Empty Menaces.
--The Premier of
Lincoln has declared over and over again, and has repeated the menace in his
Trent correspondence with Lord Lyons, that the recognition of Southern Independence by any
European power will be followed by ‘"immediate war"’ between the
United States and that power.
Many persons suppose that such would be the result, but we have no belief in anything of the kind.
What prevented
Seward from going to war with
England rather than sacrifice the national honor in the surrender of
Mason and
Slidell?
Nothing but the most abject fear of the power of
England, and the thorough conviction of the inability of the
United States in its present condition to cope with such an adversary.
The
United States only goes to war when it outnumbers its enemy four to one on land, and when its enemy has no force at all at sea. Unable to conquer even with such odds, and with its treasury and honor both bankrupt, nothing short of actual invasion, even if that could have the effect, would induces it to take up arms against
England or
France.
We believe that those powers might not only recognize the
South, but open the Stockade, without danger of an American war. The blockade has already been proved inefficient, and one which by the laws of nation they are not obliged to regard.
The interests of their subjects and of the whole civilized world imperatively demand that the Blockade should cease.
This effected, the
South asks nothing more.
Seward's threats an the mere vaporing of a pusillanimous gas who has sunk himself and his army by the surrender of
Mason and
Slidell beneath contempt.
