THE ENVOY OF THE SLAVE STATES ON CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM. T HE
chosen representative of the Power which desires to make slavery the " headstone of its corner," has made his first appearance before an English audience, and, we regret to say, has been very warmly received. While the Lord Mayor was entertaining Mr. Adams, and listening to his skilful and conciliatory address, the Fishmongers were making a lion of the Hon. W. L. Yancey, and by proposing his health, gave the first overt token of sympathy with the new Slave Power in which England has yet permitted her- self to indulge. Mr. Yancey had the tact to avail himself of the occasion. We need scarcely say that he did not repeat before that audience the generous sentiment by which he distinguished himself above his fellow-labourers in the same noble cause during his crusade in favour of a revived slave trade three years ago : we mean the assertion that, " while the North imported freely jackasses from Malta, it was only fair that the South should import freely negroes from Africa." On the contrary, Mr. Yancey's speech was full of the purest enthusiasm for freedom. His feelings are deeply outraged at the despotic measures by which the Northern Government is endeavouring to suppress this re- bellion.. He loves England for many reasons ; not a little, apparently, because she promptly acknowledged the South as a belligerent ; much more, however, because to us America owes her inheritance of those great bulwarks of human free- dom of which the South alone may now boast,—principles which once rendered the whole republic, and still render the Slave States, as Mr. Yancey truly reminds us, in some mea- sure worthy of the rather equivocal distinction of being " The land of the free
"bid the home of the oppressed,"
—a description remarkable at least for the honesty of its an- tithesis, if we avoid the error of confounding in any way the classes referred to. The Confederates, Mr. Yancey assures us, are now the only legitimate heirs of English liberty :
"Such invaluable rights as the old English writ of habeas corpus,
of a speedy trial by jury, of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, are the main pillars of American constitutional liberty, and I am both happy and proud to say are observed at least throughout the Confederate American States as vital and practical rights, even, during their stern struggle to preserve their national life.' (Cheers.)" Verily this voice is the voice of Jacob, while the hand is the hand of Esau—only in this case, it is the voice which deceives, and the baud which is veracious. It is scarcely perhaps curious that the quasi-ambassador's boasts on this head should have appeared in the same paper with certain facts that effectually discredit them. Not even the hospitable fishmongers, we should think, could have accepted without incredulous surprise the statement which as cour- teous hosts they so kindly cheered. It is not in itself a very probable circumstance that a Government which takes Slavery as the key-stone of its arch should be painfully scru- pulous in dealing with the liberties of all whose blood is not tinged with any African dye. The a priori presumption is very strong that the policy which bases itself on the slavery of one race will not make any vast sacrifices to secure the personal freedom of any other ; but we are not left to reason on a priori presumptions. While Mr. Yancey was speaking, the intelligence was arriving of the untruth of his state- ments. What the North have done in Maryland the South have done with still greater severity in North Carolina. From Hatteras Inlet the Rev. T. W. Conway had been despatched to Washington with the address of a convention of 111 delegates, assembled in Hyde County, North Caro- lina, protesting their loyalty to the Union, and arraigning in bitter language the lawless violence of the so-called Confederate Government. " The tyrants," says the de- claration, have trodden under foot every law, municipal or federal, violated habeas corpus, freedom of election, of speech, and of the press, and committed every violence and outrage that tyranny could devise. No language is too strong to express their horror and disgust towards the Con- federate Executive, and they assert, truly or falsely, that most of the other districts of North Carolina are subjected to a tyranny as violent and hateful.
Such is the reply to Mr. Yancey's pharisaic self-congra- tulations that the South are scrupulously faithful to the constitutional principles which the North despise. What happens in North Carolina of course happens wherever the Southern Government meet with any considerable opposi- tion, so that as regards any real respect for constitutional principles during the present trying struggle, the slavery- loving community are, at least, on a level with the Federated Free States. Each acts on the instinct of self-preservation without any kind of self-restraint, only the North avows and discusses what it does in the face of the whole world, the South extinguishes remonstrance, and almost succeeds in smothering rumour.
But while this eloquent advocate of the divine right of treating Africans and jackasses on the same economical principles finds it convenient for the present to depict his Government as a martyr to the cause of human freedom, he is more consistent in the ardour of his economical enthu- siasm than in the drift of his political aspirations. The same tone of mind which was evident in his crusade for a consti- tutional slave trade is evident also in the motives which he suggests to the minds of the cheered and cheering society of fishmongers. The Southerners (he says)—but in this esti- mate he oddly enough includes the Southern equivalents for jackasses- " Are ten millions in-number ; they are chiefly producers of im- portant raw materials, and buyers of all kinds of manufactured goods. Their pursuits, soil, climate, and productions are totally different from those of the North. They think it their interest to buy where they can buy cheapest, and to sell where they can sell dearest. In all this the North differs, toto ado, from them, and now makes war upon us to enforce the supremacy of their mistaken ideas and selfish interest. (' Hear, hear,' and cheers.)" "Buyers of all kinds of manufactured goods,"—that is the note, he thinks, to which the breast of his English audience will most readily respond. We shall cease to cri- ticize that key-stone of the new Power, which the North has so rashly rejected, if we see that it is essential to the exist- ence of a first-rate customer. The bait seems to have taken, unless the hospitality of the fishmongers enjoins cheering as a sacred duty towards its guests. But let the English people remember what the South really intends, in spite of modify- ing disclaimers :—not merely a perpetuation of slavery, but a revival of the slave trade as soon as its national independ- ence is fairly secured. Mr. Yancey will, for the present, be compelled by his instructions to deny this in the name of his Go'vernment. He cannot deny that it has been one of the political prospects for which he himself has long learned to hope and to plead, nor even that it is the arrie:re pewee stillfossessing the mind of half the members of the Southern n deration. Mr. F. L. Buxton, whose name is a suffi- guarantee for the truthfulness of his statements, gives testimony of an eye-witness to the real views of these in a letter to the Daily News of Tuesday last. Let 'lowing remarkable passages, written from Maryland wer to Mr. Lindsay's pro-Southern speech some weeks their own tale :
ese men, these very men, now in office at Richmond, have stated o me, over and over again, that their object was to extend the slave stem by annexing Mexico and Cuba, and introducing slave Me:: •into the former place; into the new territories now be-
\-Nk Pe.,;. the-i in a ago, "1 longing to the United States, and by compelling the United States Government to protect slave property, even in the Free States. I want to speak now of the policy of these men in regard to the slave trade, for that concerns us as Englishmen. I tell Mr. Lindsay, in reply to his statements, that whatever exists in the shape of a con- stitution in the seceded States is the provisional document, framed at Montgomery, in the State of Alabama. I was present in Montgomery at the time it was adopted. Mr. Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina, was one of the framers ; he has always been an ultra-slave code, slave extension, slave trade advocate. He said in my hearing, and within a hundred yards of the Convention Chamber, in which the document was drafted, that their first stroke of policy must be to secure foreign recognition, and that with this object in view, they had con- structed a provisional constitution. In the future—these are his words= Free trade' with the Confederate States will be a sufficient inducement to England to relax her ardour in slaver catching.' Mr. Lindsay goes on to say that the local conventions of the different rebellious States enacted clauses prohibitory of this abominable traffic.' Why, sir, if any member, in either of these conventions, had dared to stigmatize the slave trade as an abominable traffic,' he would have been tarred and feathered, or hung upon the nearest tree. I tell you, sir, that not one of those 'sovereign States,' as they term them in their conventions, passed laws prohibiting the slave trade, and when the mild protest, which was included in the Montgomery provisional constitution, came before them for ratifica- tion, it was adopted by small majorities, and then only with a dis- tinct understanding of its objects, and a still plainerntee that State rights' should in no way be interfered with. guarantee
present,
sir, when this document was ratified by the South Carolina delegates in the City of Charleston. Mr. L. W. Spratt, a prominent member, who has spoken and written in favour of reopening the slave trade, had a distinct understanding with the aforesaid Mr. Rhett, and with Mr. Reitt, who was their other commissioner to Montgomery, as to what were the purposes of the provisional government on this subject, before he would consent to vote for the ratification. I may add that if one man of all others may be called a representative Southern man,' L. W. Spratt is the man. Mr. Spratt would tell Mr. Lindsay frankly, were he to question him, that any such interference with state rights' as punishment for traffic in slaves by this rebel Government would be considered by the great majority of the rebels as more than a sufficient cause for seceding' from the seceded' States."
We do not suppose that Mr. Yancey would for a moment dare to assert that the prohibition of the slave trade by the Southern Convention at Montgomery was meant as express- ing a fixed and bond fide intention on the part of the Slave States to suppress and punish severely, as a part of their lasting and settled policy, the.restoration of the slave trade. In this matter he well knows that his own private views are the views of half, or more than half, the States which sent delegates to Montgomery, and of by far the most powerful States. Nor can we regard it as anything but a disgrace to England, that the first public assembly in which this fanatic advocate of the most diabolic national crime now known to civilized countries has been permitted to lift up his voice, received him with the same cordial sympathy which wel- comed Kossuth when narrowly escaping from the bloody grasp of Haynau, or Poerio from the murderous vengeance of. the Neapolitan Bourbons.
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