Richmond Whig

AMERICAN TOPICS IN ENGLAND.
MESSAGES OF THE PRESIDENTS CONTRASTED.
[From the London Times.]

We have carefully examined these State papers in order to ascertain, if possible, what view each President takes of the prospects of his own cause, what estimate he forms of past progress, and what hopes he entertains of future success. We confess, after the most careful consideration, we can derive little insight into the subject. The truth is, that these addresses do not contain so much what the writers think as what they wish to be supposed to think. If either North or South despaired of the safety of the Republic, the last place where we should expect to find any trace of it would be in the inaugural addresses of their President. Still such indications as we can gather seem to show that neither party has a right to look forward to the coming year with overweening confidence. The balance of advantage in the last campaign has undoubtedly been in favor of the North. President Lincoln claims somewhat prematurely that the Mississippi is completely opened, while the very last advices we have received show that this is very far from true. Tennessee, he assures us, is substantially clear of insurgents—a statement which the last accounts cannot be said to bear out.

We are told for the hundredth time that the crisis is past, and the attention of the President would seem to be directed rather to the fate of the black than of the white population of the Southern States. He announces his firm adherence to the policy of emancipation, and congratulates himself, as we think he reasonably may, that his views on that subject have made progress during the last year. There can be no doubt of the fact. It has pleased the Democratic party in the North, by an amount of moral cowardice to which history furnishes no parallel, to commit political suicide. To narrow the difference between themselves and their antagonists as to the mere question of the proper manner of carrying on the war was to take up a position by which everything was to be lost, and nothing was to be gained; and, of course, whatever the Democratic party lost has been transferred to those violent men who, in addition to the inestimable advantage of thoroughly knowing their own minds, and having perfectly clear and definite views, possessed for the moment power, place and patronage, and are able to reward those conversions to which the weakness of their opponents gave only too reasonable occasion.

Mr. Lincoln confesses, however, to two wants, both of them very serious in war; the want of men and the want of money. He speaks in guarded terms, not of the scarcity of soldiers, but of the want of labor in every field of industry. The havoc of the war has raised up a formidable competitor with the State; and the man who enters the army will probably be no better paid for risking his life by battle or malaria than the peaceful cultivator of the land, who lives without danger and without excitement. There is also a complaint that the enlistment for the army competes prejudicially with the entering of seamen for the navy.

The address of the Southern President is entitled to the praise of candor. He does not, perhaps, admit so fully as he ought the real effect of the bloody check at Gettysburg, but with this exception, we do not think that General Halleck himself could object to the view which is given of the events of the late campaign. The heavy blow which was sustained by the capture of the Mississippi fortresses, and the recent defeat in Tennessee, are stated with manly frankness—a frankness which leads more to raise our opinion of the prospects of the Confederacy than the most highly colored statements.

There is no complaint of the difficulty of obtaining men for the army, though the losses occasioned by war are spoken of with a bitter regret very different from the iron stoicism which the Northern leaders prescribe to themselves on such subjects. But the statement of Southern finance is a melancholy affair. The Southern people are inundated by depreciated paper currency, their trade is destroyed, their industry terribly impeded, and yet their President can make no better suggestion than the imposition of heavy direct taxation in order to reduce the currency within proper bounds, in addition to what may be required to make provision for the war. Nobody can doubt these principles are sound, but are they practicable? And if not, how are the Southern armies to be supported in the field, and to be provided with food, clothes, arms, ammunition, artillery and transport? The question is not what has been done in the last campaign, but with what resources the two antagonists will confront each other in the campaign which will be opened in the early Spring. The Southern President expresses a confidence in the superior endurance of men fighting for home, liberty and independence, which leaves no doubt as to the result.

Endurance will do much. In days when war was a mere hand-to-hand encounter between comparatively small forces, it might, perhaps, do everything; but endurance cannot create capital, it cannot manufacture credit, it cannot provide expensive and complicated machines, or repair means of transport which seem to be breaking down under the pressure put upon them— Still, in one sense, there is justice in Mr. Davis' confidence. We never expected, when this war began, that the South would be able to conduct it, as it has done, on the footing of a great Power, employing large armies provided with all the appliances of war. It was only after the repulse of McClellan that Europe began to understand the magnitude of the problem which the North had undertaken to solve. Yet, though we greatly underrated the difficulties of the North, the opinion was almost universal that the subjugation of the South would be found an impossibility. The climate, the vast distances, the enduring and inveterate opposition of the people, the enormous expense, and the impossibility of bringing things to an issue, all seemed on the side of secession.

The Proclamation of the President furnishes a good illustration of this difficulty. He proposes, on "republican principles" to vest the Government of each seceded State in one tenth of the population, who will swear allegiance to him and obedience to his acts of Congress and proclamations. These men will be no more able to maintain themselves than were the Thirty Tyrants of Athens without the aid of the Lacedaemonian garrison. They will form a detested oligarchy like the Normans in Saxon England, only that they will rule over men braver and more warlike than themselves.— What force will be required to support these Governments, and what possibility will there be, so long as they exist, of any law except that of the sword? These things could be done in other times, but even when the North has surrendered her liberty and beggared her finances she will not be able permanently to hold these immense countries and keep down their hostile populations on these terms. Though we conceive it to be quite possible, then, that, overborne by perpetually recruited numbers and immense resources, the South may become unable to retain large armies in the field, yet between that and subjugation there is an interval which we do not expect to see filled up.