THE MEANING OF MR. SUMNER'S SPEECH.
[Fees OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New York, May 21, 1869. PERHAPS the importance of Mr. Sumner's speech on the Alabama question has not been overrated in England, but its meaning and its purpose have certainly been misapprehended. This is plain from the tone of all the articles and the letters upon the subject discussed in that speech which, to our surprise and to our amusement, still pour upon us over the Atlantic. Never have we seen the British people so deeply stirred on any question as they seem to be on this, to which we hardly give a thought, although we have no political excitement now, not even the election of State officers or town constables. The excitement seems to us notably out of time. If a tithe of the interest now shown in the views and feelings of the Government and the people of the United States upon the case of the Alabama had been taken at the time when she lay in a British port, with her destination known to the whole world as well as it is known now, all this trouble would have been avoided. We cannot be reasonably expected to be very sorry for the rueful figure that John Bull cuts under present circumstances ; and as we really mean our overweening, and shall I say overbearing, but in the main righthearted cousin no harm, we may be pardoned if we laugh a little at his floundering in the dreadful pickle in which at last he finds himself. For to affect to conceal that we do laugh would be vain squeamishness.
I began by saying that perhaps the importance of Mr. Sumner's speech had not been overrated. My own opinion is that its importance has been overrated very much. Mr. Sumner's prominence in the body of which he has been so long a member, his ability and his high character, his position as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the fact that his speech was made on the rejection of the proposed Treaty, have misled the British people, including some journalists who should have known better, into the assumption that in this matter he spoke, if not as the authorized representative of the Government and the people of the United States, at least as their mouthpiece, not only uttering their feelings, but specifying their claims and declaring their purposes. But Mr. Sumner is not the Government, and his speech was only a speech, having no official character whatever. It probably did not change a vote in the Senate, and it probably will not in the least influence the State Department in any possible future negotiations upon this Alabama question. I am inclined to believe that Mr. Sumner himself is surprised at the effect of his speech in England, and that he looks with some wonder at the conclusions that have been drawn from it and the apprehensions to which it has given rise.
If, then, this speech was neither a defiance nor a bill of particulars, what was it ? and why was the usual secrecy of the Senate's Executive Session formally dissolved in its favour ? It was, as I have said before, merely a speech, but one in which the foremost man of the Senate summed up, forensically, the case of the people of-the United States against the governing classes of Great Britain, saying :—This is the wrong, and this is the spirit in which the wrong was done : shall we agree to settle the question by tossing a copper ? He declared that Great Britain, by the _ personal action of those who control her affairs, and by the neglect of her Government, was really responsible for a prolongation of our rebellion, which cost us many hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives, and responsible also for the destruction of a great number of our vessels, and the driving of our commerce from the ocean. With this statement of the case the people of the United States very generally agree. But they do not, therefore, propose to make it the basis of a business settle ment between the two Governments. Did any of your barristers ever hear of a summing-up that was intended to set forth in a striking light the enormity of a defendant's conduct, and thus strengthen the plaintiff's claim for a redress based upon other grounds than the pitiful " accommodation " of the matter which he proposed to avoid suit ? A woman brings an action for breach of promise of marriage, and as the defendant is rich, she claims 25,000 dollars in damages. But when her learned counsel comes to the summing-up of her case, he sets forth in moving terms not only her loss of what she had reason to expect from the defendant, but that of other and perhaps better opportunities. There was a certain rich retired grocer, who certainly would have married her if it had not been understood that she was engaged to the defendant, and he was far gone in years, and would soon have left her an interesting widow, with a handsome jointure ; and then she would have been at liberty to listen to the tenderest dictates of her heart, and marry that Californian in the prime of life, magnificent in millions, who would also have married her, had it not been for her engagement to this faithless man. And then, the money spent upon wedding garments, and, moreover, the wedding presents, the value of which must be rated at a very high figure ; and then, at last, the blighted affections of this deceived and deserted female !— would 250,000 dollars be one dollar too much as the estimated measure of her wrongs? Not one cent, not one ! And, therefore, lie asks, not 250,000 dollars,—a verdict for which, if it were possible, would surprise no one more than him,—but 25,000. On this he insists stoutly, will hear of not a dollar less ; but if he gets 10,000 and his costs, and an allowance, he thinks in his heart that he has done grandly for his client. I do not mean to compare the case of the United States against Great Britain to that of the plaintiff in an ordinary suit for breach of promise of marriage ; but Mr. Sumner's arraignment of the British Government and the British people has, you may be sure, no nearer relation to the case as it will be presented by one Government to the other, than that of an advocate has to the terms which he is willing to make the basis of a business settlement.
Mr. Goldwiu Smith has done his part toward fluttering the
Volsces in Corioli by sending a short letter to the Beehive, which the Pall Mall Gazette accepts as an important piece of evidence in
regard to the feeling of " America " toward Great Britain. Now,
with very great respect for Mr. Goldwin Smith and the kindest feeling toward him, I must say that he has—with the best motives,
doubtless—done harm by writing upon a subject that he does not understand. His saying that he holds himself "prepared for a turn of affairs which would oblige English residents to leave this country," has provoked more merriment than it is agreeable to see occasioned by anything that he says in earnest. I have heard it spoken of by all sorts and conditions of men, and only with amazement and laughter. Judge of it, and of the real state of "American" feeling, by the following " Postscript for Mr.
Goldwin Smith's letter," which appeared yesterday in the New
York Evening Post, Mr. Bryant's paper, and one of the most important organs of public opinion in the country :— " So violent and furious are the Americans, since Mr. Sumner's speech, that in social circles, and in private conversation, a proposal is seriously discussed which threatens tho most awful consequences to England and its people. It is suggested here, and by prominent Americana, that unless England will at once pay off our whole national debt and reimburse the slaveholders for the loss of their slaves, the American Congress shall pass a decree changing the course of the Gulf Stream, and shutting off England, Ireland, and Scotland entirely from the ameliorating effects of that truly American stream of lukewarm water. If this threat should be carried out, England would, it is well known, become a second Iceland ; and we therefore advise all Englishmen, the moment the negotiation falls through, to hasten at once, with bag and baggage, to this land of the free and home of the brave."
And the New York Times, in which you will find more sober, sensible, and trustworthy views of our public affairs, and particularly of our foreign relations, than in any other morning newspaper published in New York, after saying drily that war cannot be declared "before the arrival of Mr. Motley, nor before his reception by the Queen, nor before his instructions are transmitted from this side, nor before they are presented to Her Majesty's
Misters, and by them considered and rejected, nor before the resources of diplomacy are exhausted ;" and that all this will take time, adds, " there is therefore no necessity for our tens of thousands of English residents thinking of leaving us. They are one of the best elements among the many elements of our community. They are enterprising and successful. They have found this country not an unprofitable one to live in, and we imagine it will be a tolerable place for some time to come."
The presentation of the case by the correspondent of the London Daily News, which is a misrepresentation, is much more surprising than that by Mr. Goldwin Smith. For not only, as the Spectator says, is the correspondent of the News " one of the soberest and most intelligent Englishmen in America," but he has been here many years, with great advantages of position for the observation of public affairs. And yet, as you will have seen by this time, he has in this case misapprehended us, and made a mistake,—his first, I believe, and, I am inclined to think, his last, —or would be so inclined, were it not for the fact that he, like Goldwiu Smith, was born and bred in England. The common error of such able men as these, having both of them strong " American " sympathies, and a knowledge of our affairs rare among their countrymen, shows how very difficult it is for any one not to our manner born to understand and pronounce, under all circumstances, what that manner means. Be assured that in this case it does not mean a desire for war, or an intention of opening negotiations on the basis of Mr. Sumner's speech, or an increase of ill-will or even of soreness toward Great Britain. If John Bull is " spiling for a fight," and should insist on kicking Brother Jonathan into giving him one, I suppose that he could be accommodated with about the best article in that line that Jonathan could furnish ; but—in sober earnest—with what reluctance, what dread, what horror ! I am unable to find words to express, and would not be ashamed to own. And I do not hesitate to say that never, for the last two generations, not even when we made the visit of the Prince of Wales the occasion of showing what were our wishes as to the relations between the two countries, has there been less disposition than there is at present for those relations to be hostile. We are not " roach touchier " than we were in the days of the Leopard and the Chesapeake ; on the contrary, we are not half so touchy as we were in those of the Alabama. And yet, as I have said before, we are not ready to huddle up an accommodation of our difference with the British nation. Mr. Motley will, I think, vex your Foreign Office with no importunate demands ; but will receive courteously any propositions made to him for the reopening of negotiations,snd will transmit them to Washington, where they will be received and acted upon in accordance with the spirit in which they are couched, and the tone taken by Parliament and the influential part of the British people toward the United States on this and on other subjects. A YANKEE.
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