TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TRUE DIFFICULTY OF THE NORTH.
THE most thoughtful friends of the North are shaking their heads over the recent news. The Republican vessel seems to them to be crossing the bar only to encounter new dangers from the half-bidden shoals in the harbour. That the crew should be exultant, and stocks rise in fitful but continuous leaps is in- itself but natural. National power is one source of national credit, and the power of the Union is at last beyond dispute. The State which can keep an army of seven hundred thousand men in rapid and victorious movement ranks undoubtedly among the first in the world. The old accusations have all been answered. The cumbrous and lumbering Government has proved itself strong and swift as a locomotive. The half- trained generals have displayed rare inventiveness and auda- city. The men who ran from Bull's Run have recently stood firm under fire after their ammunition had been exhausted, and every despatch now contains a report of regiments almost destroyed, and thousands of killed and wounded. Even the South has ceased to mock at the Yankees' courage, and Englishmen look with amazement on a tenacity which rivals their own. The Americans were charged with feeble- ness of purpose, but five great armies are moving to- wards the South, and the nation clamours only for still more vigorous war. They were accused of want of disci- pline, but the President is obeyed by men in command of armies as implicitly as Napoleon. They were expected to display a total want of organization, but in three months of battle on a gigantic scale, no corps has wanted provisions, carriage has never failed, and the 'supply of materiel seems in excess of anything known in Europe. The navy, so gene. rally despised, has blockaded coasts as wide as those of the Mediterranean, has covered every river with heavily-armed gunboats, and has proved itself as efficient in the centre of the continent as on the open sea. Few English exploits have surpassed in audacity the capture of New Orleans, and the men who charged at the Alma would not be ashamed of the regiment which without bullets carried the battery at Wil- liamsburgh. These things sink deeply into the minds of a people incurably sensitive, and produce a glow of pride, a transport of confidence, which almost obscures their judgment. Nor is it only this new display of high powers upon which the North rests its convictions. Those powers have been used to purpose, and the victories of the past three months have re- duced the strength of the Confederates one-half. They have lost Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and the most valu- able spot in Louisiana, all the territories, and the most im- portant portion of the State of Virginia. Pensacola has fallen, and Fort Macon, Norfolk, and Baton Rouge, each a post with a distinct influence on the course of a campaign. The Confederate navy, moreover, from which such great things were expected, is all but extinct. The rams which were to defend New Orleans have been sunk, the gunboats which might have defended Memphis have been captured, the Merrimac, which was believed equivalent to a fleet, has been blown up by her owners. Everywhere along their border the Confederates are seen in retreat. The rebel Congress has left Richmond, and projects for abandoning the capital are openly discussed. With Richmond, Virginia is lost, and the whole of the Border States, kingdoms in magnitude and resources for battle, may be considered regained for the North. All this while the ardour of the conquerors, so far from cooling, is rising slowly to fever heat. The sound of opposition is almost stilled. Every exploit is more auda- cious than the last, every measure proposed approaches more and more nearly the true revolutionary tone. The people are evidently accustoming themselves to consider abolition possible. One general has proclaimed it in three of the strongest Slave States, and though the North is shocked and the proclamation has been repudiated, each repetition of these incidents tends to allay a groundless alarm. There is, moreover, no want of funds. Economists urge most justly that the incessant emission of paper will ulti- mately produce a catastrophe, point to the rising value of stocks as a proof that the notion of value has been affected, and eagerly watch for the crash of which they feel assured. his all true, but the crash may not come yet. Every country can bear a certain amount of unconvertible paper, and from the absence of rise in general prices it is evident that the limit of issue has not been as yet attained. There is plenty to. pay contractors for the hour, and to all human appearance the North may keep up its strain for months. No effort so vast was ever attended by military results more adequate, and the swelling pride with which an American once more speaks of his country is, even to sober reasoners, once more justifiable. And yet the truest friends of the North shake their heads over the news, for victory only reveals the extent of the task to be achieved. The theory of the North from the first has been that a vast number of loyalists were kept down in the South by terror. The advance of the Union armies would leave these men free to act, and the Federal administration could be carried on through them.. Discontent would exist, and the old American army must be multiplied fivefold, but still the South could be governed without imperilling republican forms. Even the better in- formed believed that, however uncertain the existence of Union sentiment, still the South, once fairly defeated, would acknowledge its error and yield. Beaten men have done so- time and again, and in one most remarkable case a country thrice in rebellion has become within a century the hearty yet free supporter of the victorious power. These dreams are disappearing. Even in the Border States there is only neutrality without an appearance of hearty acquiescence,. still less of effective aid. Tennessee is more difficult to- govern now than it was to conquer, and the military governor, General Johnstone, has been obliged to make concessions to the slave feeling, which are, in fact, com.- promises with principle. Missouri could not be evacuated by Federal troops. Maryland without its garrison would_ be in rebellion to-morrow. General Butler at New Orleans is compelled to put the press under censorship, to send soldiers to print his proclamations because compositors- refuse to obey, and to threaten that any house in which a. Federal soldier is killed shall be pulled down and its occu- pant held responsible. He has even been compelled to allow Confederate notes to circulate. In Norfolk the women spit- es they pass the Federal flag. Nowhere do Northern gene- rals obtain any information except from the "contrabands," • a fact true even of districts where their power places the people beyond the reach of a reign of terror. There is not a hint of negotiation, no proposal or sign of a proposal front the South. The Confederate generals when defeated sullenly retreat farther and farther towards the regions where swamp and morass and fever will be their best allies. They still re- tain untouched a territory of 400,000 square miles, covered most of it with timber, penetrated by only one grand river,. but with everlasting lagunes. English soldiers who know Bengal will know what it would be to advance into a country. like Bengal, but thrice as large, defended by five millions of whites organized for guerilla war. That if the North perse- veres it will obtain military possession we have no doubt whatever. But the military occupation of a soil does not make that soil a state, and in so vast a territory even military occupation will involve an unendurable expense. It costs more to keep a regiment in motion for two months than tcp pay it for a whole year. We say nothing of the political difficulties, of the impossibility of retaining state organization, yet enforcing martial law, of the awful hate which the con- tinued menace of military force produces in a free popula- tion. When the North has realized facts, risen to the height. of circumstances, constitutional forms will snap like flax in fire, and the North may govern the South as we govern India, without of necessity surrendering its own freedom. But to do it, it must either hold it for one generation as it is holding it now, viz. by military force unsparingly exerted, or it must adopt new and most revolutionary schemes. The former alternative is, we believe, an acknowledged impossibility. The North, in all probability, could not afford to keep on foot for ever three hundred thousand men, and less would be only lost within that vast expanse. Life would. be worthless under the taxation such a system would involves even if the soldiers could certainly be obtained — a very doubtful point. Born Americans will fight, and fight bravely for a principle, but a life of soldiering is not to their taste, and permanent garrison duty would be done only by the Irish and Germans—a class that is whom the Government dare not exclusively arm. There remains a revolution, and already this idea occupies the attention of American poli- ticians. Suppose, they say, we re-colonize the South and divide the planters' estates. These States are really go- verned by a limited aristocracy ; let us replace them by men devoted to Union principles, and our rule will be again secure. The new proprietors will do for us the work of an unpaid army. Linked together by self-inte- rest, and possessed of all the wealth of the country, the colonists will be an impenetrable bulwark between us and the malcontents. These ideas are openly discussed, and as they leave the question of abolition open, provide for the reward of the army, and do not involve enormous permanent taxes, they are received with favour. Unfortunately English- men know only too well the results of such a scheme. We have tried it in Ireland, with the result of throwing Ireland for two hundred and fifty years into ill-concealed hostility. One of two results is certain to occur. Either the new owners, being slaveowners, will in ten years ally themselves for their own safety with the poor whites, and so become Southern in feeling, or the slaves being emancipated, the original difficulty will be intensified by a landlord and tenant war. The Union cannot be restored except by the contented, or at least acquiescent submission of the South, and it is because we see no signs of this acquiescence, that we, strong friends of free government, see so little to hope in all the recent success. It is strange to observe, under these circumstances, how strong is the belief in England, even among politicians, in a coming war with America. That the North should hold it possible is natural enough, for the North holds in its exal- tation that the Union will be restored, and both sections unite to punish England for looking so calmly on. But that we, who see the problem before the American Government, who perhaps even exaggerate the depth of the gulf to be filled .up, should be equally alarmed, is one more proof how strong an influence imagination exercises in politics. Under any conceivable issue short of the willing re-entry of the South the Union will have its hands full for at least ten years. If the South, in spite of appearances, becomes independent, the States will attack Canada with an enemy in their rear. If, on the other hand, the South is simply held down by force, the army holding them down will have no superfluous energy to throw away across the St. Lawrence. Or, finally, if the North, driven by persistent resistance out of its constitu- tional groove, should resolve upon revolutionary schemes, they will tax its energy and its wealth, its supplies of men, and its supplies of statesmanship as severely as occupation. That the Americans are bitterly sore is, we fear, beyond ques- tion. That they have never forgiven the demand for Mason and Slidell is, however derogatory to their sense, nevertheless not improbable. But that they should utterly have lost their old shrewdness in military intoxication, that they should, with decaying trade, finances in hopeless disorder, and twelve States more or less hostile, be anxious for war with a Power which could destroy the last relics of their prosperity, is to us, we confess, incredible. That they now long for vengeance, as the New York Journal of Commerce says they do, is probable, though it is at least equally likely that the most indignant among them are secret friends of the South, and anxious to frighten England into support of a fall- ing cause. But peace brings calmer considerations. The desire for commercial revival, already extremely strong, can be kept down only by hate of an internal foe, and the second test of the Union, the strife between debtor and creditor, between the community which pays taxes and the equally large com- munity which now hopes to receive them, has yet to be com- menced. With a national debt to pay, and a permanent army to organize, the constitution to change into a tax- gathering machine, and millions of creditors to reimburse, with commerce to be revived, all parties to be reorganized, and the South still to keep down, the Federal Government will scarcely add to its troubles a European war. If it does, why the male population of Canada exceeds the volunteer army which the Union at such fearful expense now main- tains in the field.
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