England and the Southern Confederacy.
Gore's Advertiser, published in
Liverpool, one of the principle organs of the
British commercial interests, contains, in a recent number, a long article in reply to
Cassius M. Clay's recent letter to the
Times.
We make the following extracts:
‘
In such a contest waged by the United States Government against independent and sovereign States, ‘"might, not right,"’ must be the motto of the
Northern invaders, and the sympathy of this country is vainly invoked in their favor.
But
England is asked in a very ‘"tall"’ letter addressed to her by the
United States Ambassador to the Court of St. Petersburg, if she can afford to offend ‘"the great nation which will still be the
United States, even should they lose part of the
South."’ Yes, in spite of the one hundred millions of unborn men, which
Mr. Clay marshals in battle army against us only fifty years before their birth, our great nation formed of no incoherent particles, weakened by no claims of independent sovereignty in any of her geographical divisions, but strong in her indivisible unity, can afford to do that which she believes to be right, and to acknowledge the
defanto Government of the
Confederate States without departing a hair's breadth from that line of strict neutrality which in this deplorable war she has chalked out for herself.
Least of all should her aid be invoked by those who have just enacted a hostile tariff with the deliberate and avowed intention of excluding from their markets the staple products of her industry.
Still
Mr. Clay appeals to us to aid the
United States, on the ground that they are ‘"
our beet customer."’ We presume he means to aid that country by our active operation in enabling it to violate the great principle of liberty ‘"that all power is derived from the consent of the governed."’
’
If this be not the object of
Mr. Clay, we are at a loss to discover what he has written for, and we feel he will not be more successful in answering this, than he has been in answering that other question with which he commences his letter--‘"What are we fighting for?"’ We have no intention of entering into ‘"a piratical war with our race and ally."’ --We never dreamt of ‘"capturing and selling in our ports the property, or of endangering the lives of peaceable citizens of
America all over the world."’ We have proclaimed our neutrality and authoritatively commanded every British subject to abstain from all interference in the unhappy quarrel which has made the men of our own race at the other side of the
Atlantic the deadly foes of each other.
What, then, has the letter been written for, if not to coax or scare us from our world approved policy of neutrality?--Where, indeed should British honor place
Great Britain in this contest but in the very place she occupies at this moment, that of a neutral — that of a friend of both parties, who will cheerfully and promptly acknowledge the
Government or Governments which shall outlive this ever-to-be-regretted war, that must, as it progresses, tend to dehumanize those who are engaged in it — and for the advancement of no great or holy cause — brothers' hands in brothers' blood.
Even the venerable
Brougham —— perhaps the greatest champion of freedom, the greatest chain-breaker of the oppressed, and especially of the oppressed negro race, that the world ever saw — even he has stamped with his sincere approval the policy of neutrality adopted by our Government.
The letter which has called for these observations is more remarkable for its high-sounding phrases than for solid arguments, and the writer must not be offended if we tell him that the United Kingdom--
not Kingdom--of
Great Britain and
Ireland is the best conservator of her own honor, the best judge of her own interest; and that as she now right loyally salutes the Stare and Stripes, so she reserves the right to salute the
Palmetto, should the children of the
South succeed in retaining the independent position which they have assumed, in forming themselves into a new union of
Confederate States.
We have to deal not only with the political but with the commercial bearing of the quarrel; and were not a certain line of policy forced upon us by our honor in opposition to our interest, in the mere commercial sense of the word, we should immediately dispatch a fleet which would effectually open to our commercial navy every harbor of the
South.
