The French policy with regard to the Confederate States.
We believe there is no longer any doubt lingering in the minds even of the most credulous, with regard to the intervention of
France and
England.
If any hopes ever were formed by the more sanguine of our countrymen, they have pretty well subsided.
The strict adherence of the ‘"grand allies"’ to the line of policy first adopted has became historical.
It belongs to the past rather than the present, and as a portion of the past it may be legitimately speculated on.
The Emperor of the
French is proverbially the most inscrutable man, as he is beyond question the ablest ruler of his day. The fact that he is the ablest of living rulers, taken in connexion with the steady adhesion to his policy of not recognizing the independence of the
Confederate States, has a tendency to deepen the shade in which his intentions are supposed to be always enveloped.
What object could he have had in view?
He could not fail to perceive that an early recognition would secure to
France advantages, the value of which it would be almost impossible to appreciate.
He must have been aware that all the benefit likely to accrue to her, from a strict alliance with
England, would be more than counterbalanced by the advantages soon to result from a cultivation of the new relations with us. He could hardly have been deceived by the lying Yankee newspapers, which took care to proclaim to
Europe that we were paupers, that we existed only through Yankee charity, and that as soon as we were kicked out of the house by Yankee doodle we must perish in the streets.
He must have seen, what was sufficiently apparent to everybody, but Yankee doodle itself, that that interesting portion of the globe owed all its wealth and all its consequence to its connexion with us, and that as soon as it lost the enormous market for its products afforded by the
Southern States it must run rapidly to decay.
The keen sagacity for which he is distinguished above all the statesmen of this age, and which fairly entitles him to rank with the ablest of
any age, could not have failed to teach him that the same mighty commerce which had made the sterile rocks of
New England to blossom like the rose, would, if diverted to
France, make her the foremost nation of the world.
He saw a young and powerful people — a people who had proved their determination never to resume the ancient connexions which they had just cast off, ready to lay all these advantages at his feet, asking nothing in return but recognition.
And yet, with all his worldly wisdom, the far seeing monarch of
France neglected to seize the golden opportunity, and it has passed, perhaps, never to return.
What motive, or combination of motives, could have prompted the line of policy which the
Emperor thought proper to adopt, we find it impossible to conceive.
We hardly think it possible for
Soward's bragging lies, or
McClellan's ridiculous rhodomontade, to have deceived him. He has too much knowledge of the world and of men to be taken in by such shallow devices, or such shallow tricksters.
He knew, or might have known, through his consuls in the
Southern States, the exact condition of the
Confederacy, and the extreme difficulty it offers to the realization of
Seward's ambitious projects.
Still less could he have been deceived by Lord Russell, whom, no doubt, he thoroughly understands.
That the
English alliance presents enormous advantages to
France, cannot be gainsaid.
But it is not understood, we believe, that it would have been sacrificed by listening to the representations of our ambassadors.
Besides, the alliance with
England has always seemed to us so precarious that we cannot understand how such a sacrifice could have been made to preserve it.
England is everlastingly brooding over a French invasion.
France, through her newspapers, scarcely concealed her exultation at the
Indian disasters of
Great Britain.
She did not ask her advice when she went to war with
Austria and would not to-morrow should another such occasion arise.
