THE MORALITY OF THE AMERICAN UNION. 1, Adam Street, 4delphi,
31st October 1866. Sin—We have once more a rumour of "difficulties" on the part of the United States in relation to England and the European Powers. The dif- ficulty is a considerable one,—not for England or for Europe, but for the States themselves, arising from their lax condition of morality. They who covet their neighbours' goods are numerous, and their sharp practice as mer- chants gradually grows to a sharper practice as pirates and slave-dealers. The old Puritan stern virtues are waning into the distant past, and the ear- nest life and manhood of the community that grew to be a world's wonder in the resistance to oppression now withers away from sight, and the bluster of the buccaneer goes forth to the world instead as the voice of a great nation. The morality of the slave-holder claims kindred with the congenial Czar, and the heart of humanity is dead to the voice of shame. How are the mighty fallen ! Is the theory of Buff= indeed a truth,—that the soil of America can only bear a degenerate race of men ? that the best blood of earth must there wither away and decay, unless kept up by constant fresh infusion from the fountain-head ? Is this true ; or is it that there still rests behind the noisy and shameless van a mass of true men who bide their time for the regeneration of their race ? If there be not, the days of the States are numbered, and they will ultimately, as their enemies have pre-
dicted, fall into disunion and cease to be a great world-power. • If there is to be a war between England and the United States, it must be a maritime war : but it will not be as the last war; the time has gone by when victory can be won by a clever trick, overmatching a foe under a feigned re- gistry of guns and tonnage. And the accursed impress has disappeared, and with it the quarter-deck tyranny that accounted English, seamen as brutes on a par with Russian helots. The strength of manhood is multiplied by the recognition of manhood. The officers are leaders instead of drivers, and the men are volunteers instead of kidnapped slaves. They will fight earnestly for the right to pursue a peaceful and profitable vocation unmolested by the sea harpies who throng the American seaboard from all quar- ters of the earth. The swarm of landless men who overran Mexico is no type for the broad Atlantic with its police of blue-jackets. If under the American flag roam Russian cruisers to change their nation with their opportunity, the right of search will have to be executed, if not by American by English ships ; and the war which began to put down Rus- sian lawlessness will have to continue to put down the rapacity of bastard freemen. If the staple of the American people be still the brave and moral race they once were, they will proclaim with a loud and earnest voice that the career of rasoaldom shall be at an end. If the true men be in abeyance and lawless ruffianry be in the ascendant, sharp and short will be the con- test ere America will become again a dependency of Europe. The sinews of war grow not in an atmosphere of dishonesty. North will be against South, Black against White ; production will decrease, and civil war end in breaking up the agglomerated but not united States that have outlived permanence in losing the power of self-governance. This conclusion is perfectly logical. If war ensue, it will be by the will of a lawless majority or minority, who will have to institute direct taxation as a substitute for bygone customs-duties. Such taxing will hardly be vo- luntary ; and if involuntary, it must be by a real Government enforcing it. That Government must represent the will of the majority ; and if the ma- jority be good people or people of wisdom, they will scarcely carry on a ruinous war for aggressive purposes where the loss would be more than the gain. And such a Government would be enabled to make sharp work with the lawless men bringing evil upon them; expelling them bodily from their territories, to try their fortunes in savage regions analogous to their lawless natures. From that time would commence an sera of freedom tempered by justice. It is possible that the imminence of a war would set the nation seriously thinking, and giving expression to their thoughts after the American fashion. It might be that in the emergency North and South would divide into separate republics, the more violent people going to the Southern terri- tories; and in such ease the North would become powerfully and prac- tically interested in joining with Europe to maintain the peace of the world, and some definite law would deprive lawless emigrants of the power of again disturbing it for their own selfish purposes. In the cause of freedom all that is valuable in America would be united. Li the cause of lawless plunder the States would be a rope of sand. If America suffers it to go forth through her press uncontradioted that her citizens are the allies of Russia, the direct inference is that they are the enemies of freedom, and as such are to be dealt with. If they do not them- selves arrest their buccaneers, they must be held to sanction them. When with a sense of justice bands of native Americans shall burn reputed slavers and pirate ships in their harbours, as they flung the tea into Boston waters, there will be an end of piracy, and the piratical hordes will betake themselves elsewhere, and cities of honest men will cease to be the receptacles of the scum of Europe. If the old blood has died out, and no more of justice be left, the days of the American Union are numbered.
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