentenced the whole population of the States to be detained.
within his jurisdiction till the balloting is over.--All these things he has done by his own simple ukase, enforced by military power, without sanction or authority from any legislative assembly.--These things are the modern
Democrat's definition of freedom.
Conscriptions, a passport system, bastilles,
lettres detachets indiscriminate arrests, gagged newspapers, public meetings silenced — elections, legislatures, courts of justice, violated by military power — these are the institutions which constitute
Mr. Bright's ideal of liberty, and watch none but a "friend of despotism" may impugn.
The step between Jacobinism and Imperialism is never a very long one, and opinions seem to move at railway pace in our day.
If the proceedings of
President Lincoln are not despotism, what conceivable course of conduct can justify the term?
What did Bomba do that
Lincoln has not done?
They have both seized upon arbitrary power.
Both have set at defiance a Constitution to which they had sworn.
They have both imprisoned their political opponents wholesale, in over crowded cells without form of law. They have both inflicted illegal penalties for words dropped in private conversation.
They have both been served by subordinates far worse than them elves, whose atrocities have been related with loathing throughout the civilized world; and both have uphold those subordinates in their crimes.
And both have justified themselves by the tyrant's proverbial plea, averring the extreme danger in which their Government was placed.
Events have lent a melancholy confirmation to the truth of this plea in the case of the unlucky
King of
Naples; and they promise to do the same service by
President Lincoln.
There are, o ccurss, differences of detail in the two tyrannies, arising from the different circumstances of the two percentages. --The President's tyranny is loss searching and more capricious, because he is too incompetent a man to have organized a really effective system, and because his
regime is too new to have allowed him time to train the necessary instruments.
It may also be admitted, though accounts on that head differ, that Forts Lafayette and
McHenry are considerably cleaner than the
Neapolitan prisons.
On the other band, the
King of
Naples's Ministers pale their ineffective fires before
Butler and Turcoin; and the bombardment, from which the
King himself derived his nickname, was an innocent pastime compared to the appalling tragedy that was perpetrated at
Athens.
There appears to be no doubt — though it is scarcely credible — that the officer who deliberately gave leave to his soldiers to work their will upon a school of girls belonging to the chief families of the
Confederate States, is still an officer of the army of the United States.
Is it the dotage of a half softened brain, or is it sheer hypocrisy, that pretends to stigmatize as an act of friendship to despotism the denunciation of such a Government as this?
’
The same paper has an interesting article, accounting for the ‘"superiority of the
Southern troops."’ It shows that the habits of the people of the two sections are widely different, and those of the
South greatly in favor of making good commanders and soldiers.
It says:
‘
He who has controlled the population and managed the commissariat of a large plantation has learned much that will be useful to the commander of a thousand soldiers; and if, in addition, he has been a sportsman, after the manner of American planters, he has certainly undergone a tolerable apprenticeship to the trade of command in war.--Then commissions in the
Confederate service have not, as a rule, been given by political or personal favor.
In the second levy they were given almost exclusively, and in the first very largely, to men who had seen service.
And finally, the
South has all the best officers of the old United States Army, to which it always furnished men superior to those who came from the free States.
The unwarlike democracy of the latter never encouraged the ablest of its sons to enter on a profession which was held in little honor, and held out few chances of rewards worth having.
The South, aristocratic by temper and by social constitution, however democratic in politics, had the military spirit which always distinguishes an aristocracy.
Many of the ablest and most promising of the
Southern youth, therefore, adopted from time to time the career of arms; and their country now enjoys the benefit of their professional training and practical experience.
Lee,
Beauregard, the two
Johnston's, the brilliant
Stonewall Jackson, and
President Davis himself, were all professional soldiers as well as men of distinguished capacity.
The
North, which always thought its worst men good enough, and its best far too good for the army has no men to oppose to these; not because the Northerners have not among them, for aught we know, men of whom equally good officers might have been made, but because such men naturally turned away from an unpopular and unprofitable career to seek profit in trade, or fame at the bar, or in politics; and it is too late now to make
Generals of them.
The
Army and Navy Gazette says the
Confederate invasion of
Maryland is a failure, if the latest telegraph prove true.
Pope's army, it seems, was badly beaten, but not placed
hors du combat in the second struggle on the plains of
Manassas.
McClellan has shown a decided flash of soldier-like spirit in marching resolutely upon the lines of retreat open to the
Confederates.
The
Morning Post; writing in ignorance of the
Maryland battle, says "the
Confederates, in turning the invaders, have undertaken a most difficult, if not impossible, task."
The
Daily News eulogizes
Garibaldi for his declaration in favor of the
North, and denounces those who carp at him for it. It says, however, that he will not go to
America.
’
