and the strength of the liberty-and-order loving and
morality-and-religion worshipping race! So far
as they have dared to do it, the British ministers
have placed their country on the side of those men
who have revolted in America because they saw that
they could no longer make use of slavery to misgovern
the Union; and we must wait to see how far they are
to be supported by the opinion of that country, before
a distinction can be made between the ministers and
the people. Left to themselves, and unbiased
by any of those selfish motives that go to make up
the sum of politics, we have not the slightest doubt
that the English people, in the proportion of ten
to one, would decide in behalf of the supporters of
freedom in this country; but we are by no means so
sure that the ministers would not be sustained, were
they to plunge their country into a third American
War, and sustained, too, in sending fleets to raise
our blockade of the American coast of Africa, and armies
to fight the battles of Slavery in Virginia and the
Carolinas, where British officers stole negroes eighty
years ago, and sent them to the West India markets,
and found that that kind of commerce flourished well
in war. A war for the maintenance of American
slavery, and to secure for slaveholders the full and
perfect enjoyment of all the “rights” of
their “peculiar” property, would be no
worse than was the war which was waged against our
ancestors of the Revolution, or than those wars which
were carried on against Republican and Imperial France,
ostensibly for the preservation of order, but really
for the restoration of a despotism which cannot now
find a single apologist on earth. There is often
a wide distinction to be made between a nation and
its government, as our own recent history but too
deplorably proves; and the men who govern England may
be enabled to do that now which has more than once
been done by their predecessors, array their country
in support of evil against that country’s sense
and wishes. We should be prepared for this, and
should look the evil that threatens us fairly in the
face, as the first thing to be done to prevent it
from getting beyond the threatening-point. The
words of Sir Boyle Roche, that the best way to avoid
danger is to meet it plump, are strikingly applicable
to our condition. If we would not have a foreign
war on our hands before we shall have settled with
the rebels, we should make it very clear to foreigners
that to fight with us would be a sort of business
that would be sure not to pay.
That war may follow from the course which England has elected to pursue toward the parties to our civil conflict will not appear a strange view of affairs to those who know something of the history of Great Britain and the United States in the early part of this century. That which the British Government is now doing bears strong resemblance to the course which the same Government, with different ministers, pursued toward the United States during the war with