But, absurd or not, the law must be followed. Great nations must settle their disputes by the law, even as individuals do, and there is no shame in submitting to it, for submission to the constituted authorities is the highest proof of honor and of civilization. And if England chooses to strain the law to its utmost [pg 229] tension, to thereby push her neutrality to the very verge of sympathy with our rebels, and manifest, by a peremptory and discourteous exercise of her rights, total want of sympathy with our efforts to suppress rebellion,—why, we must bear it.
And here, leaving the letter of the law, we may appropriately say a few words of the animus which has inspired the 'influential classes' in England as regards this country, during our struggle with the South. We are assured that the mass of the English people sympathize with us, and we are glad to hear it,—just as we are to know that Ireland is friendly in her disposition. But we can not refrain—and we do it with no view to words which may stir up ill-feeling—from commenting, in sorrow rather than anger, on the fact that such a majority of journalists, capitalists, yes, and the mass of inhabitants of English cities, have so unblushingly, for the mere sake of money, turned their backs on those principles of freedom of which they boasted for so many years, flouting us the while for being behind them in the race of philanthropy! It is pitiful and painful to see pride brought so low. We of the Federal Union are striving, heart and soul, to uphold our government—a government which has been a great blessing to England and to the world. Who shall say what revolutions, what tremendous disasters, would not have overtaken Great Britain had it not been for the escape-valve of emigration hither? If ever a situation appealed to the noblest sympathies of mankind, ours does. Struggling to maintain a government which has given to the poor man fuller rights and freer exercise of labor than he has ever before known on this earth; fighting heroically to uphold the best republic ever realized;—who would have dreamed that 'brave, free, honest Old England' would have regarded us coldly, sneered at our victories, grinned over our defeats? But more than this. Though not avowed as an aim, and though secondary to our first great object,—the reëstablishment of the Union and a constitutional government,—we all know, and so does every Englishman, that the emancipation of the slave, to a greater or less degree, must inevitably follow our success. Here comes the test of that English abolition of the blackest and fiercest stamp which has for years been avowed in Great Britain, and which has done as much as aught else towards stirring up this foul rebellion. Where be your gibes now, O Britannia? Where be your bitter jeers against the 'lying Constitution,' against the 'stars for the white man and the stripes for the negro,' against everything American, because America was the land of the slave? We are fighting—dying—to directly uphold ourselves, and indirectly to effect this very emancipation for which you clamored; we are losing cotton and suffering everything;—but you, when it comes to the pinch, will endure nothing for your boasted abolition, but slide off at once towards aiding the inception of the foulest, blackest, vilest slaveocracy ever instituted on earth!
Disguise, quibble, lie, let them that will—these are facts. Because we, in our need, have instituted a protective tariff, which was absolutely necessary to keep us from utter ruin, and on the flimsy pretext that we are not fighting directly for emancipation, proud, free, and honest Old England, as publicly represented, eats all her old words, and, worse than withholding all sympathy from us, shows in a thousand ill-disguised ways an itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled down secession, and sent cotton to your marts, even to superfluity. Or, were you so minded, and could 'worry through' a [pg 230] single year, you might raise in your own colonies cotton enough, and be forever free of America.
Or is it really true, as many think, that your statesmen would gladly dismember this Union? The suggestion reveals such a depth of infamy that we will not pause on it. Let it pass—if the hour of need should come we will revive it, and out of that need will arise a giant of Union such as was never before dreamed of. Let the country believe that, and from Maine to California there will be such a blending into one as time can never dissolve!
But be it borne in mind;—and we would urge it with greater earnestness than, aught which we have yet said,—there is in England a large, noble body of men who do not sympathize with the Southern rebels; who are not sold, soul and body, to cotton; who see this struggle of ours as it is, and who would not willingly see us divided. These men believe in industry, in free labor, in having every country developed as much as possible, in order that the industry of each may benefit by that of the other. Honor to whom honor is due,—and much is due to these men. Meanwhile we can wait,—and, waiting, we shall strive to do what is right. England has her choice between the cotton of the South and the market of the North. Let her choose the former, and she will grasp ruin. We should suffer for a time, bitterly. But out of that suffering we should come so strengthened, so united, and so perfectly able to dispense with all foreign labor, that where we were before as rough ore, then we should be pure gold in our prosperity.
The first statesmen of England have shown by their speeches, as the first British journals have indicated in their articles, that they earnestly believe what Stephens and hundreds of other Southerners have asserted, that all the wealth of the Northern States has come from the South, and that the South is the great ultimate market for the major portion of our imports. Glancing over our map,—as was done by The Times,-the Englishman may well believe this. He sees a vast extent of territory,—he has heard and witnessed the boasts and extravagance of Southerners abroad,—he knows that where so many million bales of cotton go out, just so much money must flow in; he is angry at our Northern tariff of emergency, and so believes that by opening to himself the South he will secure a vast market. Little does he reflect on the fact that, this step once taken, he will close up in the North and West his greatest market, one worth ten times that of the South, and constantly increasing, just in proportion as our population progresses more rapidly than that of the slave States. It is no exaggeration,—strange as it may seem,—but this extraordinary ignorance has been manifested time and again by high authority in England since the war began. But supposing the balance struck, and cotton found to be worth more to England than the market of the North. Does not our very independence of English manufactures imply such a stimulus to our own, as to threaten that we shall thereby be in a much shorter time in a condition to compete with her in every market of the world? Drive us to manufacturing for ourselves, and we shall manufacture for every one. Already every year witnesses American inventiveness achieving new triumphs over British rivalry. Has England forgotten the report of Messrs. Whitworth and Wallis on American manufactures, in which they were told that of late years they have been more indebted to American skill for useful inventions than to their own? War and non-intercourse will doubtless compel us to economy, and render labor cheaper in America, but they can not quench our innate Yankee-Saxon inventiveness and industry. But if labor is made cheaper in America, then our final triumph will only be hastened. If England seeks her own ruin, she could not advance it more rapidly than she would do by a war or a difference with us. And this many think that she will do for the sake of one season's supply of American cotton! [pg 231] The fable of him who killed the goose for the sake of the golden egg becomes terrible when acted out by a great nation. And if this be true, then the uplifted sword of Albion is, verily, nothing but a goose-killing knife.
'God is not dead yet.' If we are in the right, He will guide and guard us, and they who contend for right and justice and the liberty of the poor, first fully taught on earth by the Saviour Jesus Christ, will not suffer in the end. When we first entered on this struggle with the South, it was soon realized that we had undertaken the greatest struggle of history, the reformation of the modern age, the grandest battle for progress and against the old serpent of oppression ever known. Let them laugh who will, but such a trial of republicanism against the last of feudalism is this, and nothing less. God aid us! But it may be that, as the contest widens, grander accomplishments lie before us. Whether it be done by the sword, or by peaceful industry; whether as victors, or as the unrighteously borne-down in our sorest hour of need,—it is not impossible that, in one way or the other, it is yet in our destiny to refute the monstrous theory that whatever the most powerful nation on earth does is necessarily right, and that all considerations must yield to its enormous interests. Such has been till the present the morality of English and of all European diplomacy,—who will deny it? Can it be possible that this is to last forever, and that nations are in the onward march of progress privileged to adopt a different course from that enjoined by God on individuals? 'Was Israel punished for this?' No, it can not be. We stand at the portal of a new age; step by step Truth must yet find her way even into the selfish camarilla councils of 'diplomacy.' Storms, sorrows, trials, and troubles may be before us,—but we are working through a mighty time. 'Nothing without labor.' Our task for the present is the restoration of the sacred Union. From this let nothing turn us aside, neither the threats of England or of the world. If we must be humiliated by the law, then let us bear the humiliation. Our Great Master bore aforetime the most cruel disgrace in the same holy cause of vindicating the rights of man. If new struggles are forced upon us, let us battle like men. We are living now in the serious and the great,—let us bear ourselves accordingly, and the end shall crown the work.
There is no use in disguising the fact—the people of the North, notwithstanding their sufferings and sacrifices, are not yet aroused. While immediate apprehensions—were entertained of war with England, it was promptly said, that if this state of irritation continued, we should be able to sweep the South away like chaff.
Meanwhile, the North is full of secession sympathizers and traitors, and they are most amiably borne with. There are journals which, in their extreme 'democracy,' defend the South as openly as they dare in all petty matters, and ridicule or discredit to their utmost every statement reflecting on our enemies. They are, it is true, almost beneath contempt and punishment; but their existence is a proof of an amiable, impassive state of feeling, which will never proceed to very vigorous measures. Were the whole people fairly aflame, such paltry treason would vanish like straw in a fiery furnace.