Such certainly had been my belief as to the country. I speak here of my opinion as to the ultimate success of secession and the folly of the war, repudiating any concurrence of my own in the ignoble but natural sentiment alluded to in the last paragraph. Icertainly did think that the Northern States, if wise, would have let the Southern States go. I had blamed Buchanan as a traitor for allowing the germ of secession to make any growth; and as I thought him a traitor then, so do I think him a traitor now. But I had also blamed Lincoln, or rather the government of which Mr. Lincoln in this matter is no more than the exponent, for his efforts to avoid that which is inevitable. In this I think that I--or as Ibelieve I may say we, we Englishmen--were wrong. I do not see how the North, treated as it was and had been, could have submitted to secession without resistance. We all remember what Shakspeare says of the great armies which were led out to fight for a piece of ground not large enough to cover the bodies of those who would be slain in the battle; but I do not remember that Shakspeare says that the battle was on this account necessarily unreasonable. It is the old point of honor which, till it had been made absurd by certain changes of circumstances, was always grand and usually beneficent. These changes of circumstances have altered the manner in which appeal may be made, but have not altered the point of honor. Had the Southern States sought to obtain secession by constitutional means, they might or might not have been successful;but if successful, there would have been no war. I do not mean to brand all the Southern States with treason, nor do I intend to say that, having secession at heart, they could have obtained it by constitutional means. But I do intend to say that, acting as they did, demanding secession not constitutionally, but in opposition to the constitution, taking upon themselves the right of breaking up a nationality of which they formed only a part, and doing that without consent of the other part, opposition from the North and war was an inevitable consequence.
It is, I think, only necessary to look back to the Revolution by which the United States separated themselves from England to see this. There is hardly to be met, here and there, an Englishman who now regrets the loss of the revolted American colonies; who now thinks that civilization was retarded and the world injured by that revolt; who now conceives that England should have expended more treasure and more lives in the hope of retaining those colonies.
It is agreed that the revolt was a good thing; that those who were then rebels became patriots by success, and that they deserved well of all coming ages of mankind. But not the less absolutely necessary was it that England should endeavor to hold her own. She was as the mother bird when the young bird will fly alone. She suffered those pangs which Nature calls upon mothers to endure.
As was the necessity of British opposition to American independence, so was the necessity of Northern opposition to Southern secession. I do not say that in other respects the two cases were parallel. The States separated from us because they would not endure taxation without representation--in other words, because they were old enough and big enough to go alone. The South is seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous.
They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and a different culture. 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.
