Xli.
How has
England looked on this contest?
Strange enough has been the course she has taken.
She will hardly be able hereafter to explain it to others: it is doubtful if she can do it now even to herself.
England lives in
America to-day, and is dying at home.
England is clinging to her sepulchres,—and she may well do it; for the places where her great ones repose are the greenest spots on her island.
We
Americans cheated ourselves most egregiously when we thought
England—once the head of the slavetrade, and only a few years ago the front of the abolitionism of the world—would turn her slavery-hating back on the only organized band of slavery propagandism on the earth!
Poor fools we!
Just as though the
British aristocracy—the true name for the
British Government—meant anything but interference and trouble for us when her Grace the
Duchess of
Sutherland chaperoned the gifted
Harriet Beecher Stowe through the court of her Majesty, simply because
Mrs. Stowe, by writing a great dramatic novel against slavery, could be made a cat's-paw to pull the chestnuts of the
British aristocracy out of the fire!
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Yes, abolitionism suited the purposes of the
British aristocracy just
then; and lords and ladies swarmed at negro-emancipation gatherings at Exeter Hall.
On all such occasions three standing jokes were played off, to the infinite amusement of dukes and duchesses,—duchesses more particularly.
First, there
must be a live American negro,--the blacker the better, sometimes; but they generally got one as
little black as possible, and an octoroon threw them into the highest state of subdued frenzy admissible in the upper classes.
The aforesaid negro must have escaped from the indescribable horrors and barbarities of slavery in the
Southern States,—gashed, manacled —if he showed the manacles, so much the better—a sample of American barbarism, and a burning shame on the otherwise fair cheek of the goddess of American liberty.
‘Oh, yes,’ said my lord Brougham; ‘nothing stands in your way now but negro slavery.
Abolish that, and every heart in
England is with you.’
Secondly, at these Exeter Hall meetings they
must have a live American abolitionist,—once a slaveholder who had emancipated his slaves.
Here they found their man in the noble
Judge Birney, as in the
first they found a splendid specimen of a runaway octoroon in
Frederick Douglas,
Esq.,—the—black
Douglas,--and who, bythe-by, made a better speech by far than any aristocrat in
England.
Thirdly, and last of all, some ecclesiastic gentleman bestowed upon the proceedings the benediction.
This would have been well enough,—certainly so far as the benediction was concerned,—had not future events proved beyond a doubt that, at the very moment these curious things were occurring, the whole
prestige
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of the
British empire was invoked to sanctify and adorn a spirit of hostility to the
Government of the
United States, and that the solemnities of our holy religion were also invoked in the same cause.
But to my unpractised eye it looked at the time very much as later events have shown it,—a thorough hatred of
America by the ruling classes of
England.
At one time Lord Brougham presided; again,
O'Connell; and again, the venerable
Thomas Clarkson: they even got his Royal Highness
Prince Albert to do it once, on a somewhat narrower scale,—where even tender young duchesses could attend with impunity—the
American negro always being present, like Tom Thumb in
Barnum's chief amusements—and, being fortified with a supply of highly-perfumed kerchiefs, the young duchesses managed generally to live it through and revive after reaching the open air!
These farces were played off all through the
British Islands; and the poor British people—who, from long habit, I suppose, go where ‘their betters’ go, when allowed to—joined in the movement, and ‘
American anti-slavery societies’ were everywhere established.
Even chambermaids and factory-girls contributed to raise a fund to send ‘English missionaries’ over here ‘to enlighten the
North about the duty of the
South to abolish slavery.’
Some of these scenes were sufficiently vulgar; but they were sometimes got up, in some respects, in fine taste.
One occasion I recall with the highest pleasure, which, although ostensibly an anti-slavery dinner, was limited chiefly in its company to the literary men of
London.
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It was a noble enthusiasm among the people; but it was—anybody could see through it, for it was the veriest gauze—all an aristocratic sham.
It did not mean anything for human freedom.
It meant hostility to the
United States.
It was got up by British politicians.
Sir Robert Peel and the
Duke of
Wellington had no part or parcel in it, unless it were through sheer courtesy to the men of their class.
