It Is Well For One Man To Say
That Slavery Has Caused The Separation, And For Another To Say That
Slavery Has Not Caused It.
Each in so saying speaks the truth.
Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on
which the two have agreed to differ.
But slavery has not caused
it, seeing that other points of difference are to be found in every
circumstance and feature of the two people. The North and the
South must ever be dissimilar. In the North labor will always be
honorable, and because honorable, successful. In the South labor
has ever been servile - at least in some sense - and therefore
dishonorable; and because dishonorable, has not, to itself, been
successful. In the South, I say, labor ever has been dishonorable;
and I am driven to confess that I have not hitherto seen a sign of
any change in the Creator's fiat on this matter. That labor will
be honorable all the world over as years advance and the millennium
draws nigh, I for one never doubt.
So much for English opinion about America in August last. And now
I will venture to say a word or two as to American feeling
respecting this English opinion at that period. It will of course
be remembered by all my readers that, at the beginning of the war,
Lord Russell, who was then in the lower house, declared, as Foreign
Secretary of State, that England would regard the North and South
as belligerents, and would remain neutral as to both of them. This
declaration gave violent offense to the North, and has been taken
as indicating British sympathy with the cause of the seceders. I
am not going to explain - indeed, it would be necessary that I
should first understand - the laws of nations with regard to
blockaded ports, privateering, ships and men and goods contraband
of war, and all those semi-nautical, semi-military rules and axioms
which it is necessary that all attorneys-general and such like
should, at the present moment, have at their fingers' end. But it
must be evident to the most ignorant in those matters, among which
large crowd I certainly include myself, that it was essentially
necessary that Lord John Russell should at that time declare openly
what England intended to do. It was essential that our seamen
should know where they would be protected and where not, and that
the course to be taken by England should be defined. Reticence in
the matter was not within the power of the British government. It
behooved the Foreign Secretary of State to declare openly that
England intended to side either with one party or with the other,
or else to remain neutral between them.
I had heard this matter discussed by Americans before I left
England, and I have of course heard it discussed very frequently in
America. There can be no doubt that the front of the offense given
by England to the Northern States was this declaration of Lord John
Russell's. But it has been always made evident to me that the sin
did not consist in the fact of England's neutrality - in the fact of
her regarding the two parties as belligerents - but in the open
declaration made to the world by a Secretary of State that she did
intend so to regard them.
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