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184

ORIGIN OF THE CONVENTION.

V.

T was a noble enthusiasm among the people; but it was

I a

all an aristocratic sham. It did not mean anything for human freedom. It meant hostility to the United States. It was got up by British politicians. Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington had no part or parcel in it, unless it were through sheer courtesy to the men of their class.

This English crusade against the United States, was got up by the British aristocracy in sheer animosity against our Government, not so much, perhaps, against our people, chiefly because they cared nothing about them. It was our system of government they hated, because it was a standing, growing, and luminous reproof of the blighting and degrading system of England, which starves the masses of her people in order that the privileged few may die of surfeit.

Blackwood's Magazine, an authority not likely to be charged with hostility towards the British oligarchy, nor with favoritism towards our Republic, said, in speaking on this same subject in the same year (1840)—

"It were well if some ingenious optician could invent an

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All England was ablaze about American slavery and its abolition.

CHANGE IN BRITISH PHILANTHROPY.

185

instrument, which would remedy the defects of that longsighted benevolence which sweeps the field for distant objects of compassion, while it is as blind as a bat to the misery around its own doors."

Well said! I saw and felt it all when I went through the streets, and lanes, and cellars of Manchester, where fifty thousand blanched skeleton-men, women, and children, were slowly or rapidly dying of starvation. In that city, also, vast antislavery meetings were got up to induce the North to put down slavery in the South. These assemblages were invariably under the auspices of the aristocracy, and they were held where the police were stationed at the doorways to drive off the famishing, lest their plaint of hunger might salute the ears of their bloated task-masters.

There was no lack of cotton in Manchester then. There was something worse than that. It was the same old complaint you will find in any part of England,-the poor overworked and under-fed, to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

I went up to Paisley, where more than half the population were being fed from soup-kettles, and pretty poor soup at that. There, too, the abolition of American slavery seemed to be the only thing which drew forth the sympathies, or reached the charity of the aristocratic classes. So everywhere in England, it was "that long-sighted benevolence, sweeping the distant horizon for objects of compassion, but blind as a bat to the misery at the door."

It was not so in 1840 alone. I have been in England several times since, but I never saw a good year for the poor of that oppressive empire.

To show that this was all the poorest of shams, and that England owes us no good will, let us step from 1840 to 1861.

We see all things the same in England to this day, except in the "negro business." Here all is changed. British sympathy is now shifted from the slave, and lavished on his master; from "moral pocket-handkerchiefs, and religious fine

186 BRITISH ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE REBELLION.

tooth combs" to the overseer's lash and the unleashed bloodhound; from the maintenance of free institutions to their overthrow; from civilization to barbarism; from liberty to bondage.

VI.

R. STEPHENSON, our Virginia slave-breeding ambassa

MR. dor near the Court of St. James, in 1840, became so

odious that no chance to snub or insult him was lost by the British government.

Now, Mr. Adams, holding that same post, and embellishing it with all the great and noble qualities of illuminated talents and Christian philanthropy, is treated with far more neglect and far less cordiality by the same class which despised Stephenson, and fêted Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Then, England complained of our remissness or shirking in not doing our share towards putting down the slave-trade. Now, all her sympathies are with the supporters of slavery itself, which is the only support of slavery on the earth; and her ship-yards and arsenals are taxed to their utmost to build fleets of the strongest and swiftest steam-pirates to help the slave-driving Confederacy sweep our peaceful commerce from the sea, and once more inaugurate the traffic in flesh and blood.

The British Government knew, when the Alabama's keel was laid, that she was to become a pirate; and our minister protested against it in vain. Three hundred of the rich merchants of England, in broad daylight, boasted of their purpose, and exulted over its successful execution.

The British government gave the earliest and heartiest encouragement to the rebellion, by recognizing it as a belligerent power the moment its task-masters reached London. It allowed all the materials and munitions of war the rebels called for to be furnished; and it has, from the first hour, given to the rebellion all the aid and comfort it dared to furnish our

LETTER TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

187

enemies in their atrocious attempt to immolate liberty and enthrone slavery in the Western world!*

* It has amazed those who are familiar with Lord John Russell's public history, that he should have trifled so heartlessly with the great issues of civilization and free government at stake in this rebellion. The shuffling has cost him the confidence of the great middle-class in England, and the respect of the world. If the following letter addressed to him may seem to be unlike letters usually written to titled men, I consider it quite respectful enough to the man who has struck hands with pirates and become pimp to the propagandists of negro slavery. Although written nearly four years ago, I see no occasion for retracting a syllable or cancelling a word of it:

"MY LORD,-We have a habit you are not much accustomed to,—of straight talk and honest dealing: so you need not be amazed if we speak very plainly in this despatch.

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"You have all your life been a place-seeker or a place-holder. To get power and money, you have always turned your back on your friends and let your Reform measures go to the dogs. Whenever you have been an out,' and any American question came up, you were a warm advocate of our Republic. When you were an 'in,' you changed your tone. When Liberty was at stake in a foreign nation, or at home, you have been its noisiest champion, if an ‘out.' If an 'in,' you have done your best to crush it, in Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Poland. It was with a pang that you saw even old Greece become free. For half a century, if an ' out,' you have brawled for Freedom and Free Government; if an 'in,' you have resorted to the very last trick to keep there. You have, if an 'out,' always paraded your friendship for the United States, and virulently assailed any Tory or Conservative ministry. In' again, you first veered, then hesitated, then tacked, and then attacked us, our Government, and all American things. You know our Republic has never had any fair play from any ministry except the Tories or Conservatives. All Americans involuntarily say of British politicians of your stripe, 'Save us from our friends, and we will take care of our enemies.' But you have reserved the meanest and most bare-faced tergiversation of your public life till you were pressing the verge of your mortal existence. After pointing a thousand times with exultation to our great and prosperous nation, and deploring the two wars England waged against us, you are now gloating over the prospect (as you deem it) of our speedy disruption and downfall. After hobnobbing with every abolitionist, and fêting every run-away American negro who managed to reach England, and imploring Britons no longer to use slave-grown cotton and sugar, you now take sides with the nigger-driving' secessionis s of the rebel States, who are trying to break down freedom in America, extend the area of that accursed institution and sanctify the revival of the African slave-trade. You are threatening war against the United States, unless we will surrender two intercepted traitors on their way to your abolition arms and sympathies, the chiefest emissaries

188

HOW ENGLAND PROLONGED OUR WAR.

No jurist will pretend to say that in all this she has not violated the spirit, if not the letter, of her own laws of neutrality, and the laws of nations. No intelligent man will deny that by these acts she has prolonged and inflamed this accursed war. No man in his senses supposes for a moment that England would have ventured on such a course of hostility and inhumanity at any other period of our history since the Peace of 1815.

No other thoughts can suggest themselves to impartial men now, while we are going through a domestic trouble,—a great trouble, which has filled every true heart in America, or elsewhere, with a sadness which has dragged us "down to the depths of the earth."

That England should choose such a moment of our national

which the slavery you have always pretended to hate could send to your shores.

"O, JOHN RUSSELL! how unworthy is all this of the descendant of your great ancestor, who sealed with his blood, on the scaffold, his life-long devotion to the cause of justice and human freedom! Why must you, just as you are ending your career, rob your proud name of that ancient halo which has gathered around it, by expending your last efforts in trying to blot out Free Government, for which the founder of your race so nobly died, and perpetuating on our virgin soil African slavery, which the world is clamoring to see blotted out?

"My lord, do you plead that the necessity of slave-grown cotton calls for so dastardly a betrayal by yourself of all the souvenirs of your life? And will you, to accomplish this purpose, trample on all the canons of international law, and become public robber, and go and steal this cotton? If you attempt it, will you succeed? How much cotton would you get before your ministry went down? before you lost a market for your commerce with twenty-three millions freemen? before our breadstuffs, which are now keeping the wolf away from British doors, would reach your shores? before bread-riots would occur throughout the British Islands which would make you turn pale? before all seas would swarm with our privateers, now twentyfold more numerous than in 1812, when you found them too fleet and too strong for you? before you encountered, in addition to two millions of our native soldiers and sailors, half a million of adopted citizens, able-bodied men, formerly British subjects, and burning to avenge the wrongs of centuries inflicted on their devoted island?

"My lord, do you plead that the exigencies of statesmanship demand that you should turn the arms of the earth against you? Do you suppose that NAPOLEON would lose such a chance for avenging Waterloo ? or Russia for taking

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