“It is a matter of deep regret to us that our troubles at home render
it hazardous to withdraw a part of our great land and naval forces
from operating here, and send them to China to co-operate with the
forces of the Allies there. As you are well aware, the continuance of
the insurrection in the United States is due to the attitudes of Great
Britain and France towards our country. It would seem to be desirable
for those two States to have our co-operation in China in preserving a
commerce of vast importance to them as well as to ourselves. _That
co-operation we could give if we were relieved from the necessity for
maintaining a blockade and siege of our southern ports._”
Whether Mr Seward desired that Great Britain should herself undertake
the blockade of the Southern ports, or should pass a law, and persuade
other States to pass similar laws, prohibiting all commercial
intercourse with the South, and should enforce the prohibition, does not
appear. But that he desired one of these measures to be adopted is
clear, and the one would not be more extraordinary than the other.
Another operation of the adoption of Mr Seward’s fiction is seen in the
case of the British Consul at Charleston. The British and French
Governments agreed that it was expedient to communicate to the persons
exercising authority in the Confederate States the desire of those
Governments that certain articles of the Declaration of Paris should be
observed by them in the prosecution of hostilities. Mr Seward remarks
thereupon—
“It is enough to say that in our view the proper agents of the British
Government to make known its interest here, are the diplomatic, not
the consular agents of her Majesty; and that the only authority in
this country to which any diplomatic communication whatever can be
made is the Government of the United States itself.”
The articles to which France and England desired to call attention were
those which relate to the capture of the property of neutrals at sea. It
was very necessary to the protection of our commerce that they should be
made known, and to do so was not in any way contrary to any of the
pretensions of the Federal Government. Yet because the Powers had chosen
the English Consul as their medium, instead of the Federal authorities,
who did not acknowledge or maintain communications with the Southern
Government, the Consul’s exequatur was withdrawn.
The case of the Trent is too well known, and that of the Alabama is too
recent, to need recapitulation here. It is only necessary to remind the
reader that in the late debate in Parliament it was shown that Mr
Seward’s demands could only be complied with by passing a special law,
having for its exclusive object to aid the Federal Government by
stopping vessels, not on evidence, but on suspicion, that they were
intended to become Confederate ships of war. In the case of the Emily St
Pierre he expressly tells us his views. That vessel had been captured in
attempting to run the blockade, and had then been recaptured from the
prize-crew and brought into Liverpool. Whereupon the Federal authorities
demanded that she should be restored to them by the British Government.
Lord Russell replied that “neutral nations are not bound to punish their
subjects for offences committed only against the laws of war as enforced
by belligerents, nor to restore property rescued by their subjects from
foreign captors.” When our Government communicated its decision
declining to restore her, Mr Seward remarked—
“I think it proper to observe at present that the reasons seem to be
limited to a want of power vested in the Government to restore, and do
not bear at all on the justice or legality of the demand. Under such
circumstances this Government has in more than one instance admitted
the claim, _and appealed to legislative authority for the power to
satisfy it_, and it has been promptly conferred and exercised.”
The American Minister was directed to press these demands for an
alteration of the law. In reply, Lord John Russell, after adverting to
the injury sustained by England in the blockade, says:—
“Yet Her Majesty’s Government have never sought to take advantage of
the obvious imperfections of this blockade, in order to declare it
ineffective. They have, to the loss and detriment of the British
nation, scrupulously observed the duties of Great Britain towards a
friendly State. But when Her Majesty’s Government are asked to go
beyond this, and to overstep the existing powers given them by
municipal and international law, for the purpose of imposing arbitrary
restrictions on the trade of Her Majesty’s subjects, it is impossible
to listen to such suggestions.... If, therefore, the United States
consider it for their interest to inflict this great injury on other
nations, the utmost they can expect is that European Powers shall
respect those acts of the United States which are within the limits of
the law. The United States Government cannot expect that Great Britain
should frame new statutes to aid the Federal blockade, and to carry
into effect the restrictions on commerce which the United States for
their own purposes have thought fit to institute, and the application
of which it is their duty to confine within the legitimate limits of
international law.”
Mr Seward’s demand, that we should adopt his interpretation of the
character of the war, would entail the consequences that we should
ourselves enforce the Federal blockade; that we should refuse all
Southern vessels admission to our ports, while allowing the freest use
of them to the Federal ships; that we should stop all exports of
commodities to the South, while granting fullest commercial intercourse
with the North: and that we should alter our own laws for the purpose of
making ourselves the agents of the belligerent interests of the Federal
Government. His interpretation of neutrality in affording supplies to
the belligerents is amusingly, though we daresay quite unintentionally,
illustrated by himself in a couple of sentences. It will be recollected
that, at the time of the Trent affair, Federal agents had bought up a
great quantity of saltpetre here, and that, in expectation that this
might be used against ourselves in case of war, the export of the
article was prohibited by an Order in Council. This prohibition was
withdrawn when the settlement of the Trent affair removed the
apprehension of war. “It affords me pleasure,” says Mr Seward thereupon,
“to know that the inhibition of saltpetre, which was so unnecessary, has
been rescinded.”
“It has been only European sympathies and European aid,” he proceeds in
the next sentence, “that have enabled our disloyal citizens to prolong
the civil war.” The coupling of his pleasure at getting munitions of war
from England with his complaint against European aid to the South, is
too impudent not to be, we hope, accidental.
Now, does any foreign European statesman living think that it would be a
light task to persuade England to restrain the liberty of her subjects,
or to change her laws? Would any such statesman think that he was
labouring for a practicable object, if he were to found his efforts on
the assumption that such changes would be made at his suggestion? Would
any European people, of whose Government he should be the agent, regard
such efforts with other feelings than derision? Yet there are ministers
of potent Governments who could show plausible reasons for expecting
that their efforts might prevail, and who could urge their arguments
with skill and eloquence. But even if, confident in their long
experience and profound knowledge of diplomacy, they might venture on
the experiment, is it possible to suppose that, when the failure should
be manifest, they would, instead of abandoning the ground for surer
footing, continue to build an entire policy on the shadowy foundation,
though certain to see the baseless fabric sink as often as it should be
raised? Yet such is the hopeless task in which the American Secretary
persists with dreary pertinacity. Some malign spell seems to rule his
course like that by which Michael Scott compelled the devil to make
ropes of sand, and to bale out the sea with a limpet-shell. All his
arguments, all his complaints, all his homilies, are based on the
delusion that he can compel the British Government, by the marvellous
force of his persuasive eloquence, to occupy with him a cloudland of his
own creation; where a resolute people in arms is a dwindling faction;
where a strife that drenches a continent in blood is a waning
insurrection; where the victorious result always seems close, yet is
always receding; where in the obstruction of a commercial system there
is nothing which the partners in that system are entitled to take note
of; where the Union, repelled at all points, and staggering under a load
of debt, is said to exercise authority in all but a few rebellious
spots, and to keep firm hold on the affections of all but a few
misguided men; and where nefarious contracts, armies of mercenaries and
deserters and plundering generals, are bright examples of the virtue and
patriotism of a great people elicited in the hour of trial. All his
instructions, all his remonstrances, all his prophecies, proceed upon
the assumption that these delusions are facts. If it were not so, the
vast volume of despatches would shrink to the size of a pamphlet; for
every dispute, every argument, every feeling of injury, has its root in
the shadowy standing-ground which he chooses to occupy. Of this he
appears sensible himself when he says:—
“I have not failed to see that every wrong this country has been
called to endure at the hands of any foreign Power has been a natural
if not a logical consequence of the first grave error which that Power
committed in conceding to an insurrection, which would otherwise have
been ephemeral, the rights of a public belligerent. It has seemed,
therefore, to be wise, as well as more dignified, to urge the
retrogression upon that false step, rather than to elaborate
complaints of the injuries that have followed it.”
It would have been well had he done so; but instead he has, without
ceasing to urge retrogression, indulged in ceaseless complaints. Wrapt
in his delusions, he drifts calmly on the tide of events that is bearing
him and his despatches to chaos, and takes the crack of doom for a
wholesome thunderstorm which is to clear the political atmosphere.
Nothing can surpass the feeble complacency with which he records his
perpetual illusions as incontrovertible facts. On Feb. 19, 1862, he
writes to Mr Adams:—
“I was just about instructing you how to answer the querulous
complaints in Parliament which you have anticipated, the chief of
which is the assumed incompetency of Government to suppress the
insurrection. But a very shrewd observer, a loyal, and at present
exiled Virginian, fell in at the moment, and expressed to me the
opinion that the end of the war is in sight; that there will be a
short and rapid series of successes over a disheartened conspiracy,
and then all will be over. I give you these opinions as entitling us
to what is sometimes granted by candid tribunals—namely, a suspension
of judgment.”
It is a pity that the name of the shrewd observer has not been
preserved. So sagacious a man ought not to be anonymous.