AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1194, 9 February 1864, Page 2

AMERICA.

THE COST OF THE VVAK. The cost of the American Civil War to one of the belligerents has now been stated with some approach to precision, if not accuracy. The Northern States, we are told on "official" authority, have actually sent into the field 1,276,246 men. But this only brings the account up to January last, since which time the Federal Government has made the most desperate efforts to iucrease its forces. Upon the whole, we can hardly be far wrong in presuming that a million and a half of soldiers must have been raised from a population not exceeding that of this island —a proportion never attained, we believe, in any European contest on record. As regards money, the facts are more difficult to ascertain, but the debt incurred by the Northern States was " approximately" stated as 1,228,832,771 on the Ist of last September. Our correspondent, however, explains that these figures convey no adequate representation of the liabilities actually incurred, and tells us that the estimate of the public debt formed by competent judges places the amount '• between twenty-five hundred and three thousand million dollars." In English money this would be between £500,000,000 and £600,000,000 sterling, and the annual charge at the current rate of interest must be considerably above that of our National Debt.

It is natural, after such revelations as these, to ask once more what is the object of so tremendous and exhausting a contest, The answer is given in a single word. " Union," and we may, perhaps, consider that this reply does really express the predominant feeling of the Northern people. No doubt many minor motives are included, and many interests are at work more or less perceptibly under cover of this universal cry, but in the main an instinctive craving for the old " American Union " is probably the ruling passion. We think that passion natural, but we cannot regard it as reasonably indulged. To impartial observers it appears that whatever might have been the character of the Union, it became a political impossibility when one-third of its citizens deliberately refused to continue in it any longer. That resolution might have been both destructive and suicidal, but it could not, to any good purpose, be overruled. Even if the Unionists could crush the Seceders, which seems utterly improbable, the result, as we are assured by General Butler himself, would not bring the Union back again, nor ca.n even the most complete success on the part of the North leave America anything but a divided and distracted country.

The Americans of the old Union were bent upon escaping the common political lot of mankind. They were not in reality quite such a people as they imagiued themselves, but their growth has been so prodigiously rapid and promised to be so continuous that they may be almost excused for setting no bounds to their " destinies." They conceived, therefore, the idea of a nation not only incomparably greater but incomparably more fortunate than any other nation ever known. From this ideal State tliey banished all the drags and drawbacks patiently endured by European States. The world in which they lived —that is, the New World— was to be absolutely their own, in undivided and indivisible integrity. Though they might number a hundred millions of men, these were all to form one people, under one President, with one common country. - The great American Continent was to have but i one State, and to be thus exempted from all the obligations of political rivalries, all the exigencies of a political equilibrium, and all wars, except wars cheerfully accepted for the sake of conquest or supremacy. They were to be not such as we are in this " rotten " Old World; and their happy exemption from the common burdens of national life would relieve them from debt, taxes, standing armies, and all those innumerable adjustments and sacrifices which the States of Europe are fain to make for the sake of peace and quietness. That was the idea of the Americans. It required a whole world for its fulfilment, but they were bent ou satisfying the condition. Tliey talked unreservedly of the time when all the other States of America would gravitate to their own mass and become absorbed in it like comets in the sun, and in the meantime they elevated to the dignity of an indefeasible " doctrine " a declaration that no European Power should venture to acquire on the American Continent a particle of power, privilege, or authority beyond its actual possessions.

This is the idea which the Secession of the So\ith so rudely demolished. We admit that it was an idea worth fighting for, if fighting could save it, but that result was impossible, and if the statesmen of the North could but have looked dispassionately into the luture they must have seen that a civil war would infallibly destroy those very things which it was designed to preserve from destruction. The founders of the Republic foresaw as much, and many persons in America discern as much now. It may be remarked, indeed, that scarcely any public man, however confidently he' may regard the war, pretends to speak of the

Union as a thing which, in its old shape, will ever be seen again. They expect to see the South subdued, and the American nation left without a rival, but that nation will » 0 t be the nation of former days. Whatever may be the ravings of fanatics, it is iixi possible that any reasoning citizen can either desire or anticipate the actual " extermination" of nine millions of people. The South, even if it could be subdued, would always be represented by a hostile and vindictive population, and the North would simply become a Bussia with a Poland. Such a war as this has been, and is likely to be, must necessarily leave memories behind it as incompatible with national unity as territorial partitions; nor is there any iorce in the argument of the Unionists that the sup. pression of this rebellion will prevent any secession in future. On the contrary, this war has already brought out and disclosed the strongest incompatibilities between the various States of the Union, and set each group meditating secession in its turn. There was a moment when the NorthWestern States were actually expected to separate their fortunes from the States of the North-East, and the divergence of their j respective interests has been clearly recognised. Yet, if the North-Western as well as the Southern States had declared for separation, where would have been the power to put a force upon their will? If two Confederacies instead of one had been formed in the body of the old Union, how could the remaining fraction have evaded the issue ? Does anything at this minute prevent the secession of certain States except the pressure of an enormous army, and what may we expect if this army, as appears not iinprobable, should fall to pieces from exhaustion ?

It was natural enough for Americans to connect the wars of the Old World with the divisions of the Old World, and to strive for indivisibility as the means of preventing war. But when, to secure this, they weut to war, they forfeited the very prize for which they were contending. "We can have none of your European troubles," they said; "we must have, on this continent, peace, union, and economy." But in contending for these privileges they have had as much war, as much bloodshed, and as much extravagance of outlay as would have carried them over a century in the European fashion. Their debt, in fact, is as great as ours already, so that, oil this point, they have nothing left to save. Their levies of men have exhausted the spirit, if not the strength, of the population, and they are raising such monuments of domestic hate as generations will not suffice to remove. They have incurred, in short, all those visitations which they have been fighting to escape, and have only encountered the common lot in a precipitate and extraordinary manner. Their ideal Union was a great conception, but it was based on the assumption that human nature would not be human nature on the American continent, and that millions of men distributed under a variety of conditions, and with a variety of interests, over an enormous territory would escape all those influences which in other lands had infallibly made half a dozen nations out of one. They speculated not only upon a New World, but a new nature, and they have been disappointed by the event; but the worst that can happen, even from their own point of view, is that they should fare as all other people have fared before them. They hoped to do better than this, and are vexed at the failure, but the failure from the first was irretrievable. They liquidate their debt and replenish their population,but they can never become the people they designed to be. For the destruction of that ideal the South is accountable, and must take the responsibility ; but when once nine millions out of thirty millions bad declared that they would rather die than remain in union with the rest, the political vision of the Americans was proved to be a delusion.—Times, November 13.