In a different tone, the Morning Star, of London, the constant friend of the national cause, said:—
“The Hon. Charles Sumner has not belied the confidence inspired by a long and illustrious career. He is as firmly as ever the friend of peace, and especially of peace between Great Britain and America. The eloquent voice which has so often employed the stores of a richly furnished mind in persuasives to international amity has not, as the telegrams suggested, been inflamed by the heat of domestic conflict to the diffusion of discord between kindred peoples. His speech at New York on the 10th of September is, indeed, heavy with charges against France and England. But it is an appeal for justice, not an incentive to strife. It is a complaint of hopes disappointed, of friendship withheld, of errors hastily adopted and obstinately maintained. It is, however, an argument which does honor even to those against whom it is urged, and which aims to establish future relations of the closest alliance. Senator Sumner’s chief reproach is this,—that we have acted unworthily of ourselves, unfaithfully to our deepest convictions and best memories.…
“There runs through the whole of Mr. Sumner’s gigantic oration—far too long to have been spoken as printed, but yet without a word of superfluous argument or declamation—an idea on which we can now only touch. From the first sentence to the last, Slavery is present to his mind. It colors all his reasoning. It inspires him to prodigious eloquence. Not merely as the Senator for Massachusetts, the honored chieftain of the political Abolitionists, but as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he sees everywhere the presence of the Slave Power. Against it he invokes, in periods of classic beauty and of fervid strength, all the moral forces of the mother country. To England he makes a passionate and pathetic appeal—more for her own sake than that of the slave, more for the sake of the future than of present effects—that she withdraw all favor and succor from Rebel slave-owners.”
The Northern Whig, of Belfast, Ireland, noticed especially the statement on ocean belligerence:—
“One point, however, on which Mr. Sumner dwells, is of such urgent present importance as to make the reproduction of his remarks, at such length as our space allows, desirable. We refer to his criticism of the claims of the Confederates to belligerent rights at sea. Whether the ground which Mr. Sumner takes on this question be or be not tenable, whether the authorities and examples by which he supports it really make out his case, is a matter not to be decided summarily. His argument is, beyond dispute, a most masterly one, and deserves the careful attention of the English Government and its legal advisers, and will, no doubt, engage the ingenuity of writers upon International Law.”
These expressions of opinion show something of the extent to which Mr. Sumner was sustained, and also the British criticism he encountered. To the latter must be added an unexpected episode.
Earl Russell was on a visit to Scotland when Mr. Sumner’s speech arrived. Being entertained at a public dinner in the Town-Hall of Blairgowrie, September 26th, he took that occasion to review the questions of the war, and especially to answer Mr. Sumner, thus making a new precedent. It is not known that any European statesman ever before made a speech criticizing a speech in another country. The part relating to us was approached by the remark, “I am speaking of what has occurred in what a few years ago were the United States of America”; and then, towards the end, he says, “The people of what were the United States, whether they are called Federals or Confederates.”
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