Viewing page 2 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

slave-masters in countenance from the beginning. But I will not deal in language of recrimination. There has been far too much of this already on both sides. Nor will I argue the question of difference between us. I can only appeal and entreat. Nevertheless, I will say that the issue between the North and the South is seldom fairly stated in Great Britain by those who take the Southern side. The Federal Government is held to be fighting utterly apart from any connection with the welfare of the four million slaves of the South. Theoretically the statement has a show of truth, but practically it is entirely false. This sophistry found its way where little expected, in the speech of Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, when he argued that the interests of the negro were likely to be better cared for under the Southern Confederacy than in the old Union. 

An intelligent answer to the inquiry, Why did the South rebel against the Federal Government? will exhibit the unsoundness of that pretense. The whole history of the rebellion will show that the slaveholding rebels revolted not because of any violation of the United States Constitution, or of any proposed violation of it, but from pure and simple opposition to the Constitution itself, and because, in their judgment, that Constitution does not sufficiently guard and protect slavery. The first serious objection to the Constitution dates back to 1789, and was raised in the Virginia Convention met to ratify that Constitution. Patrick Henry, one of the leaders of the struggle for severing the colonies from the British crown, declared himself against the Constitution, on the ground, as he said, that it gave power to the Federal Government to abolish slavery in all the States, and that with a strong anti-slavery sentiment, that power would surely be exercised. The answer to this objection by Mr. Madison is significant of the state of public opinion concerning slavery at that time, and shows that the objection of Mr. Henry could not be met by positive refutation; for Mr. Madison simply said he hoped that no gentleman would vote against the Constitution upon an objection so discrecitable to Virginia. The Constitution was too anti-slavery for Mr. Henry. The anti-slavery sentiment which he anticipated three-quarters of a century ago, asserted itself in the election of Mr. Lincoln.

Near the close of the late inglorious administration, Mr. Buehanan proposed several amendments to the Constitution, giving full and explicit guarantees for the better protection of slavery. The proposition as embodied by him -- happily for the interests of freedom and humanity -- found but little favor North or South; the former evidently opposed to the measure in itself; and the latter, believing it impossible to carry it, proceeded with the rebellion already determined upon. In this simple, brief statement may be clearly discerned the real cause of the rebellion. Wanting a slaveholding constitution, from which all hope of emancipation should be excluded, the Southern States have undertaken to make one, and to establish it upon the ruins of the old one, under which slavery could be discouraged, crippled, and abolished. The war, therefore, to maintain the old against the new Constitution is essentially an anti-slavery war, and ought to command the ardent sympathy and support of good men in all countries.

What though our timid Administration at Washington, shrinking from the logical result of their own natural position as the defenders of an anti-slavery constitution against a radical slaveholding one, did at the first refuse to admit the real character of the war, and vainly attempt to conciliate by walking backward and casting a mantle over the revolting origin of the rebellion? What though they instructed their foreign agents to conceal the moral deformity of the rebels? You could not fail to know that the primal causes of this war rested in the selfishness and wickedness of slavery, and a determination on the part of the slaveholders to make their stupendous crime and curse all-controlling and perpetual in America. 

But I will not weary you by statement or argument. The case is plain. The North is fighting on the side of liberty and civilization, and the South on the side of slavery and barbarism. 

You are suffering in your commerce and in your manufactures. Industry languishes and the children of your poor cry for bread. God pity them! The calamity is great. But would any interference with us bring relief to those sufferers? You have shared with the American slaveholders and the unhallowed gains of the blood-stained products of slave-labor, preferring Carolina slave to India free, making Manchester a party to the slave plantation, and largely in sympathy with the slaveholding spirit of America. What else in the world could have come of all this but participation with us in the common retribution? Must the world stand still, humanity make no progress, and slavery remain for ever, lest your cotton-mills should stop and your poor cry for bread? You are unable to obtain your usual supply of American cotton. Would, this be made better by plunging yourselves into hardships, expenses, horrors, and perils of a war, which would in any event shed no luster on your arms, and only feed the fires of national hate for a century to come -- and just in this your time of need greatly diminish your American supply of corn? Can any thinking man doubt for one moment that intervention would be an aggravation rather than a mitigation of the evils under which your laborers mourn? It is insisted that you ought, from considerations of humanity toward both sections, intervene, and put an end to the fratricidal strife. Ah! but there's the rub! -- Could you put an end to it? Never did wilder delusion beset a human brain. I say it in no menacing spirit, the United States, thought wounded and bleeding, is yet powerful. -- Heavy as have been her losses, in life and treasure, her weaknesses from these causes offer no temptation to foreign assault, even supposing you could be influenced by such motives. 

But I have no taste for this view of the subject, and will not dwell upon it. The lesson of our civil war to you is the cultivation of cotton by free labor. It tells you that your should base your industry and prosperity on the natural foundations of justice and liberty. These are permanent. All else, transient -- hay, wood, and stubble. A house built upon the sand can as well resist the woods and floods as slavery can resist enlightenment and progress. The moral laws of the universe must be suspended, or slavery will go down. Look, therefore, to India, where your laws have carried liberty. Look to the West Indies, where your philanthropy has planted Christianity. -- Your resources are great and ample. You have the islands to the west of you, India to the east of you, and Africa with her perennial cotton plant to the south of you. Intervene there, not with swords and guns and other warlike implements, but by means of peaceful industry. Convert a calamity into prosperity, a curse into a blessing. I fully believe in the general rectitude of the British heart. The poorest of all the sufferers in Laacashire would hardly be willing to purchase even life itself by replunging a liberated slave into hopeless slavery. Much less would they do so were another door open for relief. Abraham might have slain his son but for the appearance of a more appropriate sacrifice -- and you have a far better alternative than war with us. 

I will not weary you. The case is before you. No excuses, however plausable -- no distances of time, however remote -- no line of conduct hereafter pursued, however excellent, will erase the deep stain upon your honor and truth, if at this hour of dreadful trial, you interpose in a manner to defeat or embarrass the emancipation of the slaves of America. -- If at any time you could have honorably intervened in American affairs, it was when the Federal Government was vainly striving to put down the rebellion without hurting slavery -- when our army and generals wore the brass collars of slave-dogs, and hunted negroes for their rebel masters. That gloomy and disgusting period ended on the 22d Sept., 1862. From that day our war has been invested with a sanctity which will smite as with death even the mailed hand of Britain, if outstretched to arrest it. Let the confliet go on! -- There is no doubt of the final result, and though the war is a dreadful scourge, it will make justice, liberty, and humanity permanently possible in this country. 

____________________________

DR. CAIRNES ON THE REBELLION, --- THE LONDON INQUIRER AND THEPROCLAMATION
___

We have given much space to Great Britian in our present number, but we trust not more than will be interesting to our readers, [[non]] than seems called for by the necessities of the hear. Britain is narrow in Territory, but broad in respect to ideas, and broad also in respect to the range of subjects upon which she brings her mental power to bear. It is the fashion in this country, to sneer at British ignorance of American Institutions, and of our current politics; but daring this war are the very movements of our armies, have seemed at times better understood on the Thames, than on the Potomac. They have fully understood the logic of movement, and how one move would necessitate another and predicted, weeks in advance, what would be done by this and that general, a thousand miles inland, and therefore four thousand miles from the British Isles. At present, no subject, not immediately British, has a stronger interest for the philosophers and Statesmen of that country, than the present terrible strife of social forces in America: and we do well, in the whirl of the passing hour, to note for respectful consideration the opinions expressed concerning us by enlightened transatlantic men and Journals. -- The cause of the North as against the South, has been ably represented by such Statesmen as Messrs BRIGHT, CORDEN, W. E. FOSTER, and General THOMPSON, and by such Journals as the London "Daily News." But despite the efforts and influence of this class of men and 

Transcription Notes:
"confliet" [sic] "THEPROCLAMATION" [sic]