The London Times of May 10th contained a long editorial leader on American affairs, beginning in the following manner:
'It will have been noticed as a singular feature of the American quarrel, that no intervention is thought probable or practicable, except in favor of the South. Mediation, in whatever form or under whatever name it is to be offered, is universally taken to imply some movement in behalf of the Confederates. So completely, indeed, are the belligerents themselves impressed with this idea, that the South casts it in our teeth as a scandal and a blunder that no European arbitration has been yet interposed; while the President of the Northern States actually proclaims a day of thanksgiving for the deliverance of the country from 'foreign intervention,' which he identifies with nothing less than 'invasion.' The instincts of the combatants have undoubtedly led them to correct decisions on this point, but the fact is not a little curious. We need not dissemble the truth about certain prepossessions current in Europe. It is beyond denial that, in spite of the slavery question, the Southerners have been rather the favorites, partly as the weaker side, partly as conquerors against odds, and partly because their demand for independence was thought too natural to be resisted at the sword's point by a Government founded on the right of insurrection only. To these merely sentimental and not very cogent considerations was added the more potent and weighty reflection that what the Southerners had done no Power, whether American or European, could succeed in undoing.'
The rest of the article, as the reader may recall, was devoted to sneering at the North and in commending intervention; the whole being characterized by an underhand, venomous, and latent treacherous tone, much more becoming a vindictive and vulgar Oriental than a civilized and Christian European.
A little while before the Times leader appeared, the London Morning Herald had informed the world that
France and England suffer more than neutrals ever suffered from any contest, and both begin to regard the war as interminable and atrocious.'
It is singular that the great majority of the British press and people should dare to talk so glibly of intervention in this our civil war, when we consider what their intermeddling may cost them. Cotton they may or may not get, but no intervention can compel us to buy their goods, and, as we have already pointed out in our columns, the entire loss of the free States market involves a disaster which will be permanent and terrible. Apart from the danger attendant upon insolently threatening a nation amply capable of mustering an army of a million on its own soil—two thirds of them practiced in war—there remains to be considered the utter loss of all American custom. We buy much more than any other nation whatever. Worse than this, for Europe, there would follow Such a development of our home-manufactures as would seriously threaten to drive England and France from a hundred markets. Let them think twice ere they intervene. But the people, it is said, are starving; and it may be, for this is one of the occasional and unavoidable results of England's endeavoring to become the workshop of the world. By over-manufacturing, she has brought it to such a pitch that one fourth of her population live on imported food—such as do not starve outright—for be it remembered that in Great Britain one person in eight is buried at the public expense, while one in every twelve or fourteen is a constant pauper. They are starving at present more than usual, simply because the North is buying less; but to turn away any popular opposition to government, and suppress riots, they and the world are told that the trouble all comes from the closing of Southern ports and the want of cotton! This, too, when published facts show that the stock of goods and cotton on hand far exceeds the demand, and is likely to exceed it for a long time to come. It is not cotton that England or France want, but customers. How are they to obtain these? By exasperating their best buyers beyond all reconciliation? The day that witnesses British or French meddling in our war, sees the inauguration of such hostility to their manufactures as they little dream of. There will be leagues formed to enforce this to the letter. It will be treason to wear an inch of English cloth or of French silk, and what lie will they say to their starving operatives then?
Already within the past year, great advances have been made in manufacturing, especially in silks. A little closing of us up would be the worst experiment for England that she ever yet tried. She may possibly get cotton from the South, but not a customer from the North. You may lead a horse to water, but it is another affair to make him drink. And no one who can recall the prompt resolve not to use English goods, and the beginning of leagues to that effect, of which we lately heard so much, can doubt that in case we hear much more of this impertinence of intervention, the American market would immediately be lost to the insolent meddlers. It is only of late that the free States have shaken off their Democratic, pro-slavery, anti-tariff tyrants, and learned to be free. England has groaned and howled at our freedom; now she goes so far as to threaten; but unless she soon stop that, we shall promptly show her where the strength lies. While we were under a half-Southern, half-British tyranny, we could do nothing. And be it remembered that from the days of the New-York Plebeian, when British gold was spent literally by the million in this country, to strengthen the Democratic party and build up free trade, slavery and English interests always went hand in hand to oppress the interests of American free labor. But we shall soon change all that. It is in our power to chastise British impudence most effectually, and we shall probably soon be called upon to do it, by buying nothing from abroad.
The inhuman, inconsistent, and cynically selfish conduct of England toward the North in this war, whenever we have been threatened by reverses, should not be forgotten. It has been literally devilish in its grossness and meanness. Whatever wickedness the South has been guilty of was at least barefaced and bold. The South had not for years labored to build up an Abolition party in the North, as England did. For well nigh half a century has England howled, wailed, whined, and canted over slavery; but at the first pinch of the pocket, away goes the previous philanthropy, and John Bull stands revealed, the brutal, cruel, treacherous, lying savage that he is at heart, under all his aristocratic feudal trash and gilding. Well, we know him at last, and will remember him. His conduct toward us has put hay on his horns—foenum habet in cornu—and we shall avoid him. Let the manufacturers of America watch this intolerably insolent intervention closely, and lose no opportunity to turn it to their own advantage, that is to say, to the advantage of the whole nation. Let them, by means of journal and pamphlet, profusely scattered, explain to the people the enormous wrong which England is seeking to do us, and the deliberate, we may truthfully say, the official falsehood on which it is based. They have it in their power to make our country literally free—will they hesitate to use that power?
The reliance of England is, by returning to her sweet, stale flatteries, after the establishment of the Confederacy, to be friends as of old with the North. It is, she thinks, easily done. Our servants abroad and their friends are to be a little more favored with levee tickets and access to noble society; a few dozen more of the rank and file will be marched along or 'presented' before her Majesty, and thereby sworn in to endless admiration of all that is Anglican; venerable gentlemen in white waistcoats will make sweet speeches, after public dinners, of the beauty of Union, just as they made them here a year ago, in reference to the South, when the tiger was on the spring. The old see-saw of 'nations united in language and customs—brothers at heart,' will be set to vibrating, and all, as they believe, must jog along merrily as of old. For it is with a very little regularly organized stuff of this kind, turned on or off as from a hydrant, and always in dribbling drops at that, that England has, when necessary, pacified and delighted a great number of Americans, semi-insane to be received on terms of equality by the 'higher classes,' whom they worshiped at heart, while they affected all manner of bold Americanisms to hide the truth. It is time to end all this. We have come to serious and terrible days, and must be free from all such flunkeyism. In our hour of trouble, the English press boldly proclaimed that its sympathy was with the South. Let it be remembered!