The flag of England was then the flag of slavery, and not of slavery only, but of the African slave-trade; and wherever slavery now exists, England may look upon it and say, This is the work of my hands—mine was the price of blood, and mine all the anguish and despair of centuries of bondage.
This war, then, is mainly the work of England. She forced slavery here, and then commenced and inflamed here the anti-slavery agitation, assailing the Constitution and the Union, arresting the progress of manumission in the Border States, and finally culminating in the rebellion. Here, then, in the South are slavery and rebellion, branches of that Upas tree, whose seeds were planted in our soil by England.
England, then, should never have reproached us with slavery. The work was hers, and hers may yet be the dread retribution of avenging justice. Had the contest she provoked in the Trent affair then happened, the result might have been very different from her expectations. Instead of a ruined country, and divided Union, and God save the King played under the cross of St. George in Boston, New-York, and Philadelphia, she might have heard the music of Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia, and the Star-Spangled Banner on the heights of Quebec, reëchoed in fraternal chorus over the Union intended by God, under one government, of the valley of the lakes and the St. Lawrence. Looking nearer home, she might have beheld that banner, whose stars she would have extinguished in blood, floating triumphantly, in union with the Shamrock, over that glorious Emerald Isle, whose generous heart beats with love of the American Union, and whose blood, now as ever heretofore, is poured out in copious libations in its defense. Indeed, but for the forbearance of our Government, and the judgment and good sense of Lord Lyons, the conflict was inevitable.
The hope was expressed by me in England that 'those glorious isles would become the breakwater of liberty, against which the surges of European despotism would dash in vain.' This was her true policy, justice to Ireland, successive reforms in her system, a further wise extension of the suffrage, with the vote by ballot, a cordial moral alliance with her kindred race in America, and a full participation, mutually beneficial, in our ever enlarging commerce. But her oligarchy has chosen coalition with the South and slavery, and war upon our Union and the republican principle. Divide and conquer is their motto, suicide will be their epitaph.
England is now playing her part in the fourth act of the drama of slavery. During the first act, for more than a century, she was actively engaged in the African slave-trade, and in forcing the victims, as slaves, upon the colonies, against their protest.
With the close of the first act came the American Revolution, when, in the truthful language of Mr. Jefferson, before quoted, England 'excited the slaves to rise in arms among us, and to purchase the liberty of which she had deprived them, by murdering the people on whom she had obtruded them.'
The third act, from 1834 to 1861, presented England engaged in fierce denunciations of American slavery. The British pulpit, press, and hustings, her universities, literature, courts, bar, statesmen, and orators, were all devoted to assaults on American slavery, and upon our Constitution, for tolerating the system, even for a moment. Her Parliament most graciously favored us with one of its own members, to denounce in the North, the slavery of the South, inflaming sectional passions and hatred, with the fixed purpose of dissolving the Union. As all the slaves whom England had sent to Boston, had been manumitted in 1780, and there was no slavery there, the object was, not to abolish slavery, or the mission would have been to the South, where the institution and the power over it existed, but the movement was made in the North, not to destroy slavery, but to dissolve the Union. England having failed to accomplish our overthrow in the two great wars of 1776 and 1812, she commenced the third war upon us, not from the mouths of her cannon, but in zealous efforts, continued now for more than a fourth of a century, to divide the Union, by the agitation of this question. We are indebted to England for the curse of slavery, and then for the slavery agitation. In this she has been but too successful North and South; but if slavery should perish in the conflict, she will mourn the result, because it removes our only dangerous element of discord.
And now the curtain has risen on the fourth act, and England, as always heretofore, is the chief actor. And where now is the great anti-slavery agitator? Why, England has reversed her position, and suddenly discovered the surpassing beauty and perfection of secession and slavery. Secession, an anarchical absurdity, destructive of all law, and all government, she kindly adopts as the true theory of our system. This heresy was discarded by Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and all the illustrious founders of the Constitution. It was exposed, in all its deformity, by Jackson, Clay, and Webster, in 1833, when it was rejected by every State, except South-Carolina. But England repudiates the doctrine at home, and abroad also, except for our country. Substituting her wishes for the fact, she declares we are not a nation, and that any State has a legal and moral right to secede and dissolve the Union. Deplorable would have been the folly of such a system, and well then might England have exulted over the failure of republics. Nothing but her intense desire for this failure could have induced England to adopt this absurd doctrine. The whole world perceives the motive for so false a pretense, and history will expose and denounce it.
And now, as to slavery, let us compare the England of 1834 and 1860, and all the intermediate period, with the England of 1861 and 1862. What a revolution? Where now are her daily denunciations of slavery? Where now is Exeter Hall, so lately teeming with anti slavery harangues, but now cheering the slavery rebellion? Where are the abolition lords and ladies of England; where the reverend clergy; where the public press, and Parliament? Has England been struck dumb in a moment, that she can no longer denounce a system which, up to the hour of pro-slavery secession, she had, from day to day, during more than a fourth of a century, declared to combine all the crimes of the decalogue? Where now are the compliments that were lavished upon Uncle Tom's Cabin and its gifted writer? Where are the notices in England, of our recent great anti-slavery work, Among the Pines, by the celebrated Edmund Kirke, 'who awoke one morning and found himself famous'? The book is read and circulated here by thousands, but none will notice or take it now in England.
But England is not silent. Her press, her statesmen, and even members of her cabinet, declare that the rebellion has dissolved our Union, and destroyed our Government. They say we can never conquer the rebellion; that we should abandon the contest, acknowledge the South as an independent power, give it all the Gulf, two thirds of the Atlantic, all the Chesapeake, half the Ohio, all the lower Mississippi and its mouth, cut our territory into two parts, acknowledge the right of secession, and the absolute dissolution of the Union. Such is the assurance of rightful and certain success by which England encourages the rebels, while surrender, is the advice she gratuitously urges upon us, from day to day. But England is not the only false prophet whose predictions were based only on her wishes. Indeed, many of her presses and statesmen openly avow their belief and desire that the Union should be overthrown. Our area, they say, is too large, although all compact and connected by the greatest arterial river-system of the globe. But England is not large enough, and new possessions are constantly added by the sword, although her territory is double our own, and scattered over all the continents, and many of the isles of the world. If, before or shortly after this struggle began, England had spoken a word of friendship and sympathy for us—if she had but repeated her former denunciations of slavery, and given us the moral weight of her opinion—the rebellion would have been crushed long since. If—claiming to be our mother—she had only, in this crisis, acted as such, in her hour of need a kindred race would have rallied to her rescue. But now, so long as this wicked oligarchy rules her destiny never—never! It was England forced slavery upon us. It was England fastened upon our feeble, youthful limbs, this poisoned shirt of Nessus, and then, when we were tearing it from us, even though the vitals and the life-blood might follow, England exulted in what she believed to be our dying agonies.