COBDEN'S TRUE FORESIGHT.

539

digious extent of their territory, inspired them with a wholly disappropriate idea of their own power, dignity, and national capacity. They had bullied Austria, England, and even France, and had not been punished-they naturally believed that they might continue to commit offences against international law and courtesy with the same impunity. The secession of the South completely alters their position. They have now a powerful neighbor and vulnerable frontier. They are still strong enough to repel aggression; but they can no longer have that overweening confidence in their own strength, that sense of perfect security from consequences, which has made them hitherto the most aggressive of nations.

The Saturday Review, the organ of the most highly-educated classes in England, thus displays its pitiful ignorance of Democratic institutions (August 31, 1864):

A first rate general at the head of such an army as will be necessary to conquer and subjugate even a fraction of the seceding States, will be incomparably the most powerful and popular man in America; and it will be entirely by his own choice if he ever subsides into private life. Meanwhile the danger that threatens their favorite democratic institutions are contemplated by Americans with an easy indifference which is rather startling. in America seems to follow the ordinary laws of human nature!

......

.....

Nothing

CONT

XII.

ONTRAST all this with the genial and strong words of Cobden in his speech at Rochdale (Nov. 24, 1863):

This is a war to extend and perpetuate human slavery. It is a war not to defend Slavery as it was left by their ancestors-a thing to be retained and to be apologized for. It is a war to establish a slave empire, where Slavery shall be made the corner-stone of the social system, where it shall be defended and justified on scriptural and ethnological grounds I say God pardon the men who in this year of grace, 1863, should think that such a project as that should be crowned with success. Now, you know why I have from the first never believed it possible that the South could succeed, and I have not founded that faith merely on moral instincts which teach us to repudiate the idea that anything so infernal should succeed. No. It is because in this world the virtues and the forces go together, and the vices and weakness are inseparable. It is, therefore, I felt certain that this project never could succeed. For how is it? Here is a community with nearly half of the population slaves, and they are attempting to fight another community where every working man is a free man.

I say it is an aristocratic rebellion against a democratic government. That is the title I would give to it. In all history, when you have had the Aristocracy pitted against the people in a physical force and conflict, the Aristocracy have always gone down under the heavy blows of the Democracy.

How benighted the Times, (Sept. 14, 1864,) must have been when it sent out the following to the world. How wretchedly were the editor, the manager and directors of the "leading journal of Europe" deceived, or did deceive, till the last.

The Chicago Convention has not only declared the principles on which the Democratic party is prepared to act, but has demanded, in the name of the people, that negotiations shall be im

540

BRITISH BILE AND MALICE.

mediately instituted for the suspension of arms. An armistice at once, a Conference as soon as possible-these are the cries now resounding through the States of the North; and unless they can be disregarded-which is not easy to suppose-we may relieve ourselves from the trouble of further speculations on the events of the war.

We trust that the public will admit that they have not been misguided by our comments on this obstinate contest. The great fact which we asserted from the first is now placed beyond reach of controversy. We said that the North never could subdue the South, and the North has now proclaimed the same conclusion. After three years of the most desperate efforts, in which no expenditure has been spared and no tactics have been left untried, a preponderating section of the Northern people have put on record before the world their deliberate conviction that the policy of war is mistaken and hopeless, and that it must be superseded by a policy of Conciliation and compromise.

The questions now before us are written in broad and unmistakable characters. First, will the actual Government accede to the demand expressed by the Chicago Convention for an immediate Armistice? And, next, will the South accept the Armistice and enter up n the subsequent Conference on any basis except that of national independence? As regards the former of these inquiries, the world has been much misled if the Democratic party is not the strongest party in the Northern States-strong enough, in the absence of any unexpected events, to carry in November next its candidate for Presidency, and to impress its policy in the interval upon the existing Administration. It is hardly to be conceived that President Lincoln would employ his brief remaining term of office in counteracting or opposing the declared will of the majority of his countrymen. We regard the Chicago Convention as representing a majority of the people, because it has been asserted throughout that the Democratic party, if united, could easily outnumber all opponents; and they are perfectly united now.

No instance has occurred since the wars of Napoleon, in which the British press, the British Parliament, the British orators, clergy, authors and aristocratic classes have so cordially united in assailing a foreign nation, least of all in so heartless a crusade against liberal institutions. July 22, 1862, the Times, in speaking of the North, asked:

Will nothing arrest this frantic and suicidal rage? What proof do they yet require that they are embarked on a fatal and ruinous cause? Their wealth is turned into poverty, their peace into discord, their prosperity into wretchedness; the power in which they gloried is effaced; society is torn in pieces by its own members; law is trampled under foot, and the country is fast falling into anarchy, the only refuge from which is despotism. We do not scruple to say we shall rejoice if the worst anticipation shall be realized-not from any ill-will to the North, but because we sce in the failure of its efforts to subjugate the Southern States the only prospect-we had almost said the only possibility-of Peace.

This is plain enough for the most obtuse to see and comprehend; this is a fair sample of the moral aid-comfort-England gave to the Rebellion all through the war. Mr. Roebuck, in his Sheffield speech, (May 26, 1863,) says:

But the North themselves, from the very commencement, so determined on empire, they forgot Christianity; they made themselves a spectacle to the world of cruelty, corruption and horror. The South stood up, like the real descendants, as they are, of Englishmen. They said: "We will vindicate to ourselves the right to govern ourselves; we will fight to the

THE REPUBLIC A BROKEN IMAGE.

541

death for our independence." And they have fought to the death. They have conquered the North. I ask myself if the time has come when surrounding nations shall do what we ought to do now-acknowledge the South as an independent nation. . . . . . Sympathy is not a part of neutrality. I have no sympathy with the North. I think my sympathies ought to go, as they do go, with the South. They are a gallant people, fighting for their independence, and they have obtained it.

In February (7th), 1863, the Times announces that:

After a recess of six eventful months, there is not a single statesman on either side who believes that the restoration of the Union, on the terms of the original compact, is possible; not one who believes that the forcible subjugation of the South is possible. Though there is one who declares that if such a conquest was practicable, it would only prove the political ruin of America. We arrive then at the one conclusion; that separation on peaceable terms and at the earliest moment is the result which the friends of America ought to desire.

The Times candidly confesses (February 1, 1864) that its sympathies with the South had their origin in jealousy of our "overtopping and overshadowing" England:

When Mr. M. Gibson gives his unreserved and unqualified homage to the Federal cause, he knows not how much of a sort is his wisdom and that of the "model Republic," as it used to be called the other day.

As to the feelings of this country, it is true we are not justified in regarding with exultation or satisfaction so terrible a calamity as that which has befallen so many millions of our own race. Nobody of common feeling does hear of the mutual slaughter and other sufferings entailed by the war, without commiseration. But while the Republic was OVERTOPPING AND OVERSHADOWING US, while it stretched its limbs and raised its tones to the scale of a giant, it was impossible but that our sympathy should be weakened. We feel for men, not for giants, for monsters, for madmen, for those altogether out of our rank and species. But grant that the commercial injury is great, and that the general derangement of trade threatens to inflict even more serious injuries, yet it is impossible to prevent political considerations from intruding themselves, and even making a set-off the other way. Mr. M. Gibson cannot, surely, demand from us that we should absolutely wish the United States to retain their "integrity," or now recover it, so as to make a vast political unity of the kind Mr. Bright describes? THAT WOULD BE TO WISH OUR OWN ABASEMENT AND OUR OWN DESTRUCTION.

Again, the Times thus criticises John Bright:

Mr. Bright wishes to see the Union restored by the methods now in operation. We take Mr. Bright upon his own showing. The wonderful image, overlaid with gold, and we know not how many cubits high, which he fell down and worshiped, has fallen to the ground and is broken to pieces. He wishes to see it once more on its legs, once more holding the globe on one hand, and a Victory, with outspread wings, on the other; once more with its foot on crowns and mitres, sceptres and chains. His disappointment is too much for him. He had faith in this. Here was a resting-place in the sea of change and the wreck of systems. Society stood here on its base, and not on its apex. The people here governed themselves without the cumbersome intervention of classes, and the fraudulent delegation of Emperors and dynasties. They were on the road to a millennium and human perfection, as social arrangements can bring it about. It was treason to think so grand a work of highest art could be "fragile," like the huge plaster images of a French spectacle. Yet such is the unhappy fact. It lies in fragments.

542

LINCOLN, THE BUFFOON AND SWINDLER

XIII.

A

BRAHAM LINCOLN is thus described in the London

Morning Herald, November 23, 1864. It ought to be accepted as a work of English art, for it is executed for the very highest class in British society:

We look and perceive a community numbering millions in the North, without a man of genius, or of political probity wise or strong enough to counsel, or to guide them aright. We see a military despotism never yet paralleled in Russia, in which the sceptre clinks the bayonet, and the bayonet sharpens the sceptre, both being weapons of spoliation and terror to society. Half a million of soldiers ravage one of the most generous regions of the globe. Future generations-if such are reserved for America-are daily shackled with hopeless debt. New England, the Far-West, and the best old Puritan States, are bleeding to exhaustion. And Bishop Simpson's "missionary" is Abraham Lincoln, the mouther of stump-speeches, the buffoon of the battle-field (after the battle is over), the concoctor of humorous State documents upon questions of awful import to mankind, the swindler of the American constituencies, and the Judas of his country. A constitution violated, humanity outraged, Christianity scoffed at, war made fiendish-a thousand monuments of shame and ruin scattered over the land; and yet the maddened people seem proud of confiding that which Bishop Simpson proves their "destiny" to a desperado, without one quality of demeanor or of intellect which would fit him to be more than a parish beadle. The only difference is that he can bluster, can corrupt, can select base instruments, can be mean and violent at the same time, can mock and jibe at misery, can ordain conscriptions, can play false with liberty, can scourge the press which made him what he has been, can gag the mouths of his fellow-citizens, and can be the hoot-owl of a direful conflict spreading its horrors from Canada to the Mexican Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The same journal the following 4th of March, 1865, indulges in feelings which it doubtless deemed suitable to the Federal anniversary:

This is the Fourth Day of March, in the year 1865. It is a great anniversary for America. It is pencil-marked in the Book of her Constitution. Forty-eight hours hence a Senator will move, at Washington, that the United States, in gratitude for their prosperity and reputation, do constitutionally acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being. Whom, however, do they obey this morning? Once more Abraham Lincoln, who dispenses with all thought of a conscience or a future, trafficking in blood upon butcherly battle-fields, and crowning him.self King of the New World Golgotha. The Fourth Day of March is doubly significant in the American annals. It brings the hour of the President's triumph; it was the day when, nearly two centuries ago, multitudes of red Indians assembled near the site of the present city of Philadelphia, moving through the woods in vast and dusky masses to ratify a treaty with William Penn. There, without banner, or mace, or guard, or chariot, the Quaker conciliated the Sachems; and well might the Sachems marvel could they witness the horrors which blacken around the heads of their successors in the American land. Their own barbarism is eclipsed; the civilization which was to supplant it is already extinct; the people talk vainly of God, and destroy his works without reason, compunction or remorse. They propose to recognize a Supreme Being! And they deluge the soil with blood. Never was Chaos more profound. It is a huge, wandering tumult from the shores of one ocean to the brink of another.

THE RULING CLASSES AGAINST US.

543

It is a savage and shocking degeneracy of the human race. The world has witnessed spectacles equally startling; but where? Nowhere, except in China, Hindostan, Egypt and Tartary. Yet this is a people which offers to legalize a belief in the Deity!

A

XIV.

ND yet the Morning Herald, which loaded its columns for four years with such infamous and insulting tirades towards our Government and People, is one of the influential London journals which cannot withhold its amazement that so unfriendly a feeling towards England should exist in the United States! In addition to all the passages we have quoted from the organs of the ruling classes-and we could have extended them much further, and cited a hundred newspapers, and reviews, and speeches, where we have cited one-a very significant article appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post, in the beginning of the war, which, doubtless, told the simple truth of the feelings of the merchants of Liverpool who built the first pirate, the Alabama, to prey on our commerce.

"We have no doubt whatever that the vast majority of the people of this country, certainly of the people of Liverpool, are in favor of the cause espoused by the secessionists. The defeat of the Federalists gives unmixed pleasure, the success of the Confederates is ardently hoped, nay, confidently predicted."

The next four years confirmed this opinion, and demonstrated beyond a question the lamentable fact, that at the commencement, and all through the war, the sympathies of the Government, the Aristocracy, the hierarchy of the Established Church, the commercial and manufacturing interests, the leading journals and reviews, the officers of the army and navy, the diplomatic and consular corps in foreign States and all British colonies, the great Universities, the learned professions, and a vast majority of the ruling classes in every department of society, were with the Confederate States and People; and that all the aid and comfort were extended to them as far as they could be given with impunity.

This is a bold, broad statement, and, of course, it is made in