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546      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.      NOVEMBER, 1861

pel than to invite the good feeling of the British Government and people.  Our jacket is off, and we are getting ready for a fight, while the alleged foe stands coolly with his hands in his pocket, and has not given us a single angry word.  Such behavior is very little to our credit.  Neither our temper nor our statesmanship is likely to gain by it the favor of the world.  Count CAVOUR, while endeavoring to establish Italian unity, wisely secured the moral support of the Emperor of the French and the friendship of England.  He needed both; but not more than we now need the same friendship.  Our Secretary of State is a wise man, and one to whom we have ever looked with confidence, not only for wisdom, but for gentleness and moral rectitude.  In respect to the latter, we still believe in WM. H. SEWARD.  Nevertheless, we hold that he has struck the wrong note, and is singing the wrong tune, if he values, as he ought, the good will of old England.  Were we in every respect prepared to whip all Europe in arms, there is no such love of fighting among us as to make it wise to invite such a war.

It has been more than once hinted, that a war with some foreign power would put an end to our domestic war, and unite the nation as in the days of the Revolution.  The tho't is not worthy even of a madman, and only worthy of a very wicked and mean man.  The slaveholding States to-day would ally themselves more readily with the most despotic government in Europe, than with the free States.  They have no love for England, France or Russia, but their feeling towards the free States is one of fierce and deadly hate.  Proof of this has been given in every battle since the war began, and was given in every Southern speech before the war began.  But even if this were not the case, the sentiment would be worthy only of the blackest villainy.

A foreign war at this time would afford a necessity for abandoning the idea of subduing the Southern rebellion, and furnish an excuse for our inability to maintain the Union and Government as handed down by our fathers.  That much it would undoubtedly do; and if that is desirable, a foreign war may be good policy, though waged for a mean and wicked motive.  For the life of us, we cannot see the least shadow of a ground for complaint against England.  England has recognized the rebel Government as having beligerent rights.  We have practically done the same thing.  England has refused to treat the Confederate privateers as pirates; we virtually refuse to do the same thing.  It is true, we are now trying them as pirates; but every body knows that this is the veriest sham, and that not one of the privateersmen now on trial for his life will ever suffer the doom of a pirate.  That England should look with some concern upon the summary manner in which British subjects have been hurried off to prison, without the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, is entirely natural, and not to do so would contradict her whole history.--The American Government might justly be expected to do the same thing.  If England were in the turmoil of civil war, and the British Government were to clutch Mr. LINCOLN, he being then a denizen of England, and throw him into prison upon private information, we should brand as base and recreant any minister of ours who failed to express

our national concern on account of such proceedings.  There is reason in all things; but there is certainly no reason in the free and easy manner in which our newspapers are dealing with the recent brief note of Lord LYONS to the American Secretary of State.

But the main purpose of this article is not to discuss the political relations of England and America, but to acknowledge, in grateful terms, a magnanimous and able defence of the free States and their policy, by a rising British statesman and Member of Parliament--for such is Mr. WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER, whose name we have placed at the head of this article.

Among the many able and distinguished men it was our privilege to meet, and whose friendship we were permitted to enjoy during our recent brief sojourn in England, we met with none who had more deeply studied and more completely mastered the great social and political questions which then and now divide the people of America.  Mr. FORSTER seems to have taken for his political studies the two extremes, the East and the West.--One of the most masterly expositions of the relations of the British Government to India, published in the [[italics]] Edinburgh Review [[/italics]], is from his pen; while in the speech before us, he proves himself familiar with the very essense of the great slaveholders' rebellion; and notwithstanding the persistent blunders, mistakes and timidity of the American Government, calculated to make the impression upon the British mind that the South is only fighting to get slavery out of the Union, and the North to keep it in the Union, Mr. FORSTER, looking to the vital animus of the war on both sides, and weighing the tendency of each policy and the inevitable logic of events, arrives at the just conclusion that the war is, after all, a war for slavery on the part of the South, and against slavery on the part of the North.  In this view of the case he nobly commends the North to the sympathy and regard of the Englishmen.  He touches the noblest element in British character, when he calls upon them, against what seems to be interest, to take sides with humanity and civilization in this contest with barbarism. 

Just such an advocate do we need at this moment.  We have need of defence against ourselves, and from the evils which our own miserable tenderness towards slavery is calling down upon us.  Mr. FORSTER is now a Member of Parliament.  His eloquence is of the genuine British stamp, abounding in facts rather than in flowers, and completely mastering and exhausting whatever subject upon which it is employed, either in writing or speaking.  Able as he is, he is not more able than candid.--We have never met a man freer from claptrap, or shams of any kind.  It is this circumstance, together with his ability, which procured for his recent speech at Bradford a place in the columns of the London [[italics]] Times [[/italics]].  Like our New York  [[italics]] Herald [/italics]], that journal, however crookedly it may steer its own editorial columns, is wise enough to catch up every purely English utterance, and thus retain a national character, even while it would lead the nation astray.

America cannot well afford to dispense with English friendship at any time, and she can less afford to do so in this hour of disaster and desolation than at any time in the past.  Our experience of the two countries is, that where

you will hear one unkind word against America in England, you will hear ten in America against England.  Instead of widening the breach between the peoples of these two countries of the same language, religion, law and fundamental ideas, we would gladly hold up the hands of such statesmen as Mr. FORSTER, who, even at the expense of material interest, seeks to maintain the most cordial relation with the loyal and progressive people of America.


FREMONT AND FREEDOM----LINCOLN AND SLAVERY.


In our number for the month of October, we recorded and commented on the pusillanimous and pro-slavery interference of President LINCOLN against the confiscation and liberation of the slaves held by those in arms against the Government in the State of Missouri.  The friends of freedom and the Union had scarcely ceased to mourn this lamentable blunder, and the rebels to rejoice over it, when out came a still more disheartening rumor to the effect that FREMONT'S policy had not only been condemned by the Government, but that the Government was seriously debating the question of his removal from his command.  At first, no body could believe that any such suicidal policy as that could have been entertained for a moment by the Government.  But now, after weeks of telegrams "by authority," all calculated to impair the reputation of the young and vigorous anti-slavery General, there is no reason to doubt that FREMONT'S humiliation is fully determined upon, and that only a brief space is given him to save the Government the responsibility of his removal by his own resignation.--This dodge, however, is not likely to work, since strong in the confidence of his army, and strong in his own conscious integrity, FREMONT, in all the likelihoods of the case, will bravely remain at his post until the Government shoulders the full and open responsibility of his removal.

Of course, it would be rash to assume, in behalf of General FREMONT, or of any other General, that his management of his department has been faultless; but so far as the public are aware, the gravest charges yet made against FREMONT are amply refuted, and the rest are simply contemptible.  There is a deep conviction in the public mind that the opposition to the rising young General, arises out of other than honorable and patriotic motives--motives which, if persisted in, may lead to the complete and hopeless demoralization of the army, and pave the way for a civil war within a civil war.

These words have a harsh and disagreeable sound even to our own ears; but truth consults no man's taste, and events enter without begging any man's permission.  If Government shall humble merit, and exalt imbecility, displace Generals who are a terror to the rebels, and promote those who excite no alarm, and thus in fact allow the rebels to select only such Generals as they can whip, as well as choose the ground upon which they can whip them most easily--it would not be strange if the patience of the people should entirely break down, and if some determined man of military genius should rise out of the social chaos, and displace the civil power altogether.  Such things have taken place before, and what has been done may be done again.  The last twenty-five years of Mexi-

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