THE PROGRESS OF ENFRANCHISEMENT.
TF anything could increase the profound annoyance with which genuine Liberals regard the prospect of a trucu- lent answer from America, it would be the news of the last two mails. As the handwriting appears on the wall, the servants of God are about to assist Belshazzar. The great question which has underlain the whole struggle of North and South has risen to the surface at last, and already emancipation has reached the stage at which an internal certainty of defeat makes its opponents savage. Englishmen, weary of the long hypocrisy of the North, are, in their dis- gust, misreading the signs of the times, and mistake the shattering effect which follows the reception of every new idea for one more symptom of anarchy. They point to the contest of Seward and Cameron, the uncertain utterances of Mr. Lincoln, and the outspoken virulence of many generals, and forget that precisely the same signs preceded Catholic Emancipation—that Lord Anglesea was removed just as General Fremont has been, that Cameron and Seward are less bitter than Canning and the Duke, that Mr. Lincoln is not more paralyzed by the constitution than George the Fourth by "his only and convenient scruple" about the coronation oath, that here, as in America, a similar issue became an "open question " just before freedom won. It needs but a careful study of recent events and speeches to see that the popular mind is making itself up to abolition, and that officials are only waiting in fear of a sudden reaction.
The President's Message and action have been quoted in England as proofs that he is unprepared to abolish slavery. Undoubtedly he compelled Mr. Cameron to strike out of his report the sentences which advise that slaves -should, if necessary, be entrusted' with arms. That advice, however, was in advance of opinion, and but for the incurable habit of Americans of washing their dirty linen in public, Mr. Lin- coln might be held to have exercised a sound discretion. For himself, he has said nothing whatever which will impede him from giving the fullest effect to any laws of emancipation. He simply refers the subject to Congress, merely observing, that whatever the consequences, the Union must be pre- served. "The war continues. In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this pur- pose shall not e into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union pro- minent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital military import- ance to the more deliberate action of the Legislature. . . .
The Union must be preserved, and hence all dispensable means must be employed. We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable.' Mr. Lin- coln is a narrow-minded lawyer, but there is surely no indication here of any bias against, enfranchisement. The tendency of the Message is all the other way. Not only does the President suggest a feeble but -well-intentioned plan for settling emancipated slaves on some South Ame- rican territory, but he proposes an act which is, of all conceivable acts, the one most opposed to slaveholding prejudices. He recommends that Hayti should be officially recognized ; in other words, that the American Go- vernment should declare a State founded on slave in- surrection entitled to independence and to the friend- ship of white men. The Southerners, with their usual consistency, always refused this recognition, which destroys in itself their leading idea that slavery is right as well as expedient. Mr. Lincoln is too conservative, and relies, like all men without imagination, too exclusively on the written law, but little as he has said, he has given up the lawfulness of slavery, has looked forward to a time when it may be the duty of the Federation to provide for enfranchised negroes, and has promised to execute any law Congress may be in- duced to press. His Cabinet are at least ail pliable. Three members are openly abolitionists. Nothing can be stronger than Mr. Cameron's advice that slaves should be armed, and if Mr. Cameron be, as his enemies assert, the moat unscru- pulous of mankind, the significance of his action is but so much the greater. When villains desert the cause which has been for a hundred years in power, its ruin must be not only approaching but visible to all men. The remaining four members hang back, but they, like all other American statesmen, will crouch to the popular will when once suf- ficiently declared. Mr. Blair would have been Secretary of State had General Fremont been President, and Mr. Seward, if he have any principles at all remaining, believes that be- tween slavery and freedom there is, as he announced, an "irrepressible conflict" in which one or the other must go down. Indeed, he has already so far given way as to order the arrest of all justices of the peace who may impede fugi- tive slaves.
The action of Congress is not yet clear, for the Senate is strong, and the Senate is filled with older and calmer men than the House of Representatives. But there is no possi- bility of error as to the bias of the more popular body, the only one which in considering the ultimate issue is of any importance. The following resolution would of itself be sufficient to indicate the prevailing tone : "Whereas, it has been represented that there are confined in the Government gaol forty-five persons who are not charged with crime, but are fepresented as being slaves, " Therehre, Resolved that the Committee on the District of Columbia be instructed to inquire into the truth of said report, and by what authority they are confined, who are the reputed owners, and what legislation is necessary to relieve them from imprisonment, and prevent similar cases hereafter, and report by bill or otherwise. Adopted." The "district," it must not be forgotten, is the only divi- sion of the Union in which Congress has the power of the British Parliament, and is admittedly independent of state rights, while the existence of slavery in Columbia has always been the sine gull non of the South. The House, again, has affirmed the right of the President, as "Com- mander-in-Chief," to " emancipate all persons held as slaves in any military district in a state of insurrection," a clause which, though it avoids abstract emancipation as a measure of right and justice, still covers the entire present area of slavery. Much stronger resolutions have been proposed, but as they have not yet been adopted, they cannot be held to indicate the action of the House. Nor is the tone of the Senate much more doubtful. No vote, it is true, has as yet been taken on the bill of Mr. Trumbull, which enfranchises at once every slave who will quit his master—a measure which, if it does not abolish slavery, at least repeals the Fugitive Slave Law—but the following resolution has been passed "That the laws now in force in the district relating to the arrest of fugitives from service, together with all other laws concerning persons of colour within the district, be re- ferred to the Committee on the District of Columbia, and that the Committee be instructed to consider the expediency of abolishing slavery within the district, with compensation to the owners of slaves."
Mr. Seward has already acted in the spirit of this resolu- tion, having requested General M'Clellan to arrest any civil officer who presumes to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law as at heart a rebel. What becomes of the American constitution after that order we must not stop to inquire, the fact before us being simply that it puts a practical end to slavery in the district. Congress, it must be remembered, is not yet Parliament. Its resolutions bind nobody, and it cannot step over the law unless when supported by the people ; but its votes serve to show accurately the rise of the popular tide.
And what all this while of the public, the "people" whom Mr. Lincoln so formally recognized as his "rightful masters," even in matters of principle ? So far as it is possible to judge the opinion of the silent by the words of the talkative, a vast change has passed over opinion. There is no such senti- ment left BB Mr. Calhoun's" State rights before the Union," while the old saying of the democracy, that slavery is an evil to be endured, like all other misfortunes, is rapidly giving way to the doctrine that slavery is a calamity it is the duty of Go- vernment to bring to an end. The Western men may be taken, for various reasons and in various ways, to be, as a whole, free-soilers. They do not, we fear, consider slave- holding in itself criminal, nor do they care to define the future rights of the slaves ; but they are convinced that slavery is a vast political evil, which destroys political freedom and impairs political equality, which exposes free labour to unfair competition, and which, by encouraging insurrection, threatens to close the arteries of their commerce, and reduce them to speedy poverty. These are not very noble motives, but as the Western men are resolved that it is better to die than endure the system, these ideas are as operative against slavery as John Brown's belief. In the Eastern States, in New York, and in Pennsylvania, a different state of feeling prevails. The abolitionist spirit has always existed there more or less, and the opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law was almost universal. The insurrection has deepened this senti- ment among the religious classes into a passionate conviction, and the mass of "church members" may now be considered as decided more or leas clearly against slavery. They listen to abolitionists with patience, even when the lecturers are as extreme as Mr. Sumner. They do not abandon the preachers who tell them that compromise with slavery is "bowing the knee to Baal." They uphold newspapers which are as ardent, as outspoken, and as radical as English journals were in 1832. Lord Shaftesbury could not use language more iinflinching than the Independent, the organ of this party in New York, and a political authority of some weight. There remain the country population unaffected by religious ideas, the "citizens," and the mob. The country population is always silent except in very great crises, but they have made a hero of John Brown and the recruits march to Washington singing a hymn, which, their though wretched in com- position, has for a refrain "John Brown's body's in the grave, but his spirit is marching to the war." In the very home of the pro-slavery party the citizens are passionately expressing their devotion to Fremont, repay Sumner's wild anti-slavery speeches with thunders of applause, and have just elected a free-soil Mayor, after a contest as bitter as any New York can remember. It is impossible to overrate the importance of this last incident. The pre-slavery candidate was Mr. Wood, a man who has been Mayor for years, who has in- creased the expenses of the city from three to thirteen millions of dollars, and distributed the proceeds among his followers, who has appointed almost every existing official of the city, who is the darling of the Irish, who was supported by the Herald, and who could rely on all that floating element of rowdyism which Englishmen believe to be supreme in New York. His defeat, it was known, meant the defeat of the mob as well as of the pro-slavery party, yet he polled only twenty thousand votes to his rival's twenty-six. So strong is the feeling, that the Herald itself shows symptoms of one more change, and, unless war breaks out, will probably in another month be furiously abolitionist. Another month will probably combine this mass of floating opinion into a distinct party decision, to which the Administration and the generals must equally bow. The line of action will probably depend upon the height to which enthusiasm has risen, but the one now mostpopular is simply to enfranchise at once and for ever every slave who seeks the protection of the Federal flag. That decision once adopted will bring the absurd reports about the love of the slaves to their masters to a clear and definite issue, while it has the advantage of rendering the massacre, which the secret friends of slavery always pre. diet, a useless aggravation of the slave's dangers. We must add one word, to prevent that misrepresentation of our views to which those who defend freedom when incon- venient to England are often liable. We do not maintain that the mass of the Northerners have any elevated views on the question of slavery. We do not assert that the mass have any sympathy at all with the blacks. We have scarcely a doubt that if the Northerners could get rid of the question by selling the whole black population to Brazil, they would accept that evil solution without hesitation. But we affirm that the combined action of free, religious, and political opinion has now produced such a hate of the effects and system of slavery that nothing—not even we be- lieve war with England—can now prevent emancipation from becoming the first and most definite object of Northern politics.
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