TOPICS OF THE DAY
MR. FORSTER ON THE MEANING OF THE AMERICAN WAR.
MR. FORSTER'S speech at Leeds is one of the ablest, and will be one of the most effective yet uttered upon the American war. It is an effort, and a successful one, to justify the conviction entertained by enthusiasts by the arguments which appeal to statesmen who are without enthusiasm. No Northerner could desire to see his cause more loftily described than as " the struggle whether upon the continent of America the principle of slavery, or the principle of freedom, shall predominate;" no statesman will question that this, in the most restricted as well as the broadest sense, is a definite practical end. Anti-slavery feeling may be, as it is the fashion to say, a " vague fanaticism," though it be one which for eight hundred years has in one form or another inspired all English effort; but "the predominance of freedomaaver a continent" is as definite a cause as that of " order," or "con- stitutional government," or " religious liberty," or any one of the hundred " cries " for which Englishmen, have spent their lives, far more definite than that "balance of power" for which we are always fighting, or that "theory of nationali- ties " for which everybody seems always ready to fight. And that this is the cause for which, consciously or un- consciously, Northerners fight, their bitterest opponents do not affect to deny.. The North may be honest or dishonest in the matter of abolition, may be willing to admit blacks to citizenship as Massachusetts has done, or to reinslave freemen as Ohio could, perhaps, be induced to do, without affecting this issue one jot. If the South wins the game, as it originally intended to win it,—realizes, that is, the dream which in its evil magnitude imparts to Mr. Davis's broad intellect something of the enthusiast's depth, slavery will be the predominant power upon the North American continent. If the North wins the game, whether her stake be empire, or a boundary settled by herself, or only a treaty of which she arranges the terms, slavery will not be so predominant. No possible ingenuity of argument can evade that issue, and if that issue be not a practical one, what do politics mean, what is the sense or object of this conflict between the despotic, aristocratic, and democratic principles on which the world, from the day when the Thirty were expelled Athens, has wasted so much of its vital force ? We fought through a civil war rather than submit permanently to the despotic principle ; France desolated, half her provinces, covered her cities with blood, and broke for ever with the past to be rid of the aristocratic one, both have repeatedly fought to repress the propagandist democracy known as the " Revolution," and what are all these causes, even in their direct political bearing, com- pared with that of freedom, when openly pitted against the "sacred right" of slavery? It is nonsense to talk of slavery as if it affected only slaves. It affects alio free- men, and means for them either perpetual political sub- mission to a caste, or the perpetual fear of attacks directed with subtle skill, and supported with dauntless courage against the foundations of free society.. Who in England blames Cavaignac for declaring ope.n, war on men who marched on the Tuileries to overturn existing social order. Yet no dream which French workmen ever entertained, no theory Proudlion ever elaborated, would be so fatal to modern society as its sur- render to men who declare its first principle—cynics say its only one—utterly false and bad. If Europe has a right to intervene for Poland—and it is only the expediency of inter- vention which is ever questioned-7-that right is based, on the broader right of resisting acts fatal to civilization and that, and infinitely more, is the justification of the North. Apart altogether from humanity, aside altogether from the in- ternal dispute, 'beyond the right of self-preservation inherent in every organism, there stands the grand political question " whether upon the continent of America the, principle of freedom or the principle of slavery shall -predominate." Has a great war since the world began ever had greater issue ? Of course there is one argument to which all this is no answer. There are honest but narrow men who hold that our supreme principle is obedience to the command of Christ, and that Christ commanded submission to every evil strong enough to assert its strength in arms, and their faith may 11.ive its reward. But then their principle is the very one which those who denounce the North in the same breath . telly, for they warmly praise the South for resisting in arms -le chain which, as they say, pressed on the Southern States. rid Englishmen of this fallacy, that the Northern war is causeless, is half to open their eyes, and in this work Mr. Forster's speech will be a most powerful aid. His view once admitted,—and it is urged with a logical brevity laughably at variance with the popular view of the member for Brad- ford's enthusiasm,—there will be no further danger of' any mis- direction of the national strength, or any serious error in the direction of the national sympathies. The governing class may still acknowledge, as we do, that brain, and vigour, and co- herent organization are all on the Southern side ; may still regret, as we do, the idolatry of an unworkable constitution ; may still resent, as we do, the ready resort to menace against a country whose only fault is to have given no cause of offence. As- between the North and ourselves, their views may remain unchanged, but as between the North and South discussion must come to an end. There is not a Tory in England, except, perhaps, Mr. Beresford Hope, who, once convinced that the issue is as Mr. Forster has stated it, will not abstain from crippling the side through which the " prin- ciple of freedom on the whole continent of America is to be made predominant."
But, say the advocates of the South, political freedom is not involved in the struggle, for political freedom can exist even though domestic slavery continue. Were not the Athenians free, though Cleon would have disdained to inter- fere for slaves, or the early Romans, though slavery was aggra- vated by equality of race between the slaves and their lords?- A reply could scarcely be shorter or more perfect than that which Mr. -Forster has given. Slavery in modern times cannot co-exist with political freedom :—" If men would learn the very alphabet of freedom they would see that wherever there is domestic slavery, wherever the first political right—a right even above and beyond all politics—the right of man to the disposal of his own body and the government of his own soul, where that is denied by the law, political liberty is not safe. If it be possessed by the master class, that class cannot keep it in safety, and the very words "political liberty" are a farce and a. delusion. History proves that it was because the old Republicans of Rome allowed theinselves to be corrupted into domestic slavery that the master class lost their own liberty, and we find that in the South, where the slaveholder had power—to use Mr. Carlyle's expression—to hire their negro. fellow-countrymen for life—not merely, hiring their labour, but hiring the chastity of the women and the souls and brains of the men—that is, to do what they would with that honour, mind, brain, and soul—when they did that to one class they at the same time deprived their white fellow-citizens of the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and almost of the freedom of thought." No man, whatever his character, arif in a slave state, be permitted to attack slavery, or to denounce cruelty, or to teach the slaves; for if he. is, there will as surely n be insurrection, as there will be, fire if oil is touched, by flame.. Self-preservation forbids the admission of free discussion, or free education, or free speech, or free Parliamentary debate, or even free locomotion, or free internal trade—neither liquor, nor arms, nor books, nor newspapers, nor good clothes, can possibly be sold to slaves,—and yet without these rights free- dom is a mere phrase. Indeed, nominally free institutions. are very nearly impossible, for the owners must be poli- tically masters, or their institution will be upset by the majority,- who, not being owners, will, sooner or later, resent the competition of unpaid 'labour. It matters nothing whether the Slave States are part of the free com- munity, or occupy only its border line. The owners must attack freedom and conquer it or see their institution slowly perish. They . must demand and secure by conquest a fugi- tive slave law from their allies, and so deprive them of the right of asylum, or see their property deprived.. of half its value. They must prohibit free communication or abolitioti- ists may settle among them, and attack the foundation of their society. They must prohibit free contact, or the opinions they dread will spreadurnong them as fast as water filters through sand. They must, in fact, by the necessity of their position, be able to enforce their own will on their neighbours in all emergencies, 'and a S the emergencies increase in gravity from the increasing' initnber of their people, the increased infusion of white blood'in'the slaves, andthe increased spread of a hunger for freedom, they must make this coercion yearly more onerous, and searching; and permanent. The free community must, infect, Eye under a permanent danger—a danger infinitely greater than we, for instance, should suffer were France mistress of the Continent, or America mistress of the seas. Yet who blames our statesmen for averting movements which may, even in the far future, lead to those results, at any cost in treasure, or energy, or human lives? We fought the Crimean campaign to avert a danger which was, at least, a generation distant, and which, when it arrived, would have been less than the one which the North would have to encounter at once. If a State can have a right to provide for its own security in the future as well as the present, to main- tain its own creed, its own laws, its own social life, without interference from without, then the North had a right to prevent, if necessary by arms, the formation of a great slave empire along its own border line. It is this, and not the philanthropic question, which the governing classes of Great Britain have so steadily refused to see, and this which our public speakers have in so many instances failed to bring before them. Mr. Forster has sup- plied -the deficiency, and while acknowledging, as all but fanatics must, the valour and conduct of the South, while expressing a just conviction that "it is very difficult for men, even in a bad cause, to submit to the sacrifices and self- denial which many men in the South have undergone, with- out coming out of it purified and better than when they went in;" ho still expresses his faith that out of all the horrors, and the bloodshed, and the misery, the world will emerge with " this compensation, that on the continent of America,"— which is as much part of the domain of civilization as if it touched the Mediterranean,—" the power and principles of freedom will rule, and not the power and principles of slivery." And as the corollary to this great lesson, he urges upon the nation a fair and just estimate of the mighty struggle they now witness with such impatience. The mem- ber ior Bradford does not, of course, endorse the unreasonable complaints in which the American press indulge, for he does not belong to the school which prefers America to England, and is disposed, like most Englishmen, to meet menace with a very clear defiance. He does not forget either, as it suits Mr. Charles Sumner to 'do, that, on the whole, the English masses have been on the Northern side, and have endured suffering caused by Northern blockades because freedom was at stake ; that the Government has been throughout studiously patient and fair ; that even the governing class, when called upon for action, shrank from aiding the men they liked at the cost of the principle they had always maintained. But he calls upon the nation not to forget the magnitude of the issues at stake, and, remembering them, to forgive a natural though unreasonable irritation, and support their Government in a just interpretation of international law. That just interpretation will, the speaker believes, prohibit the despatch of more Alabamas. For, and thepoint is a new as well as a striking one, there is this marked difference between selling arms to a belligerent and selling ships of war :—The arms are useless till they arrive, and the power which professes to blockade lets them in by its own defect of vigilance and power. But men-of-war can be used before they arrive, and there is no way of stopping them, except by war on the selling nation. If, therefore, the Enlistment Act were passed to avoid causes of war, it must cover, or be so improved that it can be made to cover, acts which can only be checked by the war that measure was passed to prevent. The British Govern- ment has accepted the responsibility, and the country has now to support them in their decision, or clearly resolve that they do not wish " the principle of freedom to predominate on the continent of America." There is no escape from the issue, and, so stated, there cannot be a doubt of the ultimate decision ; but it would come all the sooner if Liberal members would argue out the question with as great a preference for England, and as little fear of social clamour, as the member for Bradford displayed before the people of Leeds.
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