YANKEE PRINCIPLES, AND JOHN BULL SYMPATHY.

North Otago Times, Volume I, Issue 12, 12 May 1864, Page 6

YANKEE PRINCIPLES, AND JOHN BULL SYMPATHY.

One of the commonest questions which one man puts to another in these times is, "Which side do you take in the American War ? A gigantic war is still being carried on among a people who pride themselves on their high moral and intellectual position ; and yet no one seems exactly to know which side to give his sympathy. In both armies are men of high attainments, liberal culture, and Anglo-Saxon worth. Both armies profess to be fighting for the same object, whilst another object lies undeniably beneath it. We cannot but feel that each side may, with perfect good con8cience, persuade itself that it is in the right. The Southerners may argue that the very existence of the Union as a seceded colony from Britain, implies the right of secession, and thatthe bloodshed is, therefore, the work of the invaders, and not of the defenders of hearth and home. They are no rebels, they may say, but citizens desiring peace. The Northerner, with his intense national pride, holds that a popular constitution is ever more inviolate than that loyalty which binds together older kingdoms. Secession from a confederated Union is to him the very worst form of rebellion. So far, no man out of America would hesitate as to giving his sympathies to the South. And so it has proved ; for during the first stages of the conflict, English feeling, if not European sentiment, went wholly over to the side of the bold defenders of the invaded States. But nothing could prevent the secret cause of the war from coming up in unexpected and unwelcome forms. The negro is " impressible ; " the negro is universal. The South values him as a slave, and feign would have kept him in bonds The Federals, from policy more than piinciple, are theoretically against slavery ; but they hate a black man as a companion and a brother, and they are ashamed to avow that they fight for Ms freedom. Meanwhile the war goes on ; the negro is free ; and the success of the South has been its own defeat. The Abolitionist party, by no means numerically strong, or representing American policy, has gained immense influence, and is trying to persuade the army that it is engaged in a holy crusade. The Rev. 11. Ward Beecher shakes hands with the sanguinary demon from New Orleans, and calls him a brother philanthropist. Mrs Stowe continues to make stirring appeals to her English sisters about their lukewarmness in the Northern cause. In the midst of all this no one apparently knows what to think or what to say. The Americans are themselves as fickle and as changeable as the wind. The New Englanders say they are fighting against slavery ; but the Western States say, " No ! we are fighting for the Union as it was ;" whilst the republicans give a third version, and make out that the war is a war for the Union, with the probable and desirable limitation of slavery as a matter of policy. In the midst of all this confusion of facts and principles, what are plain, disinterested people to think ? The South is bold and brave, and has a certain show of justice on its side ; but it is cruel and full of hatred towards the negro — conduct all true Englishmen must view with most energetic abhorrence. The North, again, was and is intensely anti-British, puffed up with self-conceit, inflated with bombast, saturated with vanity, and with no fixed principles at all, either for or against slavery- Two years ago it was beyond all possibility to love the Yankee. But now events have made the civil convulsion an anti-slavery war, and we, for our part, feel compelled in spite of ourselves to declare our sympathy in favor of the North. Had the North, however, succeeded, a slaveholding Union would have been the result. Had the South succeeded, the result would have been still worse. How the contest will end would be hard to say, with any degree of certainty. It is plain, however, that the North is becoming every day more true to the noble principle of freedom, and the chance of re-uniting the States is all but hopeless. The war is the doom of American slavery ; but this result will not come from brilliant victories fought on behalf of the " Union as it was." The cause of the slave is the cause of justice, of humanity, and of God !

Foe the Ladies. — Wo found the other clay in an old and rare book a mention of the first use of rouge, which, by this account, seems to have been somewhat perverted from its original purpose. It was " worn by the Roman generate in their triumphs, that they might seem to blush continually at their own praiBcs." Never Dfspaib. — Let your troubles bo what they may, never say die. Let your hair turn grey or white, but never say dye.