That war may follow from the course which England has elected to pursue toward the parties to our civil conflict will not appear a strange view of affairs to those who know something of the history of Great Britain and the United States in the early part of this century. That which the British Government is now doing bears strong resemblance to the course which the same Government, with different ministers, pursued toward the United States during the war with Napoleon I., and which led to the contest of 1812,—a contest which Franklin had predicted, and which he said would be our War of Independence, as that of 1775-83 had been our War of Revolution. The same ignorance of America, and the same disposition to insult, to annoy, and to injure Americans, that were so common under the ministries of Pitt, Portland, and Perceval, and which move both our mirth and our indignation when we read of them long after the tormentors and the tormented have gone to their last repose, are exhibited by the Palmerston Ministry,—though it is but justice to Lord Palmerston to say, that he has borne himself more manfully toward us than have his associates. England treats us as she would not dare to treat any European power, making an exception in our case to her general policy, which has been, since 1815, to truckle before her contemporaries. She has crouched before France repeatedly, when she had much better ground for fighting her than she now has for taking preliminary steps to fight us. We are not entitled to the same treatment that she thinks is due to the nations of the continent of Europe. She cannot rid herself of the feeling that we still are colonists, and that the rules which apply to her intercourse with old nations cannot apply to her intercourse with us, the United States having been a portion of the British Empire within the recollection of persons yet living. No sooner, therefore, had a state of things arisen here that seemed to warrant a renewal of the insulting treatment that was a thing of course in 1807, than we were made to see how hollow were those professions of friendship for America that were not uncommon in the mouths of British statesmen during the ten or twelve years that preceded the advent of Secession. So long as we were deemed powerful, we received assurances of "the most distinguished consideration"; but we have at last ascertained that those assurances were as false as they are when they are appended to the letter of some diplomatist who is engaged in the work of cheating some one who is neither better nor worse than himself. It is positively mortifying to think how shockingly we have been taken in, and that the "cordial understanding" that had, apparently, been growing up between the two nations was a misunderstanding throughout, though we were sincere in desiring its existence. Perhaps, when the evidences of the strength that we possess, in spite of Secession, shall have all been placed before the rulers of England, they will be found less ready to quarrel with the American people than they were a month ago. A nation that is capable of placing a quarter of a million of men in the field in sixty days, and of giving to that immense force a respectable degree of consistency and organization, is worth being conciliated after having been insulted. But would any amount of conciliation suffice to restore the feeling that existed here when the Prince of Wales was our guest? We fear that it would not, and that for some years to come the sentiment in America toward England will be as hostile as it was in the last generation, when it was in the power of any politician to make political capital by assailing the mother-land. The belief is created that England in her heart hates us as profoundly as ever she did, that the forty-six years' peace has produced no change in her feeling with respect to us, and that she is watching ever for an opportunity to gratify the grudge of which we are the object. Practically it will matter very little whether this belief shall be well founded or not, so long as English ministers, whether from want of judgment or from any other cause, shall omit no occasion for the insulting and annoying of the United States. An opinion that is sincerely held by the people of a powerful nation is in itself a fact of the first importance, no matter whether it be founded in truth or not; and if the blundering of another powerful nation shall help to maintain that opinion, that nation would have no right to complain of any consequences that should follow from its inability to comprehend the condition of its neighbor. This country will not submit to the degradation which England would inflict upon it, and which no other European nation appears inclined to aid the insular empire in inflicting. Even Spain, proverbially foolish in her foreign policy, and seemingly unable to get within a hundred years of the present time, observes a decorum in the premises to which Great Britain is a stranger.
The manner of proceeding on the part of the British Government, and the arguments which have been put forward in justification of its pro-slavery policy, are serious aggravations of its original offence. The first declaration of Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was to the effect that England would not show any favor to the Secessionists. His subordinate (Lord Wodehouse, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) was even more emphatic than his chief in speaking to the same purpose. Suddenly, the Foreign Secretary turned about, with a facility and promptness for which men had not been prepared even by his rapid changes on the questions of the Russian War and Italian Nationality, and said that the Southern Confederacy would be recognized as a belligerent, which is, to all intents and purposes of a practical character, the same thing as acknowledging it to be a nation. What was the cause of this sudden change? We have only to look at the dates of the events that, followed the fall of Fort Sumter to find an answer. Lord John Russell believed that the capital of the United States had fallen into the hands of the rebels, and he was anxious to please the masters of the cotton-fields by showing them that he had not waited to hear of their victory to behold their virtues. There was some excuse for his belief that the raid upon Washington had succeeded; for down to the 27th of April there was but too much reason for supposing that that city was in serious danger of becoming the prey of the Confederates, who might have taken it, if they had been half as forward in their preparations for war as they were supposed to have been by the chiefs of the British Government. But this belief that the rebels had delivered an effective blow at the Union only places the meanness of Lord John Russell and his associates in a worse light than we could view it in, if they had acted solely upon principle. Their political opinions had pledged them to oppose the principles of the Secessionists; but they were in a hurry to give all the support they could to those principles, because they had come to the conclusion that victory was to be with the Secessionists. They desired to appropriate the merit of being the first of European statesmen to welcome the destroyers of the American Union into the family of nations. Had the event justified their expectations, they would have gained much by their action, and would have enjoyed whatever of glory the European world might have been disposed to accord to the allies of American pirates.
The Royal Proclamation of May 13th, in which the neutrality of England is peremptorily laid down, and all British subjects are forbidden to take any part in the war "between the Government of the United States of America and certain States calling themselves the Confederate States of America," is a paper in many respects most offensive to the people of this country, though probably it was better in its intention than it is in its execution. That part of it which most concerns us is the recognition of "any blockade lawfully and actually established by or on behalf of either of the said contending parties." It is important to us that the British Government has admitted our right to blockade the ports of the rebels, provided we shall do so in force; and though Lord Derby has exhibited his ignorance of our naval power by saying that we cannot enforce the blockade we have declared and instituted, we shall show to the world, before the next cotton-crop shall be ready for exportation, that we are fully up to the work that is demanded of us, by having at least one hundred vessels, strongly armed and well manned, employed in watching every part of the Southern coast to which any foreign ship would think of going with a cargo or for the purpose of receiving one. The naval strength of the Union is as capable of vast and effective development as its military strength; and there is no reason why we should not have afloat, and ready for action, by the beginning of autumn, fleets sufficient to close up the Confederate ports as thoroughly as the Allies closed those of Russia in 1854-6, and the advanced guard of other fleets to be made ready to contend with the forces that insolent foreign nations may send into the waters of America for the purpose of fighting the battles of the slaveholders.
With the single exception of the admission of the right of blockade, the Royal Proclamation is unfriendly to the United States. It admits the right of the Confederacy's Government to issue letters of marque, from which it follows that American ships captured by cruisers of the rebels could be taken into English ports, and there sold, after having been condemned by prize courts sitting at any one of the places belonging to the Confederacy. This is no light aid to the pirates; for there are English ports on every sea, and on almost every one of the ocean's tributaries. Vessels belonging to America, and captured by the Confederacy's privateers in the Mediterranean, could be taken into Gibraltar, into Valetta, and into Corfu, all of which are English ports. Those captured in the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean could be sent into any one of the many ports that belong to England in the West Indies. If captured in the North Atlantic, or the Baltic, or any other of the waters of Northern Europe, they could be sent into the ports of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In the South Atlantic are St. Helena and Cape Town, which would afford shelter to Mr. Davis's privateers and their prizes. In the East Indies British ports are numerous, from Aden to the last places wrested from the Chinese, and they would be all open to the enterprise of the Confederacy's cruisers. In the Pacific are the English harbors on the Northwest Coast; and in Australia there are British ports that ought, considering their origin, to be particularly friendly to men who should enter the navy of the Secessionists. England has in advance provided places for the transaction of all the business that shall be necessary to render privateering profitable to the "lawless brood" of the whole world. Into all of her thousand seaports could the lucky Confederates go, and dispose of their captures, just as the old Buccaneers used to sell their prizes in the ports of the English colonies. Nor could all the efforts of all the navies of the world prevent privateers from preying upon our commerce, as they are to be commissioned in foreign countries, and will sail from the ports of those countries. The East Indian seas, the Levant, and the Caribbean are the old homes and haunts of pirates; and under the encouragement which England is disposed to afford to piracy, for the especial benefit of Slavery, the buccaneering business could not fail to flourish exceedingly. True, our Government would not allow privateers to be fitted out in our ports, during the Russian War, to prey upon the commerce of France and England; but what of that? One good turn does not deserve another, according to the public morality of nations so orderly and pious as are England and France.
According to the Royal Proclamation, the blockade of any one of the Northern ports by one of the ships of the Secessionists would be as lawful an act as the blockade of Charleston by a dozen of the Union's cruisers; and England allows that a privateer from Pensacola could seize an English ship that should be engaged in bringing arras to New York or Philadelphia. Thus are the two "parties" to the war placed on the same footing by the decision of the English Government, though the one party is a nation having treaties with England, and engaged in maintaining the cause of order, and the other is only a band of conspirators, who have established their power through the institution of a system of terror, much after the fashion of Monsieur Robespierre and his associates, whose conduct was so offensive to all Britons seven-and-sixty years ago. But Montgomery is much farther from England than Paris, and the French had no cotton to tempt the British statesmen of 1793-4 to strike an account between manufacturing and morality. Distance and time appear to have united their powers to make things appear fair in the eyes of Russell that inexpressibly horrible to those of "the monster Pitt."
The Royal Proclamation forbids Englishmen affording the Union assistance in any way. No British gunmaker can sell us a weapon, no English merchant can use one of his ships to send us the cannon and rifles we have purchased in his country, and no English subject of any degree can lawfully carry a despatch for our Government. Never was there—a more forbidding state-paper put forth; and the arid language of the Proclamation is rendered doubly disagreeable by the purpose for which it is employed. We are placed by its terms on the level of the men of Montgomery, who must be vastly pleased to see that they are held in as much esteem in England as are the constitutional authorities of the United States. If we were to seek for a contrast to this extraordinary document, we should find it in the proclamation put forth by our own Government at the time of the "Canadian Rebellion," and in which it was not sought to convey the impression that we had the right to regard rebels and loyalists as men entitled to the same treatment at our hands. It is a source of pride to Americans, that nothing in their own history can be quoted in justification of the cold-blooded conduct of the British Government.
It has been sought to defend the action of England by referring to precedents. We are reminded by Lord John Russell of the acknowledgment of the Greeks as belligerents by England; and others have pointed to her acknowledgment of the Belgians, and of those Spanish—Americans who had revolted against the rule of Old Spain. We cannot go into an extended examination of these precedents, for the purpose of showing that they do not apply to the present case; but we may say, and an examination into the facts will be found to justify our assertion, that England was in no such hurry to acknowledge the Greeks, the Belgians, and the Spanish-Americans as she has been to acknowledge the Secessionists. Years elapsed after the beginning of the struggle in Greece before the English Government professed to regard the parties to that memorable conflict even with indifference. The British historian of the Greek Revolution, writing of the year 1821, says,—"Among the European Governments, England was probably, next to Austria, the one most hostile to Greece at that period, when her foreign policy was guided by a spirit akin to that of Metternich; the hired organs of Ministry were loud in defence of Islam, and gall dropped from their pens on the Christian cause." And when, some years later, England did profess neutrality between the "parties" to the war, it was less to prevent the Greeks from falling into the hands of the Turks than to prevent the Turks from falling into the hands of the Russians. Another object she had in view was the suppression of that horrible piracy which then raged in the Hellenic seas. She was then as anxious to suppress piracy because it was injurious to her commerce, as, apparently, she is now anxious to promote it because its existence would be injurious to our commerce. The famous Treaty of London, made in 1827, the parties to which were Russia, France, and England, was justified on the ground of "the necessity of putting an end to the sanguinary contest which, by delivering up the Greek provinces and the isles of the Archipelago to the disorders of anarchy, produces daily fresh impediments to the commerce of the European states, and gives occasion to piracies which not only expose the subjects of the contracting powers to considerable losses, but render necessary burdensome measures of suppression and protection." In the autumn of the same year, an Order in Council decreed that "the British ships in the Mediterranean should seize every vessel they saw under the Greek flag, or armed and fitted out at a Greek port, except such as were under the immediate orders of the Greek Government." The object of this strong measure was the suppression of piracy. Thus England had to interfere to put down the Greek pirates; and if she means to insist upon there being any resemblance between the case of the Greeks and that of the Secessionists, (President Lincoln to appear as the Grand Turk, or Sultan Mahmoud II., the destroyer of the Janizaries,) we should not object, so far as relates to the finale of the piece, which is very likely, through her most injudicious action, to produce a large crop of Selims and Abdallahs, by whom any amount of sea-roving will be done, but as much at Britain's expense as at ours.
The case of Belgium is not at all to the point, the Dutch being by no means anxious that the foolish arrangement made at Vienna, by which Holland and Belgium had been formally united, should be continued, though the House of Orange was averse to the loss of so much of its dominions. The disputes that followed the expulsion of the Dutch from Belgium were about details, and the whole matter was finally settled by the action of the Great Powers, and England was not then in a condition to decide it, had it been left for her decision. The makers of the Kingdom of the Netherlands destroyed their own work, after it had been found to be a bad job, and had had fifteen years and upward of fair trial. England had no choice in the matter,—especially as the effect of determined opposition on her part would have thrown Belgium into the arms of France, and have brought about a French war, which would have extended to the whole of Europe, with the revolutionists in every country for the allies of France. Louis Philippe either would have been overthrown very speedily after his elevation, or he would have been enabled to wear his new crown only by placing the old bonnet rouge above it.
That England recognized the Spanish-Americans is true; but why did she recognize them? Because she had to choose between doing that and allowing the Holy Alliance to enter upon the reconquest of the Spanish colonies. Mr. Canning declared that he had called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,—and that, if France, as the tool of the Holy Alliance, should have Spain, it should not be "Spain—with the Indies." This was in 1823, though it was not until 1826 that Mr. Canning made use of the language quoted; and so serious was the matter, that our country was prepared to make common cause with England in resisting the interference of the Allies and their dependants in the affairs of Spanish-America. The question was one which did not relate to English interests alone, but concerned those of the whole world; and it was not decided with reference to the interests of any one country, but after it had been ascertained that its decision would closely and immediately affect the welfare of Christendom. England had to choose between diplomatic resistance to the Continental Powers and the support of a policy which she could not adopt without degrading herself. Naturally she elected to resist, and she did so with success. The Spanish-American countries, however, were freed from the rule of Spain long before she recognized them, and Spain had not the means of subduing them. England, therefore, did not acknowledge them as against Spain, but as against France, and in opposition to the Holy Alliance, the decrees of which France was engaged in enforcing at the expense of the Spanish Constitutionalists, and which process of enforcement the French Government was prepared to extend to Peru and Mexico, and to the whole of that part of America which had belonged to the Spanish Bourbons. Mr. Canning's conduct was statesmanlike, but it was also spiteful; and had England been in the condition to send sixty thousand men to Spain, probably the recognition of the independence of Spanish-America would have been much longer delayed. He had to strike a blow at a mighty enemy, and he delivered it skilfully at that enemy's only exposed point, where it told at once, and where it is telling to this day. But his action affords no precedent to the present rulers of England for the treatment of our case, for he moved not until after the colonies had achieved their independence. Now the British Government proclaims its purpose to acknowledge the Southern Confederacy in less than a month after the beginning of the attack on Fort Sumter, and in about a week after it had heard of the fall of that ill-used fortress! Is there not some difference between the two cases?
England did not admit the Poles to the honors she has allowed to the American Secessionists, after their revolt from the Czar, in 1830-31, though their cause was popular in that country, and they had achieved such successes over the Russian armies as the Secessionists have not won over the armies of the Union. Neither did she acknowledge the Hungarians, in 1849, though they had actually won their independence, which they would have preserved but for the intervention of Russia. It was not for her interest that Austria should be weakened. Is it for her interest that the United States should be weakened? Is it the purpose of her Government to give our rebels encouragement, step by step, in order that the American nation may be thrown back to the place it held twenty years ago?