TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ENGLAND AND THE SOITTHERN STATES.
fear -there is no little reason to apprehend that the leading members of' the English Government have already under their consideration the propriety of recog- nizing, early in the autumn, the independence of the Southern States ; and that unless some . decisive victory and rapid success of the North intervenes, or English opinion declares very strongly against it, this step may be soon taken. The second reinforcement of Canada, which has taken place since Parliament separated, and the language and sympathies of the Government journals, are some indications of this danger. At all events, there is no doubt that it is a question much canvassed in influential quarters, and that the strong desire of the Government to secure Lancashire against a cotton crisis, together with an impression which is widely prevalent in political circles that it would be a great advan- tage to England to see the power of the -United States broken up into fragments, tends to persuade them to adopt it. It is, 'therefore, exceedingly important that this country should speak out its mind on the subject at once. We have no difficulty, for our own part, in speaking mit ours ; though we fear that but one of the great Liberal organs —we need hardly say that we allude to the Daily News, the only paper which has .done justice to the North throughout this long and painful crisis—will support the same view with any warmth. But from the English people we expect some- thing different. There is, we feel persuaded, a large silent class, who care as much about the slavery cause as their fathers did thirty, years ago, and-who are not prepared to see England throw her influence hastily into the opposite scale without a protest and a struggle. Whatever our opinion may be as to the chances of the war, we must remember what a premature recognition of the Southern Confederation would, in fact, amount to. It would exert a double set of in- fluences ; it would be a great moral discouragement to the North, and it would be not only a great encouragement, but a new lease of strength, to the South. Are we prepared that the same Government, which in the coldest terms declined to acknowledge Hungarian independence in 1849, when Hungary was absolutely victorious in a great phy- sical as well as constitutional struggle with Austria —a struggle which might, for anything ame know, not have to be fought over again this year had England then recognized the Hune,garian victory, as she ought to have done, and for the unwarrantable intervention of Russia—are we prepared that this same Government,which " knew nothing of Hungary" except.as a constituent part of Austria, shall now anticipate the issue of this struggle between the American rebels and their rightful Government, after a contest of little more than half a year, during which there has been no time to organize the really enormous resources of. he Free States ? If we do this, we shall break our strongest tie with the Free North. An eminent American author has well expressed the disappointment of the Free States in the attitude taken .by England in a letter to Lord Shaftesbury : " It is not to be disguised that one unfortunate result of our American crisis has been a weakening of national confidence in England, and a feeling of great sensitiveness and soreness in our rela- tions with the country. . . . . It is not to be disguised that they regard themselves as suddenly abandoned in the very crisis of a battle by the moral forces of those brethren on whom they had relied as undoubtingly as on themselves, and the possibility of whose failure
had never entered into their most distant calculations. . .
It is not principally by the governmental course of the English nation that this class among us feel aggrieved. It is not with that that they principally concern themselves. . . . By false :repre- sentations and false issues, our friends in England have been blinded to the real significance of the sublime movement which the American nation has-just commenced."
How will ;this feeling be increased by any official recogni- tion of the South while yet the contest is—in the 'mind of the Northern States at least—quite undecided and still hopeful'? It may be all very well for English politicians, who get .almost all their impressions through the cotton interest in theUnited States, to say that the struggle has no connexion with slavery. The Northern people know that it has. They know, as Mrs. Stowe asserts, that the election of last year binged-entirely on the question of slavery extension.; that the organization Of the Republican .party was founded on the resolve -to pen up slavery within its existing limits ; and that it was the triumph of this policy Which determined the Slave States to rebel. This is so notorious that no one can dispute it for a moment. The taunt that Mr. Lincoln is not prepared to fight the battle on the issue of emancipation is true. But it is quite as true that he is being compelled to take this line by his supporters, as well as by the force of circumstances.; and it is certain that the Northern States would consent to no terms which did not settle the question of slavery-extension at once and for ever. Practically, therefpre, if we anticipate their defeat, if we paralyze them by giving .our verdict in favour of. the new Southern -power, and sending an ambas- sador to Montgomery, we shall have gone out of our way to foil the Free States in their first pitched battle against slavery. We did not recognize even the kingdom of Italy while Francis II. held the field against his opponents. We paraded our diplomatic incapacity to comprehend that Hun- gary had broken loose from Austria ; and if 'here, in a country where no political right has ever been denied to the rebel'States, where the only grievance is that, after a long supremacy, they have been outvoted and defeated in their love for the most debasing element in modern civilization, if here we make haste to ail the rising power, New England will be justified in saying that Old England's anti-slavery sympathies are mere hollow sentimental pretences, since she can rest satisfied to stuff her ears with cotton against the cries of the slaves, and to compensate her gentle regret over the new impulse given to slavery by her lively gratification over the paralyzing shock suffered by Democracy. This rupture with the Free States at the very juncture when we can learn most from them and give_ them heartier sympathy than at any time since their independence, would, to our minds, be a great national calamity. Again, we shall certainly draw much closer our alliance with the "chivalric" South if we are among the first, perhaps the first, to recognize her independence. Is this what the people of England really wish ? The crisis seems to be one expressly intended to relieve England of the humiliating obligations under which she lies to an institution wholly abhorrent to all our highest political tendencies. Let us but for a single year develop the cotton resources of India and the other subsidiary free cotton countries, and we should be freed for ever from the nightmare with which all thoughtful politicians have been oppressed during the last generation. They have felt, and felt most justly, that to depend for'the maintenance of millions on a cotton supply which is the fruit of frightful guilt, is at once a dis- grace and a peril—a disgrace, because, as we now see, it restrains the natural drift of our political sympathies; a peril, because the system'is so radically corrupt that it may collapse at any moment with a crash. All this they have felt ; and if now that the time is come when Providence forces us to look elsewhere,—to turn to a country where we should confer `boundless prosperity 'by our purchases instead of 'boundless misery,—if at such a moment we hug our chains and cannot tear ourselves at any persuasion from our beloved long-staple cotton, then we deserve to be subjected to •the same humiliation and peril under which we have so long groaned for another cycle of Egyptian servitude. This, too, we say, would be a great national calamity. Let us remember distinctly what it means. It means the relapse of our national conscience into, first, a toleration,—then, probably, a positive approval of slavery. Once let us draw close our relations with an independent South by the ties of a mutually selfish gratitude,—once let us feel committed to the advocacy of that noble and patriotic cause, of which a repudiator is the -Washington and slavery is the " corner- stone," and we may be sure that slavery sentiment will fast gain bead in England. The generous sympathies of Mr. Gregory, the member for Galway, will soon be shared by numbers of cur leading men, and it may not be long before the same country which paid twenty -millions sterling to wipe out the blot of slavery upon our colonies will be glad to lend as much to .a thriving slave commonwealth for the purpose of making good its frontier against the encroachments of a free republic. Nor will it stop here. No sooner shall we have assisted the South to attain its independence, than new questions of the first importance will come up as to slavery extension and the slave trade. 2Iexico and an Anglo-Saxon slave-com- monwealth can never bepeaceable neighbours. The South already intend to absorb Mexico. For twenty years back their policy has tended in this direction. The Knights of the Golden Circle are pledged to the attempt. The genius of the slavery cotton-system requires constant enlargement of area, and Mexico is not the State to resist any consistent and well-organized pressure. We shall have soon to face the efforts of the South to absorb Mexico as part of the slave commonwealth, and the same peril which makes us bend before it now will bid us bend before it then. We shall be i wvolved in the meshes of the slavery net, and be more sen- sitive than ever to the .danger of slave insurrections, the me- naces of Northern abolitionists, in short, the moral necessity of supporting the South against its Northern foe. And what will be our reward ?—that we shall have a less formidable rival in Disunited than we could ever have in United States. This is one of those political motives which we can never hear confessed without wandering at the un- blushing selfishness of statesmen. It has, we know, a real influence on English thought at the present wonieut. It is thought that we shall .find our advantage in the quarrels of our rivals. Perhaps so ; if it be our advantage to fear them less, and to be more than ever in the hands of one of them at least. The South may become to us another Turkey, with far wore than the moral complications of Tur- kish misgovernment. We may drift sooner than we think into a real or fancied necessity for maintaining the integrity of the South against the North. A weak and unscrupulous ward contrives practically to impose a tar more galling yoke than a powerful and audacious rival. We are now at the meeting of the ways. If we are wise, we shall stand sedulously aloof from all diplomatic action till the contest is over, and either one combatant is van- quished or the two have made their own:terma. But all our moral influence ought to be clearly given to the North, and if the conclusion of the struggle leaves any portion of the Southern States independent, it should be our earnest en- deavour to support the Northern States iu the policy of sealing up slavery within certain impassable limits, and .for. ever terminating the .slave trade. If the moral influence ot England is cast into the other scale, we shall say that a Liberal Administration will have deliberately inflicted a greater injury on the cause of freedom than Any single generation of Liberals can -hope to retrieve.
Previous page
