circumstances in which we find America, we ought to apply to it our own
principles. My hon. Friend has referred to the question of the Trent. I
was not here last year, but I heard of a meeting--I read in the papers
of a meeting held in reference to that affair in this very hall, and
that there was a great diversity of opinion. But the majority were
supposed to indorse the policy of the Government in making a great
demonstration of force. And I think I read that at least one minister of
religion took that view from this platform. I am not complaining of it.
But I say that if you thought when the American captain, even if he had
acted under the commands of his Government, which he had not, had taken
two men most injurious and hostile to his country from the deck of an
English ship--if you thought that on that ground you were justified in
going to war with the Republic of North America, then I say you ought
not to be very nice in judging what America should do in circumstances
much more onerous than those in which you were placed.
Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have
been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me
were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom,
who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken
and retained by this country when we were not at war with Spain, and it
was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour. [A Voice:
'No! No!'] No doubt the Gentleman below is much better acquainted with
the history of it than I am, but I may suggest to him that very likely
we have read two different histories. But I will let this pass, and I
will assume that it came into the possession of England in the most
honourable way, which is, I suppose, by regular and acknowledged
national warfare.
Suppose, at this moment, you heard, or the English Government heard,
that Spain was equipping expeditions, by land and sea, for the purpose
of retaking that fortress and rock. Now, although it is not of the
slightest advantage to any Englishman living, excepting to those who
have pensions and occupations upon it; although every Government knows
it, and although more than one Government has been anxious to give it
up, and I hope this Government will send my friend, Mr. Cobden, to
Madrid, with an offer that Gibraltar shall be ceded to Spain, as being
of no use to this country, and only embittering, as statesmen have
admitted, the relations between Spain and England,--and if he were to go
to Madrid with an offer of the Rock of Gibraltar, I believe he might
obtain a commercial treaty with Spain, that would admit every English
manufacture and every article of English produce into that country at a
duty of not more than ten per cent.;--I say, do you not think that, if
you heard that Spain was about to retake that useless rock, mustering
her legions and her fleets, the English Government would combine all the
power of this country to resist it?
If that be so, then I think--seeing that there was a fair election two
years ago, and that President Lincoln was fairly and honestly elected--
that when the Southern leaders met at Montgomery in Alabama, on the 6th
of March, and authorized the raising of a hundred thousand men, and
when, on the 15th of April, they attacked Fort Sumter--not a fort of
South Carolina, but a fort of the Union--then, upon all the principles
that Englishmen and English Governments have ever acted upon, President
Lincoln was justified in calling out seventy-five thousand men--which
was his first call--for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of that
nation, which was the main purpose of the oath which he had taken at his
election.
Now I shall not go into a long argument upon this question, for the
reason that a year ago I said what I thought it necessary to say upon
it, and because I believe the question is in the hand, not of my hon.
Friend, nor in that of Lord Palmerston, nor in that even of President
Lincoln, but it is in the hand of the Supreme Ruler, who is bringing
about one of those great transactions in history which men often will
not regard when they are passing before them, but which they look back
upon with awe and astonishment some years after they are past. So I
shall content myself with asking one or two questions. I shall not
discuss the question whether the North is making war for the
Constitution, or making war for the abolition of slavery.
If you come to a matter of sympathy with the South, or recognition of
the South, or mediation or intervention for the benefit of the South,
you should consider what are the ends of the South. Surely the United
States Government is a Government at amity with this country. Its
Minister is in London--a man honourable by family, as you know, in
America, his father and his grandfather having held the office of
President of the Republic. You have your own Minister just returned to
Washington. Is this hypocrisy? Are you, because you can cavil at certain
things which the North, the United States Government, has done or has
not done, are you eagerly to throw the influence of your opinion into a
movement which is to dismember the great Republic?
Is there a man here that doubts for a moment that the object of the war
on the part of the South--they began the war--that the object of the war
on the part of the South is to maintain in bondage four millions of
human beings? That is only a small part of it. The further object is to
perpetuate for ever the bondage of all the posterity of those four
millions of slaves. [A few cries of 'No! No!'] You will hear that I am
not in a condition to contest vigorously anything that may be opposed,
for I am suffering, as nearly everybody is, from the state of the
weather, and a hoarseness that almost hinders me from speaking. I could
quote their own documents till midnight in proof of what I say; and if I
found a man who denied it, upon the evidence that had been offered, I
would not offend him, or trouble myself by trying further to convince
him.
The object is, that a handful of white men on that continent shall lord
it over many millions of blacks, made black by the very Hand that made
us white. The object is, that they should have the power to breed
negroes, to work negroes, to lash negroes, to chain negroes, to buy and
sell negroes, to deny them the commonest ties of family, or to break
their hearts by rending them at their pleasure, to close their mental
eye to but a glimpse even of that knowledge which separates us from the
brute--for in their laws it is criminal and penal to teach the negro to
read--to seal from their hearts the Book of our religion, and to make
chattels and things of men and women and children.
Now I want to ask whether this is to be the foundation, as it is
proposed, of a new slave empire, and whether it is intended that on this
audacious and infernal basis England's new ally is to be built up. It
has been said that Greece was recognized, and that other countries had
been recognized. But Greece was not recognized till after she had fought
Turkey for six years, and the Republics of South America, some of them,
not till they had fought the mother country for a score of years. France
did not recognize the United States of America till some, I think, six
years, five certainly, after the beginning of the War of Independence,
and even then it was received as a declaration of war by the English
Government. I want to know who they are who speak eagerly in favour of
England becoming the ally and friend of this great conspiracy against
human nature.
Now I should have no kind of objection to recognize a country because it
was a country that held slaves--to recognize the United States, or to be
in amity with it. The question of slavery there, and in Cuba and in
Brazil, is, as far as respects the present generation, an accident, and
it would be unreasonable that we should object to trade with and have
political relations with a country, merely because it happened to have
within its borders the institution of slavery, hateful as that
institution is. But in this case it is a new State intending to set
itself up on the sole basis of slavery. Slavery is blasphemously
declared to be its chief corner-stone.
I have heard that there are, in this country, ministers of state who are
in favour of the South; that there are members of the aristocracy who
are terrified at the shadow of the Great Republic; that there are rich
men on our commercial exchanges, depraved, it may be, by their riches,
and thriving unwholesomely within the atmosphere of a privileged class;
that there are conductors of the public press who would barter the
rights of millions of their fellow-creatures that they might bask in the
smiles of the great.
But I know that there are ministers of state who do not wish that this
insurrection should break up the American nation; that there are members
of our aristocracy who are not afraid of the shadow of the Republic;
that there are rich men, many, who are not depraved by their riches; and
that there are public writers of eminence and honour who will not barter
human rights for the patronage of the great. But most of all, and before
all, I believe,--I am sure it is true in Lancashire, where the working
men have seen themselves coming down from prosperity to ruin, from
independence to a subsistence on charity,--I say that I believe that the
unenfranchised but not hopeless millions of this country will never
sympathize with a revolt which is intended to destroy the liberty of a
continent, and to build on its ruins a mighty fabric of human bondage.
When I speak to gentlemen in private upon this matter, and hear their
own candid opinion,--I mean those who differ from me on this question,--
they generally end by saying that the Republic is too great and too
powerful, and that it is better for us--not by 'us' meaning you, but the
governing classes and the governing policy of England--that it should be
broken up. But we will suppose that we are in New York or in Boston,
discussing the policy and power of England. If any one there were to
point to England,--not to the thirty-one millions of population in these
islands, but to her one hundred and fifty millions in India, and nobody
knows how many millions more in every other part of the globe,--might he
not, whilst boasting that America has not covered the ocean with fleets
of force, or left the bones of her citizens to blanch on a hundred
European battle-fields,--might he not fairly say, that England is great
and powerful, and that it is perilous for the world that she is so
great?
But bear in mind that every declaration of this kind, whether from an
Englishman who professes to be strictly English, or from an American
strictly American, or from a Frenchman strictly French,--whether it
asserts in arrogant strains that Britannia rules the waves, or speaks of
'manifest destiny' and the supremacy of the 'Stars and Stripes' or
boasts that the Eagles of one nation, having once overrun Europe, may
possibly repeat the experiment,--I say all this is to be condemned. It
is not truly patriotic; it is not rational; it is not moral. Then, I
say, if any man wishes the Great Republic to be severed on that ground:
in my opinion, he is doing that which tends to keep alive jealousies
which, as far as he can prevent it, will never die; though if they do
not die, wars must be eternal.
But then I shall be told that the people of the North do not like us at
all. In fact, we have heard it to-night. It is not reasonable that they
should like us. If an American be in this room to-night, will he feel
that he likes my honourable Friend? But if the North does not like
England, does anybody believe the South does? It does not appear to me
to be a question of liking or disliking. Everybody knows that when the
South was in power,--and it has been in power for the last fifty years,--
everybody knows that hostility to this country, wherever it existed in
America, was cherished and stimulated to the utmost degree by some of
those very men who are now leaders of this very insurrection.
My hon. Friend read a passage about the _Alabama_. I undertake to
say that he is not acquainted with the facts about the _Alabama_,
That he will acknowledge, I think. The Government of this country have
admitted that the building of the _Alabama_, and her sailing from
the Mersey, was a violation of international law. In America they say,
and they say here, that the _Alabama_ is a ship of war; that she
was built in the Mersey; that she was built, and I have reason to
believe it, by a member of the British Parliament; that she is furnished
with guns of English manufacture; that she is manned almost entirely by
Englishmen; and that these facts were represented, as I know they were
represented, to the collector of customs in Liverpool, who pooh-poohed
them, and said there was nothing in them. He was requested to send the
facts up to London to the Customs' authorities, and their solicitor, not
a very wise man, but probably in favour of breaking up the Republic, did
not think them of much consequence; but afterwards the opinion of an
eminent counsel, Mr. Collier, the Member for Plymouth, was taken, and he
stated distinctly that what was being done in Liverpool was a direct
infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act, and that the Customs'
authorities of Liverpool would be responsible for anything that happened
in consequence.
When this opinion was taken to the Foreign Office the Foreign Office was
a little astonished and a little troubled; and after they had consulted
their own law officers, whose opinions agreed with that of Mr. Collier,
they did what Government officers generally do, and as promptly,--a
telegraphic message went down to Liverpool to order that this vessel
should be seized, and she happened to sail an hour or two before the
message arrived. She has never been into a Confederate port--they have
not got any ports; she hoists the English flag when she wants to come
alongside a ship; she sets a ship on fire in the night, and when, seeing
fire, another ship bears down to lend help, she seizes it, and pillages
and burns it. I think that, if we were citizens of New York, it would
require a little more calmness than is shown in this country to look at
all this as if it was a matter with which we had no concern. And
therefore I do not so much blame the language that has been used in
America in reference to the question of the _Alabama_.
But they do not know in America so much as we know--the whole truth
about public opinion here. There are ministers in our Cabinet as
resolved to be no traitors to freedom, on this question, as I am; and
there are members of the English aristocracy, and in the very highest
rank, as I know for a certainty, who hold the same opinion. They do not
know in America--at least, there has been no indication of it until the
advices that have come to hand within the last two days--what is the
opinion of the great body of the working classes in England. There has
been every effort that money and malice could make to stimulate in
Lancashire, amongst the suffering population, an expression of opinion
in favour of the Slave States. They have not been able to get it. And I
honour that population for their fidelity to principles and to freedom,
and I say that the course they have taken ought to atone in the minds of
the people of the United States for miles of leading articles, written
by the London press,--by men who would barter every human right,--that
they might serve the party with which they are associated.
But now I shall ask you one other question before I sit down,--How comes
it that on the Continent there is not a liberal newspaper, nor a liberal
politician, that has said, or has thought of saying, a word in favour of
this portentous and monstrous shape which now asks to be received into
the family of nations? Take the great Italian Minister, Count Cavour.
You read some time ago in the papers part of a despatch which he wrote
on the question of America--he had no difficulty in deciding. Ask
Garibaldi. Is there in Europe a more disinterested and generous friend
of freedom than Garibaldi? Ask that illustrious Hungarian, to whose
marvellous eloquence you once listened in this hall. Will he tell you
that slavery has nothing to do with it, and that the slaveholders of the
South will liberate the negroes sooner than the North through the
instrumentality of the war? Ask Victor Hugo, the poet of freedom,--the
exponent, may I not call him, of the yearnings of all mankind for a
better time? Ask any man in Europe who opens his lips for freedom,--who
dips his pen in ink that he may indite a sentence for freedom,--whoever
has a sympathy for freedom warm in his own heart,--ask him,--he will
have no difficulty in telling you on which side your sympathies should
lie.
Only a few days ago a German merchant in Manchester was speaking to a
friend of mine, and said he had recently travelled all through Germany.
He said, 'I am so surprised,--I don't find one man in favour of the
South' That is not true of Germany only, it is true of all the world
except this island, famed for freedom, in which we dwell. I will tell
you what is the reason. Our London press is mainly in the hands of
certain ruling West End classes; it acts and writes in favour of those
classes. I will tell you what they mean. One of the most eminent
statesmen in this country,--one who has rendered the greatest services
to the country, though, I must say, not in an official capacity, in
which men very seldom confer such great advantages upon the country,--he
told me twice, at an interval of several months, 'I had no idea how much
influence the example of that Republic was having upon opinion here,
until I discovered the universal congratulation that the Republic was
likely to be broken up.'
But, Sir, the Free States are the home of the working man. Now, I speak
to working men particularly at this moment. Do you know that in fifteen
years two million five hundred thousand persons, men, women, and
children, have left the United Kingdom to find a home in the Free States
of America? That is a population equal to eight great cities of the size
of Birmingham. What would you think of eight Birminghams being
transplanted from this country and set down in the United States?
Speaking generally, every man of these two and a half millions is in a
position of much higher comfort and prosperity than he would have been
if he had remained in this country. I say it is the home of the working
man; as one of her poets has recently said,--
'For her free latch-string never was drawn in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin.'
And in that land there are no six millions of grown men--I speak of the
Free States--excluded from the constitution of their country and its
electoral franchise; there, you will find a free Church, a free school,
free land, a free vote, and a free career for the child of the humblest
born in the land. My countrymen who work for your living, remember this:
there will be one wild shriek of freedom to startle all mankind if that
American Republic should be overthrown.
Now for one moment let us lift ourselves, if we can, above the narrow
circle in which we are all too apt to live and think; let us put
ourselves on an historical eminence, and judge this matter fairly.
Slavery has been, as we all know, the huge, foul blot upon the fame of
the American Republic; it is a hideous outrage against human right and
against Divine law; but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit
its peaceable extinction. The slave-owners of our colonies, if they had
been strong enough, would have revolted too. I believe there was no mode
short of a miracle more stupendous than any recorded in Holy Writ that
could in our time, or in a century, or in any time, have brought about
the abolition of slavery in America, but the suicide which the South has
committed and the war which it has begun.
Sir, it is a measureless calamity,--this war. I said the Russian war was
a measureless calamity, and yet many of your leaders and friends told
you that it was a just war to maintain the integrity of Turkey, some
thousands of miles off. Surely the integrity of your own country at your
own doors must be worth as much as the integrity of Turkey. Is not this
war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and
South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of
slavery for the last eighty years? I do not blame any man here who
thinks the cause of the North hopeless and the restoration of the Union
impossible. It may be hopeless; the restoration may be impossible. You
have the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that point. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a speaker, is not surpassed by any man
in England, and he is a great statesman; he believes the cause of the
North to be hopeless; that their enterprise cannot succeed.
Well, he is quite welcome to that opinion, and so is anybody else. I do
not hold the opinion; but the facts are before us all, and, as far as we
can discard passion and sympathy, we are all equally at liberty to form
our own opinion. But what I do blame is this. I blame men who are eager
to admit into the family of nations a State which offers itself to us,
based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more
blasphemous than was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or Pagan,
in civilized or in savage times. The leaders of this revolt propose this
monstrous thing--that over a territory forty times as large as England,
the blight and curse of slavery shall be for ever perpetuated.
I cannot believe, for my part, that such a fate will befall that fair
land, stricken though it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot
believe that civilization, in its journey with the sun, will sink into
endless night in order to gratify the ambition of the leaders of this
revolt, who seek to
'Wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'
I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a
vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching
from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from
the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the
Pacific main,--and I see one people, and one language, and one law, and
one faith, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a
refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.
* * * * *
AMERICA.
III.
SLAVERY AND SECESSION.
ROCHDALE, FEBRUARY 3, 1863.
[This speech was delivered at a public meeting held in the Public Hall,
Rochdale, for the purpose of passing a resolution of thanks to the
merchants of New York, for their generous contributions to the relief of
the suffering population of the cotton districts.]
I feel as if we were in our places to-night, for we are met for the
purpose of considering, and, I doubt not, of agreeing to a resolution
expressive of our sense of the generosity of the merchants of New York,
and other citizens of the United States, who have, in the midst of so
many troubles and such great sacrifices, contributed to the relief of
that appalling distress which has prevailed, and does still prevail, in
this county.
I regard this transmission of assistance from the United States as a
proof that the world moves onward in the direction of a better time. It
is an evidence that, whatever may be the faults of ambitious men, and
sometimes, may I not say, the crimes of Governments, the peoples are
drawing together, and beginning to learn that it never was intended that
they should be hostile to each other, but that every nation should take
a brotherly interest in every other nation in the world. There has been,
as we all know, not a little jealousy between some portions of the
people of this country and some portions of the people of the United
States. Perhaps the jealousy has existed more on this side. I think it
has found more expression here, probably through the means of the public
press, than has been the case with them. I am not alluding now to the
last two years, but as long as most of us have been readers of
newspapers and observers of what has passed around us.
The establishment of independence, eighty years ago; the war of 1812; it
may be, occasionally, the presumptuousness and the arrogance of a
growing and prosperous nation on the other side of the Atlantic--these
things have stimulated ill feeling and jealousy here, which have often
found expression in language which has not been of the very kindest
character. But why should there be this jealousy between these two
nations? Mr. Ashworth has said, and said very truly, 'Are they not our
own people?' I should think, as an Englishman, that to see that people
so numerous, so powerful, so great in so many ways, should be to us a
cause, not of envy or of fear, but rather of glory and rejoicing.