TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TORY TEMPTER. THE hunger for unimpeded cotton supply, which has long been growing into a passion in Lancashire, has at length found a Parliamentary spokesman. Captain Henry Jervis White Jervis, the member for Harwich, in the Con- servative demonstration, on Wednesday, at Colchester, ex- horted England to speak out openly on the subject, with a voice which will warrant Lord Derby in active intervention on behalf of the South. That is the clear drift of his speech. Lancashire is likely to suffer much, he says, from its short supply and short time. Ireland will suffer much from its bad harvest. Not only Lancashire but England is likely to lament its short supply of tobacco. Therefore it is false delicacy of the worst kind to argue that we ought not to interfere. Let us hear his actual words : " It was said that we could not interfere in the American quarrel, that if we interfered with the North we should go against our cotton interest, and that we could not take the part of the South, because they were slaveholders. Language such as this reminded him very much of the conduct of an old lady who might have been rather loose in her early years, but who made up for it by an extra amount of godliness as she got older ; for twenty years ago the English were slavebolders themselves. It was not until 1834 that slavery was abolished in our own colonies, and, six years having been allowed for it gradual annihilation, it could not be said to have finally ceased till 1840. Again, we voted 20,000,0001. by way of compensation, and yet we asked and expected the Americans to emancipate all at once 4,000,000 of slaves, worth 300,000,000/., and then to begin in the dark to make a living. These theories were all very well to talk about, but in the mean time we wanted a supply of cotton to enable us to feed our working population. We had heard a great deal said about looking to India as a substitute; but it must be remembered that we should have first of all to make roads in India, and that we should also have to teach the people of India to grow our cotton, while cotton coming from India was, on its arrival, only worth about half as much as American."
From all this he argues that England should at once ex- press its will to have an unimpeded supply of cotton and tobacco by fair means or foul. The people must give expres- sion to their wishes, that Lord Derby may wield the force of the nation so as to put an end to this embarrassing state of things. We confess that such language as this from even the least notable Member of Parliament astounds, more than it incenses, us. There are national crimes so flagrantly selfish that we have to conquer a sense of surprise before we can feel the indignation which the deliberate proposal of them excites. We are aware that Captain Jervis is the spokesman of a small but united party in Lancashire. But we can allow much for the short-sightedness of men who see, or think they see, ruin staring them in the face, and who are convinced, or think they are convinced, that it is the mere caprice and wickedness of two quarrelsome rivals which is the cause of this ruin. We would not too harshly condemn any Lancashire cotton merchants who demand English in- tervention. It is with them, we will not say an inexcusable, but not a deeply criminal, insanity ;—for no one of us can say how he might act, if all his prospects in life and those of thousands of poor neighbours seemed to be hazarded by what he held to be a rash and senseless quarrel. The fabric of self- interest is in such a case so widely interwoven at all points with disinterested feelings, that the judgment is absolutely hoodwinked, and no one can be condemned harshly for not seeing with the clear vision which it requires utter self- abnegation to attain. But this excuse applies only to the first sufferers in the North. We say it is a sorrowful and a shameful thing when public men who are not thus blinded by a narrow circle of interests can be found to come forward and advocate such a measure as that which Captain Henry Jarvis White Jervis has openly called upon England to approve. Let him consider a moment what vestige of respect for international right, law, or honour could be claimed for England if he were to find any considerable public opinion in support of his views. We think with Major Beresford that as yet there is no great reason to apprehend a con- fusion between the political species of Tories and Liberals. But we confess that we do not believe in any such chasm be- tween them as would be shown to exist if Lord Derby, or any respectable Tory statesman, could be persuaded by any con- ceivable demonstration of public opinion to take so cynical and immoral a step as Captain Jervis coolly proposes. We may concede, for the sake of argument, what we hold to be quite untrue, but also wholly immaterial to the imme- diate question—that Secession may be legally justified by the American constitution. Let us suppose that the South has all the constitutional law on its side, and that the North is engaged in an unconscious effort to strain the law by a false interpretation. We repeat, that this is not only not true, but the reverse of true—yet, if true, it would net make such a step as Captain Jervis advocates one whit less cri- minal. In any case whether it be revolution, or whether it be war, no man in his senses would, we suppose, deny that there is a more ample eases bell% for the strife than could be shown in the case of ninety-nine out of every hundred wars. Whatever the statesmen of the South may urge for their legal case, they can urge nothing for their moral procedure. They cannot justify in English eyes the treachery which, while acting in the name of the -Union, disarmed the North in order to prepare the South for the struggle ; the bad faith which apparently accepted the constitutional struggle for the President, with a foregone conclusion to reject the decision if it were unfavourable to them ; they cannot convince Eng- land that their avowed motive for leaving the Union—the re- striction put upon slavery-extension—was a righteous one with which the North had no concern. And even if they could clear the South of its guilt and treachery, as well as of legal misdemeanours—which is impossible— they cannot bring us to believe that a commonwealth which, blasp hemously enough, takes slavery " for the head-stone of the corner," can be founded on the border of a great and free nation, without rais- ing a hundred international perils and grounds of strife to jus- tify war, if they do not, as we maintain, compel it. The war, then—no one can deny it—is a war of grave, moral origin, in which the North, whether legally in error or not, feels that it has deeper wrongs to resent than any militant nation for many generations. Of the nature of those wrongs Eng- land has always professed, and still professes, the deepest sense. Yet we are asked to violate neutrality on the Smithern side, to proclaim war against the North—for breaking the blockade is, de facto, a proclamation of war— in order that the cotton supply may not be cut off. We cannot remember ever to have heard of a proposal quite so shameless. For an early push to acknowledge the Southern States we were prepared ; that is a step which follows as a matter of course after a certain period of de facto inde- pendence ; and we ourselves have only protested against any show of bias by premature action. But if the South were acknowledged to-day, we should be bound to respect a blockade by either belligerent, unless we chose to ally our- selves with either. This is the course which Captain Jervis urges on England, and especially on the Conservatives. " Proclaim," he says, " instantly, that you will do anything for cotton ; that you who boast of your resolve to take no side even when Austria wages war against the liberties of Italy, or when Russia crushes the free people of Hungary,— that you do not hesitate for a moment to take a side, and that, too, the side of the worst kind of despotism in the civilized world, when your interests are touched by a prospect of danger to your cotton. Let no shame prevent you from avowing that English ruin and English misery will outweigh every noble principle which England has avowed during the last century. Never fear the fury of the United States, the righteous wrath of New England, the contempt of Europe, the painful sense of humiliation in yourselves, but shut your eyes to every interest except the sufiering in Lancashire and its reaction on Great Britain." Such is the advice of our Tory tempter—painfully resembling the advice of a greater tempter, who was rebuked by the words, " Thou shalt not live by bread alone." We have no fear that the advice will be followed. We would not bear hardly on the temporary insanity of a handful of men —by no means representing the sturdy principle of Lan- cashire at large—but we have no words too strong for the national crime proposed. Let us remember that our gravest and truest ground of dissatisfaction with the North is the vulgarity of their whole tone of thought and action. But when could we dare to speak of this again, if we should per- mit ourselves to entertain for a moment a suggestion so thoroughly and radically vulgar as this England would be vulgarized to the heart's core before she could seriously con- sider such a suggestion. And let us not forget that, what- ever be said to the contrary, this war is more and more plainly declared as a war which must issue in the subversion of slavery, if it be prolonged. The democratic party in the North—the great drag on the anti-slavery movement—are even now arriving at the resolution that the resort to eman- cipation must be the final resource. The motive is not pure —but the end gained is equally great. This is the language of a leading democratic organ in New York, The World : " The day it is settled that either Slavery or the Government must perish, that day slavery will be doomed. The Northern people are determined not to yield to this accursed rebellion; and if it shall prove that they cannot conquer it without emancipation, they will conquer it with emancipation. This would be to them not only an impulse, but a necessity. They know full well that there would be no living on the same continent with the once successful parricide, and, sooner than entail upon themselves perpetual war or base compliance, they would finish with it on the spot, once and for ever, come what might. The Southern people, if they are not utterly gone in infatuation, will stop short ere they push the North to this direful extremity." The differences, therefore, in the Northern States are now only a question of time. The Republicans, as a matter of principle, wish to accelerate the step which the Democrats, looking upon it only as the dernier ressort of policy, wish to delay. But the day is coming when the step will be taken, unless some Western Power be wicked enough to interfere. That the French Government may be capable of so cynical and iniquitous a step, we dare not deny. But even if the Emperor contemplates it, as seems possible, he will scarcely venture to act—certainly he will long delay his action—if we restrain him. And unless we wish to share the meanness and the guilt of the most barefaced international crime of modern days, we shall put the tempter behind us, and resolutely endeavour to withhold France from any similar fall.
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