Recognition.
So far as we are able to judge from the extract published by us the other day, the London
Times the great organ of English sentiment is as much averse to recognizing the
Confederate States as ever.
It has now completely shifted its ground; and whereas it opposed recognition eight months ago, because the
Confederacy had given no proof of its ability to maintain its independence,
now it opposes it because it has given abundant evidence of its power to take care of itself.
This method of handling an argument is common enough while those who are predetermined to support particular line of action at all bazaar, and is sufficiently characteristic of the
Times, We wish it would be candid, and say at once what, in its view, constitutes good ground for recognition.
Is a State to be recognized because she is too weak to establish her independence, or is she to be recognized because she is strong enough to maintain it?
We wish to know from curiosity merely, not that it is a matter of any importance to us. We seriously believe, as we have heretofore had occasion to remark, that recognition without a powerful intervention — such as
Great Britain is not likely to make — would be productive of well rather thin injury.
Such an intervention as is implied in a blockable would throw into the hands of the
Yankee Government whole classes of men to recruit their armies by them out of other employment, and leaving them no alternative but to fight or starve.
It would strengthen their financial status, by shutting them out from the world, and confining their circulation entirely to themselves.
Recognition and intervention, therefore, unless backed by a land force of half a million of men, would do us no good and might do us much harm.
When
Gen. Bonaparte was negotiating the treaty of Camp Formio,
Count Cobentzel, the
Austrian Minister, presented the draft of a convention, the first clause of which began with an acknowledgment of the
French Republic. "Strike that out," said
Bonaparte. --The fact is as clear as the existence of the sun." Whenever we come to make treaties with foreign powers we should be able to use the same language.
Let our existence be so clearly established as to require no acknowledgment.
Let it be as notorious as the existence of the sun. That it may be so, we have only to defend our rights as we have done theretofore.
Valor and perseverance such as the Southern Confederacy have shown must achieve their independence in the end, and the conquest will be so much the more valuable that it was made without assistance, and even without encouragement from the other Governments of the earth.
It is gratifying to perceive from the extracts before alluded to that the
English people are is far as ever from being deceived by the
Yankee reports of their explodes.--They speak in terms of the highout admiration of the valor of our troops, and the skill of our
Generals, and appear to entertain no doubt whatever that so much skill and, so much valor cannot fail to be successful in the end. Even the
News, controlled entirely by Yankees, is compelled to acknowledge that the
Southern people, though the most barbarous of
Anglos Saxon communities, can at least
fight. The abuse of such it cheat as the
News is the highest compliment that can be paid to Southern civilization.
The acknowledgment wrung from it by the valor of our triumps is more valuable then the studied endorsed of more respectable . We do not desire to be praised by mostly such journal as the
News but we in the success which has forced it to acknowledge the valor of our troops and the skill of our fenders.
The
News would not that we should be recognized among the nations of the earth; for the very reason that we have shown it strives as powerful as the best of them.
Avoidance, we not done so?
What other nation, in ever succeeded in repelling an army of 700,000 men in a angle rejoicement as great as it numbers.
Shall we say
Russia?
The wholes number that invaded
Russia —
French Italian and Germans — did not exceed the . Shall we say
France?
It mostly,
France was subdued and her without her consent, whereas we are unconquered, but vicinities every where.
The battles we have fought have been the bloodiest or moderns times, and they have succeeded each other with a rapidity that almost relies calculation.
In all of them we have been victorious and in some of them we have strick blows which would have gone night to prostrate any throne in
Europe.
It should be recollected in the meantime, that our enemy is three times as numerous as we are, that he possesses a powerful navy while we have none, that he has been, from the commencement of the war, provided with the best arts, the utmost abundance of ammunition, and stoves unlimited in quantity, while we in the beginning were poorly armed, and greatly deficient in ammunition.
The skill of our
Generals has, in every instance nearly, to the courage and perseverance of our troops.
We may place the manœuvres by which the battles around
Richmond were won, the operations, against
Pope, the advance into
Maryland, and the capture of
Harper's Ferry, alongside of any manœuvres executed by any General within the last hundred years,
Frederick and
Bonaparte not excepted.
When
Europe beholds the gigantic fighting on this continent, and the uniformity with which we gain the victory, it is not wonderful that she should be astounded.
We who live in these times do not appreciate them as they will be appreciated by posterity.
We are making history on a grander scale than it ever was made before.
Our army and its chiefs will, fifty years hence, be regarded with the same admiration that waits upon the grand army and the Marshals of
France.
Does any one doubt it. Let him look over any history of the were of the
French Revolution, and show us when and where those wars ever witnessed such tremendous conflicts its the present campaign has brought forth.
