MR. SEWARD ON WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN.
IT has often been objected to Lord Russell that he is fond of lecturing foreign Governments. If so, there never was a more conspicuous instance of those "instructions, which being taught, return to plague the inventor." It was cer- tainry that "even-handed justice" which is always proffering to our own lips the very unpleasant dose we mix for other people's, that decreed that during the American Rebellion Lord Russell should be Foreign Secretary. Mr. Adams, the American Ambassador, is, according to his own account of himself, a gentleman with a very remarkable talent for sross-examination, and Mr. Adorns reading the American Secretary of State's letters must be a sort of infliction to which no humane person would subject even a deaf man. Mr. Seward is so very didactic. For instance, just at the breaking out of the rebellion, he thought it his duty to inform the American Minister at Vienna what were the different raaes inhabiting the various provinces of the Austrian Empire, what languages they spoke, and what commodities they produced. To Mr. Adams he more commonly sends, for Lord Russell's benefit, what in the language of the last generation would be called most elegant essays upon things in general. On the state of feeling in this country—a subject on which Lord Russell has some opportunities for observa- tion at all events, Mr. Seward is very great ; and in- ternational law may be regarded as a subject which he has made entirely his own—for as presented in his let- ters it bears only the faintest resemblance to what has hitherto been known under that name. We regret, however, to say that the correspondence between Messrs. Seward and Adams is as yet only known to us through the medium of the American papers—or rather of the extracts which they have thought fit to publish, and naturally Mr. Adams's letters are the more interesting portion of the correspondence to them, just as Mr. Seward's letters are to us. What, therefore, we have from that accomplished pen are at present mere scraps and parings of the rich repast which is to come hereafter, mere crumbs from a Secretary of State's table. But among these is contained one remarkable composition, which is certainly a novelty in diplomatic communications. It is an elaborate speculation on the advantages and disadvantages which would result to Great Britain from a war with the United States, and is a gem of so pure and serene a ray that it fully merits to be carefully considered. A mere ordinary man would probably have been fully occupied with the war which is raging almost in the suburbs of Washington. But if North and South are at enmity, Mr. Seward has been, and is, at peace. He dwells in a serene atmosphere, far above all the vulgar battle-fields of earth. There may, indeed, have been a gun or two fired, but he did not hear it. There may have been a little bloodshed, but he has not seen it. All he knows anything about is a slight riot, which must be concluded in ninety days, —a trifling disturbance, in which, as a matter of fact, North and South, perhaps in consequence of the Irish immigration, are—
Fighting like divels for conciliation, And hating each other for the love of God.
But still this petty outbreak, although quite insufficient to oc- cupy so great a mind, has set his imagination running on warlike subjects, and so he has pulled his arm-chair up to his library- table, and set himself to write a little composition on the con- sequences of a war with America—an essay purely conceived in the interests of universal peace, which Mr. Adams "may possibly find suitable occasion for suggesting to the rulers of Great Britain." This is a delightful picture of a great statesman combining with the cares of office dignified philan- thropy and literary leisure. First he argues the matter on the supposition that Great Britain "might divide and conquer us." What philosophic impartiality in reasoning ! But he thintq we should find the Americans rather difficult to manage. We entirely agree with him. But when the didactic diplomatist proceeds to point out that the United States under their present constitution must always be "a peaceful nation, practically friendly to Great Britain," really he must pardon an Englishman if he fails to follow him. There is a notion on this side of the Atlantic that some Americans are never so happy as when they are insulting or overreaching the Britisher. The Ashburton treaty has left on our minds an unpleasant sense of having been done. General Harney really was a little arbitrary about the island of San Juan, and somehow public feeling seemed to be with him. And then General Cassius Marcellus Clay proposes to invade Canada, stir up revolt in Ireland and India, and take vengeance on "the perfidious aristocrat." The general is really as "dangerous" as one of his namesakes and as martial as the other—a conspirator and the sword of America all at once. Really, if the present "organization" of that great continent were overturned, whatever else this country and the world would lose—and we think it would lose more than we have apace to set forth—we should scarcely have ;less "guaranty of influence, favour, and commercial advantage" than we have now. But, having thus, in his own opinion, exhausted this side of the alternative, our instructor gives the rein to his patriotism, and considers the other. What warrant have we for expecting "to conquer, subjugate, and desolate" the 'United States ? Really, this is like Sir Robert Hazlewood of Hazlewood, in Scott's novel, who came "deem- ing and thinking and opining." Suppose we answer frankly, none at all, and never thought we had. But this is not at all what is wanted of us. What we have to do is to listen to an eloquent prediction that "war waged against us by Great Britain could not fail to reunite our people." If this be so, we make the admission with great reluctance, but really it seems the President would be wise to declare war with us at once. He has repeatedly announced that it is his business to restore the Union by the shortest road—with slavery, or with- out slavery—by the Constitution, or in spite of it. If he and his Minister really believe that a war with England would bring about a restoration of the Union, their forbearance puts them on a pinnacle of moral grandeur to which it is much to be doubted whether Mr. Seward has over been elevated, even by his own imagination. This is to make a sacrifice, indeed, to the entente cordiale.
Yet Mr. Seward scarcely three months later threatens, and not obscurely threatens, war : he writes that the sale of vessels to the Confederates by our merchants in defiance of the Foreign Enlistment Act—a subject on which Americans thought very differently when they sold vessels to the Russians drain. the Crimean war—" seems to leave to the 'Ignited States almost no hope of remaining at peace with Great Britain without sacrifices, for which no peace could ever compensate." What ! after it has compensated him for the sacrifice of a certain means of restoring the Union? Are the few merchant vessels which the Alabama has captured more even than that which every Northern man venerates with more loyalty than the British aristocrat lavishes on his sovereign ? But perhaps a little inconsistency must be for- given to this complete letter-writer, and we may still im- plicitly pin our faith on Mr. Seward's assurance that "every honourable and generous effort will be made by the 'United States to avoid" a rupture.
But the notion of a war with England is founded, in Mr. Seward's mind, secondly, on the possibility that a country so proverbially perfidious may wish to take advantage of any serious reverses to the Northern cause. "None snob, how- ever," says the Secretary of State, writing on the 2nd of last August, "have as yet occurred." Oh, Mr. Seward, what a bounce! The expression is altogether undiplomatic and undignified, but it is really extorted from one. Bull's Run nothing—the campaign before Richmond nothing? But as we are often told that everything in America is on a larger scale than in Europe—rivers, trees, plains, and—bounces—so, it is to be presumed, are military reverses too. To be serious, defeats must be on a scale quite unusual here. One is curious to know whether an Austerlitz or a Leipzig would be up to the mark in America. But, continues Mr. Seward with dignity, "such chances are perhaps happily beyond human control and even human foresight." Observe the dubiousness of the "perhaps." Clearly, there is some little lurking doubt in Mr. Seward's mind whether it is quite so happy that they are altogether beyond the control, at all events, of a certain very eloquent Secretary of State. If they had not been, one may be sure the history of a recent combat or two— mere trifles, no doubt—would have been rather different. But Mr. Seward will not pursue such speculations. No- thing will shake the confidence of the President in ultimate success, and that unflinching resolution we at least regard with respect. It is not in the Spectator that the reverses of his party have been welcomed with delight, or the numerous annoyances which the blockade on the one hand, and the prosecution of commerce with the South on the other have inflicted on either people, dwelt upon and irritated. And it is therefore with the more regret that we see the cause with which we sympathize, rendered ridiculous by wordy declamation and hypothetical threats, by a steady ignoring of the most notorious facts of the war, and i a persistent assertion that England wholly responsible for an estrangement of feeling, for which the United States are at least as much to blame. Ridiculous in reality that san- guinary struggle can never be, on whose issue it depends whether millions of men are to be regarded as of reasonable soul, or as the beasts which perish; but whatever can be done to make it so, Mr. Seward may congratulate himself on hiving done.
But after all he is a great pacificator. If he contemplates war, it is under protest, as it were, and "for ninety days" only. The prospect is soon too much for him, and he "willingly turns from the spectacle of servile war and war abroad—of military devastation on land, and of a carnival of public and private cupidity on the seas—to set down with calmness some reflections." However, as a matter of fact, he proceeds to ask a great many questions. What Lord Russell said to them is not yet known, but most people will find them terrible puzzlers. The Civil Service Commissioners on spell- ing are nothing to Mr. Seward. He wants to know for what America was "brought up, as it were, from the depths of what before had been known as the dark and stormy ocean ?" Have the European states ever understood or accepted its real destiny and purposes? After near four hundred years of dis- appointments and disasters "is the way of Providence with regard to America still so mysterious that it cannot be under- stood and confessed ?" France has lost her transatlantic pos- sessions; so has Spain. The larger part even of England's colonies have revolted from her. "To whom have these vast dominions been resigned . . . butte American nations ?" What can Mr. Seward mean ? Is it that, like the famous 'coon, who, when he saw the gun pointed at him, said, "Don't fire, captain. I'll come down," we ought to give up Canada at once? What did Lord Russell answer? For our- selves we rushed in this perplexed position to the inspired pages of Zadkiel the sage. There was in the hieroglyphic for 1862 a picture of a black man preaching from a book, with a dove hovering over his head. In the Almanack for 1863 we find the following explanation :—" The dove over the negro indicated the peaceful condition of the slaves, notwithstand- ing the raging of the civil war around them." Really this is. very poor. We believe, for our part, that the preacher is Mr. Adams, painted black to represent his abolition tendencies_ The dove is Mr. Seward prompting him. The book from which he reads is a copy of Mr. Seward's voluminous de- spatches, and Britannia with a drooping head in the next compartment of the hieroglyphic is Lord Russell dozing under the infliction. Zadkiel Tao Sze really does not do himself justice.
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