English sympathy with the South.
--There seems to be no doubt that, whatever may be the policy of the
English Government, the sympathies of the
English people are with the
South in the present struggle.
Thus much is certain, from the accounts of Yankee letter-writers in
England, and from the querulous tone of the
British press.
It is not that Englishmen like slavery, but there is in the
British mind an inherent love of fair play, which is called into active exercise by the present war. If there is another characteristic of
John Bull as prominent and universal as his pluck and back-bone, it is his unvarying sympathy with the smallest man in the ring, and his intense indignation and contempt at the idea of two men setting upon one.
From the heir apparent to the coal heaver there is a vein of genuine chivalry in the
British stock, which renders it impossible for a true Briton even to comprehend how a people can be so lost to shame as to exult in the idea of overpowering their enemy by sheer force of numbers.
To glory in the spirit which can grapple with and conquer a more powerful foe, is the instinct of genuine chivalry and valor, but it is reserved for Black Republican warriors to reverse the sentiment, and fire national salutes over a victory like that at
Port Royal, where ten to one was the odds necessary to secure their triumph.
Whatever the cause, certain it is that every mail from
England, every English journal, and every Yankee correspondent abroad, of a Northern press, confirm the impression that the sympathies of the
English people are with the Southern Confederacy.
We are not disposed to attribute this sympathy entirely to the fact that the interests of
England are interwoven with our own. Nations like men are governed by interests, but there are purer springs and higher motives than sordid and selfish love of gain and power.
If
England is opposed to black slavery, she is still more opposed to white slavery, and cannot look with indifference upon a struggle in which all the political and civil rights and immunities the
South has inherited from
England, and which were purchased by the trials and perils of her best and bravest for centuries, are threatened by a colossal military despotism, which has already trampled under foot in its own section the last vestige of civil liberty.
This is a matter of indifference that should have the sympathies of
England, if we cannot have her active co-operation.
We ought to be simply ashamed to depend on any-nation but ourselves for our deliverance from oppression, but such moral aid and comfort as the sympathies of civilized Christians afford may well inspire with new strength every patriot heart.
It is the testimony of all mankind to the justice of se. It is the approving verdict of nations; who cannot be accused of partiality, but, on the contrary, have been prejudiced against us by our peculiar institutions and by the misrepresentations of them which have been scattered broadcast over
Europe by our insidious foes.
For ourselves, we rejoice that so far as
England and the
South are concerned, bygones are bygones.
The trifling tax which was the pretext for
Puritan revolt in 76, and all the other grievances trumped up for that occasion, never amounted to a thousandth part of the injustice, wrongs and crimes which the descendants of the rebels of
New England have visited upon the rebels of the
South.
