The New York Herald and the Emperor of the French.
We published the other day an extract from the New York
Herald, in which the writer undertake to explain the attitude of the
French Emperor with regard to the contending parties in this war. It seems he is as much in need of cotton as Lord Russell, but has not quite so much confidence, in the power of
Seward to furnish him with the desired quantity.
He has therefore determined to take the matter into his own hands, and to intervene after a fashion that cannot but prove successful.
He is to insist upon it that the Southern Confederacy submit at once to the
Yankees, and take them for their masters without any further resistance to their demands.
Then the
Emperor will have cotton, and that seems to be the grand object of all the diplomacy extant in the
European world at the present time of writing.
The Emperor is to lay aside his predilections for universal suffrage, and to settle our affairs on a basis different from that on which he has been tofore been accustomed to settle the affairs of the several European States whom he has been so kind as to take under his protection.
This we are assured was the object of
Count Merciers visit to
Richmond.
Now, there are two small objections to this arrangement.
1st.It is impracticable.
The people will have something to say in the matter, and they will enter into no arrangement which supposes the continued existence of our political association with the
Yankees.
They hate them with a deadly his tired.
They always felt a contempt for them; but that contempt has been raised into fury by their invasion and all the abominations which it brought along with it. For more will they resent and resist any attempt to make them
submit to these same Yankees, and to become their vassals and slaves for the future.
2d.
If
the Emperor should succeed in forcing such a settlement, he will not be enabled to get a pound of cotton for his pains.
The Southern people have that cotton in their possession, and they can burn it to prevent its falling into
his hands, just as well as they can burn it to prevent its being taken by the
Yankees.
The annunciation of an intervention on such a basis would be the signal for a general conflagration.
If
the Emperor ever doubted this before, he must have become convinced of it by the capture of New Orleans.
It added not a bale to the stock of
France, while it consigned thirty thousand bales to the flames.
We believe the
Emperor of the
French to be far too sagacious a statesman to make any such proposition as that foreshadowed by the
Herald. It might suit the calibre of small men like Lord Russell, whom Lord Althorpe contemptuously designated as ‘"Little Johnnie,"’ when he overthrew one of the ministries with which he was connected. [‘"Little Johnnie has upset the coach again"’] Little he certainly is in every respect.
Little in size, little as an author, and little as a statesman.
As a man he stands about five feet two; as an author be almost made.
For and
Moore contemptible; as a statesman, he has overthrown every ministry with which he has had anything to do. The
Duke of
Wellington once said ‘"Lord John is a host in him self;"’ but what he meant thereby there is nothing in Lord John's history to explain.
Probably Lord John did not know himself, although he was hugely tickled with the compliment.
This scheme looks like one of his connecting, and has not a touch of that profound sagacity which distinguishes everything that emanates from the imperial brain of the third
Napoleon.
Or it may be a mere manufacture of the
Herald office.
At any rate, the
Southern people will not lay down their arms at the bidding of the
French Emperor, merely that he may get his necessary supply of cotton, after having gained so much without his sympathy.
