TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WAR OR PEACE.
THE chances of peace, though they still exist, cannot be said to improve. So many and so various are the in- fluences which directly affect the settlement of this American quarrel, so manifold seem the conditions essential to sound opinion, that society is slightly bewildered, and half inclined to believe in that modern version of Providence, the " some- thing" which is to " turn up," and to keep the world in its groove. It is not an unnatural impression, but the more grave and careful the survey, the fainter, we fear, will it become. Though the sense of insult diminishes as the time of the outrage recedes, and the national temper has become more cheerful, it is not on the tone of the British public that the alternatives of peace and war can now be said to depend. Numerous and conflicting as the elements of decision appear to be, they may be really reduced to two : the temper in which Earl Russell's despatch finds the American people, and the nature of the demand in the despatch itself. The latest accounts from New York would appear at first sight to afford some faint grounds of hope. There is a hesi- tation apparent in all the journals, a doubt of the English mode of receiving the news, which augurs favourably for the chances of conciliation. There is the usual amount of lunatic writing with which the friends of America have long since learned to put up, as they put up with a friend addicted to whistling or humming bars in bad tune. Brag is an in- stinct, as well as a policy, with all uneducated men, and a cabman is to be treated fairly, though he begins a dispute by personal criticism, and considers that blasphemy strengthens his defence of his rights. Of course the half-taught com- positors who own most of the city journals recommend Cap- tain Wilkes's promotion, talk nonsense about the "opinion of honest men" being the best guide to the law, and tell their readers at once that England will not complain, and that her complaints will be wholly bravado. If we are to go to war with the North because her journals are vulgar, we shall never need lawyers to discuss the causes of quarrel, and never be at a loss for a wholly unanswerable case. But under all this parade of bad taste, there is this time a very obvious dread, a disposition to condemn Captain Wilkes for reck- lessness, even while he is exalted for pluck. The worst papers admit that the Cabinet may have to make an apology. Even the New York Herald, which obviously wishes for war, ad- vises that Captain Wilkes should not be made an admiral till he is first dismissed. The organ of the commercial classes, as strong at Washington as the country gentlemen are at Westminster, unequivocally condemns the act ; and the papers which strongly approve, do so because they believe England will pass over the outrage. The people in America are always more moderate than their journals, and could this temper last, the Government would be left free to do us substantial justice. The politicians, too, do not, as we half feared they would, assert any right to Messrs. Mason and Slidell, simply as rebels, or denounce the right of asylum when invoked against Americans instead of in their behalf. They do, certainly, talk odd nonsense about the two South- erners being "ambassadors," an argument which, were it true, would bring France into the war as earnestly and hotly as England. But though they do deny the right of asylum to Nicaragua, and in so doing betray the ultimate tendency of their own minds, they have not as yet, with England, ventured to raise the one point on which discussion is not permissible. The case is argued throughout as one of contraband of war, and, although the Americans quote only the precedents they approve, and seem not to understand the difference between their rights on their own soil and their rights on a British ship, still, the man who appeals to the law, even when he misunderstands it, is not supposed to be anxious to send an immediate challenge. Moreover, it seems almost certain that the act of the San Jacinto was not ordered direct from home. Captain Wilkes may have had general instructions to search every vessel for despatches, but there appears no proof that the seizure of men was contemplated, far less distinctly ordered. If this is the case, the Govern- ment is, at all events, not bound to support its agent in the specific act, however much it may deem itself right in exempting him from all penalties. A solution other than war would appear, therefore, when the last mail left New York, to be at least one of the possibilities. Unfortunately, there is no chance of permtnence in this approximation to reason. Had the evil genius of America arranged the sequence of events in the single hope of a war, • just as excitement began to cool, the Americans would receive morally, though not, we frankly admit, legally, that right of the news of the burning of the Harvey Birch, and the shelter asylum, on which we can listen to the award of no Areo- afforded to the Nashville in the port of Southampton,—news pagus on earth. If we allow such a precedent, the next• which, unless civil war has developed a new self-restraint, passenger we defend may be Kossuth, with Russia to decide will be received with a scream of rage. The British Govern- whether he is a political fugitive or an envoy from Hungary, went, in allowing. the Nashville to remain unmolested, was and the right of asylum would be reduced to nothing. But we of course blameless, for it is bound to act by the advice of could listen to our own court, or perhaps to the one court of its own law officers, and they held that prisoners not being the United States which is beyond the menaces of the prize, the Nashville had not infringed the Queen's proclama- mob and the pressure of official remonstrance. In some tion. But we can scarcely expect Americans—filled as they such suggestion, bold enough to excite the instinctive English are with a notion of the absolute power of the British Go- respect for an appeal to law, lies, we fear, the solitary chance vernment—to perceive such a fetter as that, or to under- of a continued peace. But if the Americans make it, their stand why a Foreign Secretary cannot compel local magic- genius and their organization are of a different temper from trates to grant a search-warrant, which they have pronounced anything which Europe has been yet allowed to perceive. illegal. They will argue, and not illogically, that the right of burning their ships is as hurtful to them as the right of seizing them ; that the Nashville was never searched to see THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL ON THE if she had prize on board or not, and probably that she was AMERICAN QUESTION a right without papers to attack the national enemy ; the at the discriminating force of his language, or at the undis- letter of marque being his justification, not for that, but criminating turbidness of his thought. Much as there is in for putting his prize up to sale ; but the mistake is one which this speech which we heartily recognize as expressing prin- half England is always making, and into which Americans are ciples with which all true Englishmen ought to sympa- certain to fall. Then, as if to make extrication hopeless, thize, we believe that like most of Mr. Bright's other efforts before the despatch on the San Jacinto affair can reach him, it will injure rather than serve the cause he has at heart. but after he has heard of the burning of the Harvey Birch, The truth is, that while there is a deep hatred of des- the President must send in his annual message to Congress. potism at the bottom of his heart, there is no spark of He must allude to the Harvey Birch ; and it would tax the that reverence for law which is the only safeguard against self-restraint of a man born to the etiquettes of a throne despotism ; and hence his really masterly defence of the not to make such an allusion as will touch the North to the Northern cause as against the South is totally .unrelieved quick, and arouse a fever of national pride. He may even by any of that true insight into the short-comings of its commit himself personally too deeply to recede ; and, at all boastful and licentious democracy, without which English- events, he will indefinitely increase the difficulty of the task men feel that the American question can never be impartially which Mr. Webster called almost impossible—that of con- judged. In short, Mr. Bright speaks—we do not mean in ducting negotiations in the presence of twenty millions. language, which would be unjust, indeed, to his noble and The despatch on the San Jacinto will therefore be read to vigorous Saxon eloquence, but in thought—like a Yankee a people already furious with anger against Great Britain, defending Yankees, rather than like an Englishman and the demand it contains is, we fear, not one which will choosing between two rivals — neither of them com- allow time for sober reflection. The secrets of the Foreign manding our full sympathy. — the one who is fighting Office are well kept, but unless the public are greatly de- in the nobler cause. And feeling as he does in this ceived, the restoration of Messrs. Slidell and Mason has respect, we do not expect nor hope that he will make been made the condition, not of continued peace, but of many converts. Earnestly as we sympathize with all that continued negotiation. The American Government, whe- he says on the great slavery issue between North and South, ther convinced of right or insolent in wrong, must yield at we cannot view his speech, as a whole, as showing any true once, and without discussion, to the Power whom it is sympathy with the only enduring liberty—liberty that loves almost certain they will, six days before, have defied with and respects law. He takes pains, indeed, even in his pre- all the national grandiloquence. Is it reasonable to expect liminary review of the last ten years, to mark the confusion such a humiliation from a people, penetrated with the which pervades his thought between liberty and licence. feeling of national pride, as vindictive as the race they He reiterates his conviction that the Russian war was a have supplanted, and whatever the ruin entailed by the blunder of which the English nation are now heartily war, sure at least of their independence ? We do not ashamed. The victory gained in that war was simply a vic- know that in itself the surrender of Messrs. Mason and tory of law over lawless aggression, and, therefore, he de- Slidell would seem so very obnoxious. The mob yells spises it. England and France refused to let Russia plead the over their capture, of course, and hates them individually, right of mere might for her invasion of Turkey, and Europe lust as the English soldiery in India hated the half-dozen learned a lesson without which European civilization would eading mutineers it was their fortune to seize. But statesmen, speedily retrograde. Because the gain was only one of in- even in America, must be beyond all this, and a convenient visible law,—not a material acquisition,—because the sacrifice contempt for, the prisoners would delight the mass almost as by which it was obtained was material as well as mighty, much as their execution. But their cession as an act of Mr. Bright holds up the whole struggle to derision, and falls obedience to an external Power, without discussion or delay, back on even a less manly authority than his own—Sir is an act which only a very self-restrained or an intensely James Graham's—for support. Again, in his reference to law-fearing nation could do, which the British people alone, the Indian mutiny, he shows the same undiscriminating mind. perhaps, among nations could be trusted to stand and see. That contest was not one between oppression and liberty; but There is, it is true, a form of pride which has once or twice between law and licence, and yet his sympathy seems to have been seen in history, which calmly suppresses all pride rather been with the native soldiers, who, except in the North-West, than yield its end, but it has been confined hitherto to the could find no trace of popular feeling in their support. Roman patricians and Papal ecclesiastics. We do not give With such a bias it is not strange that his discussion of the the American people credit for any such quality, and without American question is little likely to win new friends to the it there remains, we fear, but one poor hope of peace. North. He feels no repugnance—nay, he seems to feel sincere It is just barely possible that the American Government, admiration—for that vile tyranny of ignorant popular opinion aware of the terrible consequences of war, and dreading the which has so long driven. and still drives the statesmen of dismemberment of the country even more than a popular the Union into a foreign policy that is simply licentious, outcry, may discover in their extremity some device which, and that necessarily forces English opinion into hostile at- in spite of despatches, may yet compel us to consider what is titudes. It is quite true—and had he insisted more strongly due to the right, as well as what is essential to our own honour. on that point we should have gone with him entirely—that If, unmoved by the menace of immediate war, and unaffected hitherto it has been Southern politicians chiefly who have by fear of their own people, they offer as their ultimatum flattered and pampered the licentious democracy of the to abide by a decision of the British Court of Admiralty, Union. But if we admit this, we are bound to admit also England would be compelled to pause. War, to avoid a de- that Northern politicans are tainted, if less deeply, with the cision of our own courts, of whose rigid impartiality English- same inherent vice; that they, too, speak as if the mere ap- men at least.have no kind of doubt, would shock the moral petite of a hungry mob for dominion could never be too sense of the people, and send us into the conflict uncertain of much pampered; that they too rant about the Monroe the justice of our cause. We could not submit to a neutral principle, threaten Canada and the Isthmus, anti do their it could not have been more unlucky. On the 2nd instant, court, or even to neutral arbitration, for the dispute involves
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