TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE AMERICAN ANSWER THE soft answer that turneth away wrath has seldom been uttered at a more unexpected moment than the present, or by more unaccustomed lips than those of the American Secretary of State ; yet never has it been more heartily welcome to the English people. Not because we feared war, though the English people never love it ; not even because we dreaded the miseries of a strife which would BO nearly approach the type of civil war, though the English shrink from it with hearty horror ; not because we were either uneasy or ashamed of our attitude, for never was our conscience clearer as to the actual issue ; but because we did foresee with perplexity and humiliation that a struggle with the North, however short, could not but prove in effect a direct guarantee to the South of the temporary sta- bility, at all events, of that great edifice of which they have elected to make slavery the corner-stone. That Canada, the old refuge of the escaped slaves, should have been fighting heartily on the side of the slave-owners who were so recently demanding back their chattels from her ; and that England should have thrown her overwhelming power into the same scale of the balance, was an anomaly too distressing to the nation to admit of any heartiness in the cause. Messrs. Mason and Slidell represented a prin- ciple which could not be surrendered, but that these tho- rough-going advocates of slavery should have represented such a principle was almost as distasteful to us as it was to a Crusader to find his honour pledged to a Saracen, or as it would be to Lord Shaftesbury to find himself committed by the principle of private judgment to espouse the cause of the Jesuits in conjunction with Cardinal Wiseman. It is there- fore with genuine popular delight that we find ourselves extricated from this unpleasant dilemma ; and Mr. Robson probably never produced so much heartfelt joy by his wittiest song, as when he announced the other day to the audience at the Olympic that this unhappy bone of contention, for which England felt bound to fight, though she had no wish to possess it, was to be resigned without a struggle.
Nor is the public satisfaction diminished, though cer- tainly our perplexity is increased, at the very courteous form in which the answer appears to be couched. When the pause is long, when the expectation is on the stretch, when the tongue which has so long been held still moves, and the lips which have BO long "kept silence, even from good words," open at last, one expects to see some symp- toms of the slowly kindling fire, some trace of the rising emotion which has been reined in ; and when the answer at length comes, as soft, smooth, and unembarrassed as if it were the first spontaneous utterance of undivided and unharassed conviction,—the expression of a mind that has never entertained a doubt, or a scruple, or a shadow of bitter- ness,—we are naturally as puzzled at the phenomenon as were the companions of the man who was always two hours in arrears with the conversation, and was found travailing painfully with a long-effervesced joke while his companions were pitying the newest tale of sorrow. And the answer is still more surprising to us because the American Government is not usually of this slow deliberate temper. The conviction BO frankly and cordially expressed in December cannot have been essentially different—at least on the merits of the case —in November ; and hence we are not unnaturally led to fear that some of the weighty considerations which made the case so clear at the end of the year were exported from this country to Halifax in its last weeks, at even a greater cost of freight and burden to England than those heavy despatches which Mr. Seward received with so much tranquillity "though they weighed 100 lbs." Of course this aspect of the matter to some extent alters the colour of the feelings with which we receive the very friendly and explicit despatch of Mr. Seward. If the justice of the case was so clear, why wait for the formal claim ? There is always an awkwardness in admitting that you have known that you had possession of a friend's property, but were waiting for him to claim it ; and the awkwardness is apt to be mutual as soon as the confession is made. No one regards it as exactly a friendly admission, except there be so sentimental a reason for retaining posses- sion that it is in reality a confesgio mantis; and Slidell and Mason can scarcely be regarded in the light of a stolen keep- sake from England. Hence, satisfactory as the general tone of Mr. Seward's despatch undoubtedly is, we can scarcely feel that its history and antecedents are quite so satisfactory. We shall probably continue to feel for a short time a little mutual embarrassment in spite of the reconciliation.
Still we do not believe that the English nation is disposed to criticize the transaction in any ungenerous spirit. It would be a great mistake. We well know that it is a mere fiction to treat the action of the American Government as if it were the action of a single unfettered individual, acting freely according to his own sense of right and honour. in all probability the American Cabinet—never very united— was bitterly divided, and one section of it, supported by a very strong public opinion out of doors, probably succeeded in keeping the more rational section at bay until the pressure of the English Government and the despatch of the French Minister came in to the aid of the latter. And even if there were no such division in the Cabinet itself—and that there was such a division the hasty approbation of Captain Wilkes expressed by the Secretary to the Navy seems to make pretty certain—the mere attitude of a large section of the people and of the volunteers of the Potomac, might well have kept a timid Government irresolutely pondering its course ; and that all democratic governments are timid in any foreign policy which is not susceptible of a grand colouring to the eye of the mob, the whole experience of history proves. And the same excuse must be admitted in extenuation of Mr. Seward's unfortunate attempt to make it appear that the English Government, in making its present demand, is deliberately abandoning some old claim of belligerent rights. We say this, not as deprecating such a step, if it were really made by our Government. The consequential application of the principles which we accepted by the treaty of Paris would, we believe, oblige us to relinquish many claims that we have long enforced : and the right to search a foreign nation's vessels in time of peace was in fact explicitly abandoned by Lord Malmesbury a year or two ago. But in this particular case it is clear that we are abandoning no principle which has ever been claimed by England. Indeed we have ex- plicitly admitted the right of the San Jacinto to board and search the Trent for contraband of war, and to refer the case to the proper Prize Court in case any thing or person believed to be contraband, or quasi-contraband, had been discovered there. We have, therefore, in this instance, in no way surrendered a single English position on the subject of the right of search, and the attempt to make it appear that the American Government has gained any concession by our attitude is simply a show of logical cover to Mr. Seward's retreat. But again we say, looking to the state of opinion expressed by Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, in the Senate, and by many of the Northern States, with regard to the disgrace to America involved in a surrender of the prisoners, this is not a device which we ought to care to resent. It is not a very manly course : but for "such creatures as we are, in such a world as the present,"—especially if the creatures be Americans and the locality Washington,—it cannot be pro- nounced a very guilty one. One word as to the future attitude of England. We shall not, we trust, be in any danger of the grave mistake of so far identifying Messrs. Slidell and Mason with the cause of which they have been for a moment the accidental represen- tatives—or misrepresentatives—as to receive them on their arrival in England with any marks of congratulation. We have paid dearly for them without feeling any sympathy with them, simply because they were covered by the na- tional flag. Let us not falsify our true position by trans- ferring to the men the feelings which were excited by the refuge they had sought. Let us show the North that the Commissioners were really as insignificant to their cause as we have always maintained ; that they have not the power to modify in any degree the feeling or the principles of Eng- land ; that they were only dangerous to the North while they were under the lock and key of the Washington Ad- ministration ; that they are thrown away upon ungrateful England, and might have served the South better by fighting as privates on the Potomac than by disseminating their sentiments here. Now that we have redeemed the stolen property, not because it was valuable, but because it was stolen, let us show them what we think of its real worthless- ness. We trust that a more cordial feeling on both sides will be the result of this temporary storm.
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