The foreign Powers and the Southern Confederacy.
The Richmond correspondent of the Charleston
Courier says that dispatches of the most satisfactory character have been received from our Commissioners in
England and
France, and he is assured by one in authority that our interests in that quarter are advancing beyond the most sanguine expectations — slowly, cautiously, and with that almost prophetic foresight which
England always manifests in her foreign relations.
She is preparing for the emergency which the next six months will surely present.
Her citizens, both here and at the
North are ardent Secessionists; her ministers and representatives sympathize in our cause, and not only is their influence beginning to tell upon the leading journals of the country, but the private correspondence received indicates that the great heart of the
British people is throbbing with our own. The message of the ‘"so-called"’
President of the
United States will only add to the flame.
Its lack of statesmanship and humanity, its fierce temper and disregard of legal and constitutional obligations, and the spirit of tyranny which breathes in every line, will open to the understanding of the nations of
Europe the real issues of the war as they are understood here.
They will discover that right and justice have become mere names, and that beneath the gleam of the unsheathed sword such high-handed acts are being perpetrated as may well make civilization tremble for its safety.
An oligarchy, supported on the unstable foundations of the
Chicago platform, and by the flashing bayonets of an army, must, one day, waver before the terrible uprising of popular indignation, both at home and abroad.--Meanwhile, let us abide the blessed hour.
The same writer says that the estimated expenses of the war to the
Lincoln Administration will be about three hundred millions of dollars.
With the contemplated increase of the
Northern Army, it will be nearer five hundred millions of dollars.
Preparing, as they are for a three years war, we may safely estimate that they will have upon their hands a debt of fifteen hundred millions of dollars.--There are in the
North about three millions six hundred tax-payers.
Divide this sum between them, and they will have to pay the lively little sum of four hundred and twenty-eight odd dollars
per coput. It is easy to say that this financial saddle, over which
Lincoln is about bestriding the people, is one which will soon wear so the hone, and that if he should persist in his attempt at equestrianism, the time may not be far distant when the ambitions rider will be unhorsed.
Where this money is coming from, Heaven only knows.
The last Government loan of fifteen millions was not all taken.
The nine uniltions was at eighty-five cents on the dollar, and the balance was relied on Treasury notes.
It is, therefore, a very pretty problem to solve, whether three or four hundred millions with find in the now suspicious matters of the world the same welcome as heretofore.
The United States Congress may admire
Mr. Lincoln's calls for money, but their endorsement will not raise the wind either at home or among the lynx-eyed capitalists of
Europe, who know that cotton is the only security the
United States can offer for payment, and that it hasn't a bale of the article in its possession.
