Two Bishops
--Pro and Con the
War--The
Metropolitan Record, Archbishop Hughes' New York organ, publishes a correspondence between that famous ecclesiastical dignitary and
Bishop Lynch, of
Charleston, on the subject of the secession of the
Southern States and the war. The correspondence is too long for publication in our columns, and is devoted to a discussion of the merits of the issue which has been debated,
ad infinitum until now there is no longer room or time for debate.
It must be settled by the arbitrament of the sword.
Words are now of no avail: blood is more potent than rhetoric, more profound than logic.
But it is, nevertheless, interesting to know on what side these religious dignitaries are arrayed.
Bishop Lynch addresses a long letter to the
Archbishop, and the latter replies in one of course equally long; for the
Archbishop does not generally allow an adversary to exceed him in
length of an argument, and, indeed, not often in ability.
Bishop Lynch takes the
Southern side.
He reasons it very ably, presenting in strong light the injuries inflicted on the
South, her concessions, the failure of all efforts at redress, and the consummation of Northern tyranny in the sectional triumph by the election of
Abraham Lincoln on the
Chicago platform.
He refers to the commercial interests of the
North, the vast productive power of the
South, and portrays the immense injury the
North must sustain in the separation it has forced upon the
South.
He displays his abiding confidence in the power of the
South to sustain herself, and shows that the
North must be the greatest sufferer by the war. The South, he contends, has resources in men and means to carry on a long war more successfully than the
North.
In provisions, he is satisfied there will be enough gathered in the crops of the present year for two years supply.
Clothing, though of rude texture, is abundantly made, he says; and there are some $25,000,000 of specie in the
South as the basis of that paper medium, which will readily answer our purposes.
The Government will have, he contends, two and a half million of bales of cotton the spinal column of our financial system) as a basis for its credit.
If exported at once, they will be as good as gold for $100,000,000; and, if not so exported, a security undoubted for that amount.
The blockade, he reasons, has been beneficial to the
South, as it has forced her to manufacture a great many things she has heretofore gotten entirely from the
North.
Upon this reasoning, he assumes that the
South must triumph.
He concludes:
‘
"The separation of the
Southern States is
un fait accompli. The Federal Government has no power to reverse it. Sooner or later it must be recognized.
Why preface the recognition by a war equally needless and bloody?
Men at the
North may regret the rupture, as men at the
South may do. The Black Republicans overcame the first at the polls, and would not listen to the second in Congress, when the evil might have been repaired.
They are responsible.
If there is to be fighting, let those who voted the
Black Republican ticket shoulder their muskets and bear the responsibility.
Let them not send Irishmen to fight in their stead, and then stand looking on at the conflict, when, in their heart of hearts, they care little which of the combatants destroys the other."
’
Archbishop Hughes, in his reply, does not undertake to answer
Bishop Lynch's reasoning upon the causes which have led to the war. He declares that he was a friend of peace until the war began, but does not now dare to hope for peace until he can see some solid ground upon which to establish it. He reasons that the
South begun the war — that it had no right to secede or separate, no matter what its complaints, except in the mode provided by the
Constitution.
The election of
Lincoln was not sufficient ground, he contends, since so many Southern
Presidents had filled the Presidential chair.
He denies the right of secession in a State more than a county or a town from a State.
(He seems to have been a pupil of the profound
Dr. Lincoln.) In short, he is an out-and-out Federalist — is against the cry of peace — for the vigorous prosecution of war; but declares that the
North is not fighting for subjugation, but to bring back the seceded States to their organic condition before the war. The only peace suggestion that he thinks practicable at the present moment is the holding, during the progress of hostilities, of two conventions--one in the seceded States, and the other in the loyal States--where, in the former, a statement of grievances and reclamations might be prepared, and in the latter a reconsideration of the points in which the
Constitution may have proved inadequate to meet the present difficulties, the whole to be submitted to a convention of delegates from all the States as soon as a common agreement can be effected for that purpose.
Thus much for the controversy between the Bishops.
It is marked by much ability.
The
Archbishop adds ingenuity to his essay, in the employment of which he is not over-scrupulous.
For instance, he quotes from
Mr. Russell the remark of some Southern men hostile to foreigners as an illustration of Southern feeling towards them.
He confesses that the gentleman quoted by
Mr. Russell is no true representative of the gentlemen it was his fortune to meet in the
South.
‘"But no matter,"’ he says, ‘"if it be true, it shews that for Irish and foreigners in general the
South is nearly as unfriendly as the
North can be."’-- He has not the hardihood, even if it be true, to say that the
South is
as ‘"unfriendly"’ as the
North; for he could not ignore the fact that the
South has protected foreigners, while the
North has mobbed them,
burnt their churches, sought their disfranchisement, and even invaded the property and authority of the
Bishop himself.
But, nevertheless, he chooses to give the
North what advantage he can by quoting
Mr. Russell's anecdote, and saying ‘"if it be true,"’ &c., knowing that with his admirers it will have the same effect as if it were true.
This is the meanest act we ever knew of the
Archbishop, and shows what men, with some reputation, for fairness, may descend to in maintaining a bad cause.
It is passing strange that a learned and ardent Irishman like the
Archbishop, who desires the separation of
Ireland from
Great Britain, should throw his influence in behalf of the coercion of the
Southern people to an alliance with those whom they loathe, and the sovereign Southern States into a union to which they will never submit.
It may, in a measure, be accounted for by the fact that the Arch bishop is an intimate friend of the
arch-fiend Seward. It is not the first time that the route of the ‘"devil's walk"’ was through a
Bishop's palace.
Again, whatever be the
Archbishop's motive, it is certain that after his coercion letter,
Erastus. (ye rascal)
Brooks would hardly attack his prerogative and property, in the New York Senate; and there can be no doubt that the
Archbishop feels, now that he has espoused the
Northern tyranny, vastly more secure than when a few years since appealing to the public against the persecution of that
Know-Nothing wolf. 
