An English view of Northern despotism.
--The
Manchester (Eng)
Guardian says that the course pursued by the Administration of the
United States is that of desperate men persuaded that, for them at least there is no retreat from the path which leads, however clearly and inevitably, to ruin.
It adds: Their inability not only to make way, but to hold what they have gained in any quarter, only stimulates them to resort to fresh violence in order to obtain troops which, when they have got them, they do not know how to employ.
We seem to have heard the last of bombastic appeals to the patriotic spirit of the
Northern States, of lavish inducements of consulting the popular will as to the prosecution of the war. All administrative energies are now concentrated on the attempt to procure fresh food for powder and fever by the rudest arts of
Oriental despotism.
The consulates of the principal cities swarm with persons craving exemption on the plea of foreign birth and others, distrusting either the strength of their case or the justice with which it will be judged, seek safety by hurried flight in every steamer which leaves the ports of the
Union.
The Government responds to these movements by ordering a corden to be drawn around the country, seaboard and land frontier alike, by suspending the
habeas carpus act in the case of all persons accused of endeavoring to evade military service, and by a fresh batch of arbitrary arrests.
New York itself has been placed by a stroke of the pen in a condition which can only be fairly described as a state of siege, the ordinary police of the city having been constituted a military force, and the
Chief Superintendent of the body being invested with the privileges and powers of a
Provost Marshal--Such are the means by which a war which, we are told, is prosecuted on behalf of national right and the best interests of mankind, is to be maintained in the boasted land of freedom and of respect for popular opinion.
It becomes every day a more interesting problem to decide how long such a monstrous state of things can last and by what species of convolution it is to be terminated.
