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of the seas, and the internal waters.
We can blockade them by sea, and invade them by land, and close up the rebellion in a single year, if we are “let alone!”
For the population of the slave States is divided, perhaps equally, for and against the Union--the loyal citizens being for the time overawed by the organized conspiracy of the traitors, while the North is united to a man, the late allies of the South--the democratic party--being now more earnest for the subjugation of the rebels than the republicans.
3. “But can you govern a ‘subjugated’ people and reconstruct the Union?”
We do not propose to “subjugate” the revolted States--we propose to put down simply the rebel citizens.
We go to the rescue of the loyal Unionists of all the States.
We carry safety, and peace, and liberty to the Union-loving people of the South, who will of themselves (the tyranny overthrown) send back their representatives to Congress, and the Union will be “reconstructed” without a change of a letter in the Constitution of the United States.
Did England subjugate Ireland and Scotland?
Are the united kingdoms less homogeneous than of old, before the wars against rebellion?
So will the United States rise from the smoke of battle with renewed stability and power.
In turn, now let us ask the British public some questions.
1. “Where should British honor place her in this contest?”
We overthrow that political element in America which has all through our history been the studied denouncer and real hater of the British nation, while we have been always from the beginning the friends of England.
Because, though under different forms of government, we had common sympathies, and a common cause, and, therefore, a common interest.
England was the conservator of liberty in Europe — the old world; we in the new. If the “Confederate States” are right, then is England wrong.
If slavery must be extended in America, then must England restore it in the West Indies, blot out the most glorious page of her history, and call back her freedmen into chains!
Let her say to the martyrs of freedom from all the nations who have sought refuge and a magnanimous defence on her shores, return to your scaffold and your prison-house; England is no more England.
Let the Times cease to appeal longer to the enlightened opinion of the world: nay, let the statues of the great dead, through which I passed in reverence yesterday, to the Houses of her political intelligence, be thrown from their pedestals, when England shall forget the utterances of her Chathams, her Wilberforces, and her Broughams — that natural justice is the only safe diplomacy and lasting foundation of the independence of nations.
2. “What is the interest of England now?”
If we may descend to such inferior appeals, it is clearly the interest of England to stand by the Union of the States.
We are her best consumer; no tariff will materially affect that fact.
We are the best customer of England; not because we are cotton-growers or cotton-spinners, agriculturists or manufacturers, but because we are producers and manufacturers, and have money to spend. It is not the South, as it is urged, but the North who are the best consumers of English commerce.
The free white laborer and capitalist does now, and always will, consume more than the white master and the slave.
The Union and the expansion of the States and the republican policy make us the best market for England and Europe.
What las the world to gain--England, France, or any of the powers to gain — by reducing the United States to a Mexican civilization?
3. “Can England afford to offend the great nation which will still be ‘The United States of America,’ even should we lose part of the South?”
Twenty millions of people to-day, with or without the slave States, in twenty years we will be 40,000,000!
In another half century we will be one hundred millions. We will rest upon the Potomac, and on the west banks of the Mississippi River, upon the Gulf of Mexico.
Our railroads will run four thousand miles upon a single parallel, binding our empire, which must master the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
Is England so secure in the future against home revolt or foreign ambition as to venture now in our need to plant the seeds of revenge in all our future?
If Ireland, or Scotland, or Wales shall attempt to secede from that beneficent government of the United Kingdom which now lightens their taxation and gives them security and respect at home and abroad, shall we enter into a piratical war with our race and ally, and capture and sell in our ports the property, and endanger the lives of peaceable citizens of the British empire all over the world?
I enter not into the discussion of details.
England, then, is our natural ally. Will she ignore our aspirations?
If she is just, she ought not. If she is honorable and magnanimous, she cannot.
If she is wise, she will not.
Your obedient servant,
C. M. Clay, United States Minister Plenipotentiary, &c., to St. Petersburg. Mortley's, London, May 17.
