Government impossible. See, it would have been said, the meanness, the cowardice, the insensibility to a great name and lofty destinies which Democracy produces. These people were yesterday one of the greatest nations on the globe, and at the first check they abdicated their greatness rather than draw the sword, Democracy begets and nourishes poltroons. We must look elsewhere for those manly virtues by which States contend successfully with perils that threaten their existence, and, at length, emerge from their trials stronger, purer, and more glorious than ever. THE IMPRESSMENT OF BRITISH SUBJECTS IN NEW ORLEANS. There are no people so thoroughly on their good behavior before all the world as the two unfortunate parties in the fratricidal contest now raging in America. They have to prove not only their sense of justice and their regard for truth, and also that they are not needlessly sensitive or too ready to fall into a quarrel. There is a general persuasion in this part of the world-indeed, all over the world, except between Niagara and the Gulf of Mexico, that the present state of affairs there is the natural result of a defiant, offensive, and intolerable tone of talking and acting on all matters whatever. The American is rather too apt to consider himself absolutely right, and is pleased to think he is so occasionally to the confusion of others. A high civilization holds it in the greatest of social misfortunes that there should be a difference at all. An American does not regard this as so great a misfortune, compared with having to own himself a little mistaken, or misinformed as to a trifle. With such people, when a quarrel has once arisen, there can be only one appeal-that appeal to arms, which has now assumed such terrible proportions, and the issue of which no man can venture to foretell. But if there is any hope of a compromise-if, even in our own time, we are ever to see the Northerner and the Southerner discussing their differences amicably in Congress, it can only be by the introduction of a less positive, less domineering, less provoking tone than that on which the Americans have hitherto prided themselves. Alas for Democracy! its enemies will give it no quarter. In their desperate hurry to mangle its limbs, to cut its throat, to demonstrate that it has forfeited all right to live, they do not even care to be just. Whether it fights or abstains from fighting, it is all the same; whether it obeys the fiery impulses which have made Europe for eighteen centuries one continuous battle-field, or meekly drops its arms in mute submission to fortune, its reputation is fore-doomed. What else could we have expected when its enemies assume to sit as judges, and the critic who professes impartially to try its conduct never lays aside his vulgar, unphilosophic, unsparing, and indiscriminating hate? If, however, we must try democratic institutions by this new test, we challenge its application with pleasure. Only let it be applied fairly. There are a great many nations under heaven, some of which have lasted long enough to furnish ample materials for comparison. Our own country is one of the most highly favored. Society here is strong, having its roots far back in an immemorial past, long before the date of Bunker's Hill or even the discoveries of Columbus. Yet we have had our civil wars. Not to go back to the time of the Plantaganets, when the claims of rival dynasties swept the land with fire and slaughter for a century together, we have had one great rebellion which sent a monarch to the block, another rebellion which drove another monarch from his throne, and two more rebellions, the last of which saw an army of Highlanders in the heart of the kingdom. Within the memory of men still living we had a great rebellion in Ireland, where battles were fought and scaffolds well furnished Mr. Russell has been for some time in the with victims. Even within the last thirty | United States discharging for the British pubyears the Duke of Wellington regarded that lic, not to say for the whole world, the same country as one that required to be held with a services that he did so well before in the Crimea large garrison, and ruled over by a mitigated and in India. He has every where had to perform of martial law. Do the recurring disasters form his laborious duties under difficulties inof half a dozen centuries prove that monarchy conceivable to most of his readers, and little "conveys not the slightest security against the shared by writers compiling narratives at a worst of wars"? We will not send our read-library table, or taking down the words of some ers abroad, to Paris, to Vienna, or to Warsaw, where civil war exists in its worst form, the helpless struggle of a brave people against omnipotent battalions. If the civil war in America proves any thing to the disparagement of democracy, what do the convulsions of Europe prove for monarchical institutions? But ours, it may be said, is neither the one nor the other. customary informant. He has had to write in haste, in exhaustion, in noise, in danger, in the very turmoil of war, with disputation and even menace still in his ears. He has been occasionally contradicted, generally confessed to be right, and sometimes has frankly and courageously avowed himself to be mistaken or misinformed. His letters are now before the world in the form of volumns, and, having passed through the ordeal of criticism, are part of the literature of his country. Nowhere has his liberty of speech been so furiously arraigned, and his vocation so denounced, as in the United States. A correspondence in another column will show how little support, truthful, exact, and candid as he is, he is likely to receive there, even from those who might be supposed above the madness of a mob. subsequent information leads him to withdraw or qualify a word, the conclusion is that he sacrifices every thing to truth. In the deportment of the Governor of Louisiana the conclusion is that he may be safely put out of the question altogether. This is a matter that should be known, for it helps to illustrate the state of things in the United States; and the government of Louisiana has not mended matters, or served its cause, by attempting to discredit the informant who has told the simple truth. -London Times, August 13. WAR EXPENSES AND WAR TAXES IN AMERICA. He had stated that at New Orleans British subjects had been forcibly impressed into the ranks of so-called volunteers. On their resistance he said that they had been knocked down and dragged off, and only released after energetic representations by the British Consul to the Every Englishman knows, by the experience authorities. When we find it admitted by of his own country, where the shoe would beColonel Manning, aide-de-camp to the Governor gin to pinch the American belligerents. In that of the State of Louisiana, that there do exist country, as elsewhere, any number of men can at New Orleans volunteer corps called the Car- be procured to fight, after some fashion, in any roll Guards, which he admits to be without any cause, good or bad, if they are only well paid, recognized military organization, to be so far well fed, well clothed, well housed, and moderbeyond the control of the authorities, and for ately well commanded, with some prospect, if whom, therefore, he wisely declines to be re- not of booty, at least of a whole skin. So it sponsible, our readers will easily understand becomes a question of money. A confidence how British subjects, in common with other in money alone has always proved false; but people at New Orleans, would be liable to great money there must be, and there is no country outrage, notwithstanding earnest wishes to the in which it is more necessary than in the contrary on the part of the authorities. Those au- United States, where wages are high and work thorities wish two things not easily compatible, is abundant. A war will cost there almost as As politicians they wish to enjoy the benefit of much as it did here, for if the work is nearer a strong popular feeling and a large force of vol- home, and the area of the war somewhat less unteers. As the conservators of public order, than the whole surface of this terraqueous they wish no man to be forced, and British sub- globe, still, for that very reason, there is much jects, at all events, to be left alone. Mr. Russell interruption of the ordinary pursuits of life. frankly admits that they acted on the latter feel- In the first place, all the bonds of debtor and ing as soon as the opportunity occurred, and that creditor, whether public or private, and all the he erred in charging them with a degree of eva- relations of business in cotton and other cultision before they released the British subjects vation, are at an end. The State Governments who had appealed to the Consular aid. They themselves set the example of repudiation by had been released, it appears, with as little de- refusing to cash bonds, or coupons, which can lay as was necessary to receive the statement be traced to the possession of the other party of their case. Thus far the story is very intel- in the struggle. Searching interrogatories are ligible. The Carroll Guards go about the work-put, and must be answered on oath, before a shops and wharves of New Orleans compelling State will pay interest which may find its way this man or that to join their ranks. They to hostile hands. Meanwhile commerce is inmeet with occasional resistance and excuse, terrupted by blockades and privateers, and imparticularly that of being subjects of the Brit- mense works commenced in the depth of peace ish crown. They don't care much for this, are stopped by the withdrawal of hands and perhaps because they don't believe it, perhaps resources, and not less by a general diminution because they have heard the American theory of confidence in the prospects of the country. that every person who lands in America with At Washington, finance observes the old forms the intention of residing there acquires the of Union, and supposes a tax to be levied on all rights and the duties of an American citizen, the States, It is obliged, however, to condeThe Consul is asked to appeal in their favor, scend to fact, and calculate on the certainty and the Governor, on hearing their statement that only half the States will respond to the call. and that of their captors, lets them go, but not So the Congress of Washington is looking the till they have suffered some detention and out- difficulty, as they say there, square in the rage. When this is undisputed, when it must face; "" not so 66 square," however, as they will be admitted that it was matter for record, and one day have to look it. There appears to be when the Governor of Louisiana cannot think no difficulty in the authorization of loans to himself ill-used, we do not see why he should any amount; indeed, at this moment Governseize on the admission that no evasion had been ment has large powers for the issue of Treasury practised to invite general disbelief in Mr. notes for three years, and has found the mar Russell's statements. In every good society in ket, we presume, unfavorable for the exercise this country, when a man frankly confesses that of its powers. The real question is how to find 66 a proper basis for loans in an augmented and well-paid revenue. This involves taxation, and, unfortunately, taxation appears to be a point on which the Eastern and Western States of the Federal Union are almost as much at variance as both are with the Southern Confederacy. The Western States have a particular objection to taxes; and when we read the war budget which the Congress seems finally to have decided on, one feels that such an objection may be expressed not only in good sentences on the floor of Congress, but also in a not less formidable manner far West. Besides a direct tax of $20,000,000 apportioned among the States, and expected from only one-half, the new budget proposes a tax upon carriages, varying from one dollar to fifty; a tax upon watches, an excise duty on spirituous liquors of five cents a gallon, and on fermented liquors of sixty cents a barrel; and a general tax upon incomes, the rate of which, as well as the incomes liable, is not yet decided. Meanwhile the Morrill tariff is untouched except by the imposition of additional duties. Every item in this budget suggests a financial war, as difficult, if not so sanguinary, as the war in the open field. But there is another question which presents itself to the capitalist before even the solvency of a State, or the yield of a tax, or the final success of a cause; and that is the number and frequency of similar calls. If we are to judge from the immense figures on paper paraded by the Northerners, this is a war that may take rank with any of ours-with the European war, which cost us from first to last more than a thousand millions of money, or the Russian war, which cost us a hundred millions in two years. If the Government of Washington is obliged to ask for a hundred million dollars today, when and how soon will it have to repeat that demand; and how many such demands will it have to make this year, and for how many years? Every such demand will compete in the market with the bonds of the last, and our old folks can remember with what celerity a promise to pay £5 a year became worth not so much as £50. Prudent people do not like buying stock at its present price when they know that twenty or thirty millions more will soon be thrown on the market for what it will fetch. Nor is this the only apprehension to damp the courage of the lender. Already, while this war is still in its very cradle, the bankers of the seaboard States are suggesting, in the form of Treasury bonds, a very large increase in the paper currency. How long would this be convertible? We may safely predict that if the war lasts as long as it now threatens to last, both sides will be driven to the same pitiable expedient of a depreciated paper currency as the mother country was in a similar extremity. No doubt there are enthusiasts in the United States who will lend money and buy Treasury bonds for three or ten years, and all the more freely because they feel deeply the social and religious aspects of the quarrel. There may, too, for aught we know, be abolitionists and philanthropists in this country who will buy American notes in a falling market, and prefer to give a good price for them rather than a bad one, because they care more for the credit of the Federal cause than they do for the amount of their own fortune. We cannot think, however, there are so many such people as largely to af fect the quotation of American securities in our market. -London Times, August 14. GENERAL M'CLELLAN'S APPOINTMENT. The appointment of General McClellan to the command of the Federal army is a circumstance which not unnaturally has excited considerable discussion in the New York papers. By one he is described as a military dictator, who is to act entirely free from the control of General Scott and the War Department; and by another a loud complaint is raised because the gallant general, in compliance with the intrigues of certain selfish politicians at Washington, is to be hampered in the selection of the general and regimental officers who are to serve under his command. But all the accounts agree in one particular, that General McClellan, having accepted the responsible post of commander-in-chief, is examining every thing with his own eyes, and is endeavoring to enforce that stern and rigorous discipline, without which, as the disaster at Bull Run shows, a great army may speedily become a disorganized and panicstricken rabble. But when the New York papers talk of a military dictatorship, we hardly know what they mean. Civil war necessarily implies the suspension of ordinary law, and the substitution of the rule of the sword. As far as the interests of the North are concerned it matters little whether this extreme power is wielded by the President at Washington or by the general at the head of the army in the field. Mr. Lincoln, it is admitted, las travelled far beyond the principles of the Constitution. He has proclaimed martial law, he has suspended the habeas corpus act, and he has deposed and imprisoned the municipal authorities at Baltimore. We do not say that these measures are not perfectly justifiable. The indemnity acts of Ĉongress prove them to be so. Mr. Lincoln can delegate to the chief of the army any power which the head of the Executive Government is permitted to exercise; and for the purposes of the campaign it matters little, we repeat, whether Mr. Lincoln or General McClellan exercises powers which are beyond the strict letter of the Constitution. It still appears to be doubtful whether the Confederate troops, flushed with success, intend to attack Washington. As their object will be accomplished by clearing the secessionist States of Federal troops, sound policy would seem to dictate that the enemy should be quietly left to improve their organization in the compar ative security of Arlington Heights. Actual -London Post, (Government Organ,) Aug. 13. If the reader will refer to any speech of any Manchester orator he will find the Government of the United States extravagantly eulogized for the very qualities of which it is now proved to be utterly destitute, and the Americans exalted beyond all other people on account of gifts which it is plain they never possessed. It is this, if the Americans wish to know the truth, which points the remarks of Englishmen on their civil war and its incidents :-It is not that they are any worse, or more foolish, or more intemperate than was to be expected under the trials to which they have been exposed, but that they have been held up to our admiration by a certain party among us as a people in whose counsels no intemperance or folly would ever be likely to prevail. When we see that unlimited democracy conveys not the slightest security against the worst of wars and the most reckless extravagance, we may apply the moral at home, and congratulate ourselves that the old British constitution has not been precipitately remodelled after a Manchester design. -London Times, August 14. THE FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF THE WAR. Never was there a war in which the people of this country took a greater interest. We watch with the utmost solicitude all the proceedings of the belligerents, and observe not only the operations of their armies, but the manifestation of popular feeling, with senti- The mercantile letters from New York by ments which no other struggle could excite. the present packet describe great despondency, We can say more. Though it is impossible to owing to the impression produced by the bad avoid reflecting that the division of the Union management and inefficiency shown at Bull into two great States may relieve us from many Run. People, it is said, are losing confidence of the troubles with which we were menaced by in the Government, and another defeat would the overbearing policy of the old Federal Govern- bring a large number over to the policy of alment, we can safely assert that Englishmen lowing secession to take place peaceably. Some desire nothing more than to see the quarrel persons now express a belief that the North terminated and the strife appeased. We wish will have to acknowledge the South before the no harm to either party, and would far rather end of the year, but the real tendency of events see America strong, united and prosperous, than seems to be more and more in the direction of speculate on the advantages which its premature the state of affairs that will render both parties disruption might possibly bring to its neighbors. glad of a compromise. The Federal troops are But when we have said this, we have said all stated to have evacuated both Harper's Ferry that the Americans are likely to hear with much and Hampton, and much anxiety was evidently satisfaction. For the rest, our conclusions are felt as to the safety of Washington. The opincertainly not favorable to those institutions ion was, however, that it would be a great misunder which this great catastrophe has been take on the part of the Confederates to attack matured. What the Americans call freedom, that city. If defeated, they would lose all the but what we call democracy, does not show to prestige gained at Bull Run; and, if successful, alvantage at this critical time. The theories they would again unite the North against them attributing immeasurable superiority to repub- as one man; while, if they abstain from needlican forms of Government have all been falsi-lessly arousing animosity and remain on the fed in the plainest and most striking manner, and the last six months have proved beyond all question that the preponderance of popular will without check or limit is at least as likely to hurry a nation into war and debt, as the caprice of the most absolute despot or the intrigues of the most selfish of aristocracies. We are not finding fault with the Northern States for going to war. We have repeatedly admitted that the Federal party could not be expected to view the dismemberment of the Union without an effort to avert the loss. But, though civil war is the most frightful of all wars, the Americans plunged into it with less concern than would have been shown by any European State in adopting a diplomatic quarrel. defensive, the North, it is asserted, will soon divide into two parties, an event which would greatly interfere, not only with enlistment, but with the raising of money. The expenses of the Federal Government are enormous, being estimated by a good authority at considerably more than £200,000 per diem. The six per cent. Treasury notes are already at four discount, and as they have only twelve months to run, this is equal to the rate of ten per cent. interest. As they were being issued as fast as possible a further depreciation seemed imminent. The abundance of money at New York was much in their favor, and it is clear that if, owing to the scale of expenditure, this abundance should not continue, a rate far above ten per cent. will speedily be found neces- THE AMERICANS AND OURSELVES. The effects of the war in America are beginning to react on this country. Hitherto we have been mere spectators of the sanguinary struggle, hoping that the course of events would bring it to a speedy and satisfactory close; but recent events show that we are only at the beginning of the end, and that, great as the sufferings of the immediate combatants are, these sufferings must be felt more or less by the whole of Europe, and more especially by the great producing countries, France and England. One of the first consequences of this unfortunate civil strife is a serious diminution in the amount of English railway dividends. Almost every great artery of communication which pierces England from one extremity to the other acknowledges a decrease of business, and this is reflected in the reduced division of profits-a condition of things which is painfully felt by those whose property is embarked in such undertakings, and the worst feature is that, bad as the present prospect is, the future holds out little encouragement. Every week the stock of cottonfor the manufacture of that article is the staple produce of England-becomes "small by degrees and beautifully less," and the question arises where shall we look for a fresh supply when the present one is exhausted? The East Indies may send us 300,000 or 400,000 extra bales; but this is a mere "sop to Cerberus," when measured by our actual necessities. What supplies may we hope for from Australia, from the West Indies, from the West Coast of Africa, or the other portions of the earth to which we were told to direct our eyes? Ultimately, we may perhaps receive from these and other sources enough to keep the mills of Lancashire and Lanarkshire going; but "while the grass grows the seed starves," and the difficulty is how to manage during the painful interval. This difficulty must have been present to the minds of the Southern planters when they raised the standard of revolt. They argued that the first law of nature, self-preservation, would compel England and France to force the blockade of the Southern ports to supply themselves with an article the possession of which is essential to keep down starvation and insurrection at home, and in this sense they reasoned wisely. We may rub on with comparative ease until the Fall of the year, but towards November and December next, when cotton-laden vessels from New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and other ports in possession of the Southern Confederacy, usually make their appearance in British and French waters, the question will arise-a serious one for all parties what is to be done? There are those among us who contend that, unless peace between the North and South has been secured in the interval, we must in self-defence violate the block ade to secure that great essentia of life-cotton. Better, these persons argue, to risk a war with America than to see millions of our operatives turned into the streets to die of wantbetter to provide ourselves with what we cannot do without, at whatever cost, than to bring worse than war-famine, disease, and pestilence -to our own doors. These we admit are extreme views; but it was the belief that they would be realized that induced Mr. Jefferson Davis and his abettors to defy the power of the President and attempt to dismember the Union. Now, we cannot, for the life of us, see, unless some desperate alternative of this kind is to be encouraged, why a large section of the English press takes a morbid delight in inflaming the passions between the North and South, which already burn so violently. Every consideration of humanity ought to induce us to act in the very opposite spirit. We are far removed from the scene, and however much we may deplore the conflict, can look on while the game of war is played out without becoming heated partisans on one side or the other. But some of our cotemporaries appear to exult at the reverse which the Northern States sustained at Bull Run, and the spirit of their comments cannot fail to make a very unfavorable impression on the other side of the Atlantic. Charges of cowardice against the men, and of want of gallantry against the officers, are as plentiful as blackberries in Autumn; and to make the draught still more bitter, we are reminded of the inherent vices of democracy, and of the usually vaporing character of the Americans. Such charges, at such a moment, exhibit, we cannot help saying, singular bad taste. It is not conduct which the Americans pursued to us in our days of adversity-and that we have had to struggle against misfortunes, it would be useless to deny. When Ireland was stricken with famine, America, in the spirit of the good Samaritan, rushed to her assistance in a way that ought not to be forgotten. When it was believed, in the early days of the Second Empire, that Louis Napoleon had inimical designs against us, a loud and almost simultaneous cry of aid came from the Western shores of the Atlantic. But, apart from these considerations, there are no people in the world to whom we are united by so many and such close ties-no people on the earth in whose material prosperity we are more interested, and with whom we do a greater amount of reciprocal trade. When Parliament was sitting, its good taste refrained from all allusion to a subject which can hardly be handled without giving offence; but now that Parliament is adjourned, too many of our public writers and public speakers cannot refrain from giving an expression, often in a very coarse and offensive way, to what they think of the working of American institutions, and the vast superiority of a Limited Monarchy to an absolute President. The contrast is the more remarkable because, of recent years, the |