Chapter IX: Part 9

“You will hear of a reverse of our arms in Virginia. The exaggerations
of the result have been as great as the public impatience, perhaps,
which brought it about. But the affair will not produce any serious
injury. The strength of the insurrection is not broken, but it is not
formidable. The vigour of the Government will be increased, and the
ultimate result will be a triumph of the Constitution. Do not be
misled by panic reports of danger apprehended for the capital.”

And on the 12th August Seward’s himself again,—

“The shock produced by the reverse of our arms at Bull Run has passed
away. The army is reorganised; the elections show that reaction
against disunion has begun in the revolutionary States, and we may
confidently look for a restoration of the national authority
throughout the Union. If our foreign relations were once promptly
reestablished on their former basis, the disunion sentiment would
languish and perish within a year.”

In this way, after each defeat, or “reverse of our arms,” he presently consoles himself by extracting a precious jewel, in the shape of a moral, from the front of adversity, and transmitting it for the comfort of the American envoys. We all remember the achievement which first made Jackson famous, of turning suddenly on Banks at Winchester and driving him headlong over the Potomac, previous to joining in the general movement against M‘Clellan on the Chickahominy. Upon that event Mr Seward remarks to Mr Adams:—

“The defeat of General Banks at Winchester yesterday, and his
withdrawal across the Potomac, are just now the prominent incidents of
the war. A careful consideration of the affair results in the
satisfactory conclusion that the movement of the enemy _was one of
merely energetic strategy_.”

What this can possibly mean, or why it should be satisfactory to Mr Seward, or what satisfaction it could convey to Mr Adams, we are utterly at a loss to divine. Again, on July 7th, when M‘Clellan had been driven from the York to the James River, he tells Mr Adams that—

“The efficiency of the army of the Union is improved.... If the
representative parties had now to choose whether they would have the
national army where it is and as it is, or back again where it was and
as it was, it is not to be doubted that the insurgents would prefer to
it the position and condition on the Pamunkey, and the friends of the
Union the one now attained on the banks of the James.... The
insurgents and the world abroad will see that the virtue of the people
is adequate to the responsibilities which Providence has cast upon
them.”

July 12th, he states the cheering fact that a force is “under the command of Major-General Pope, who has achieved great successes in the Western States, and is esteemed an officer of great ability.”

July 28th, he says: “Our assault upon Richmond is for the moment suspended. No great and striking movements or achievements are occurring, and the Government is rather preparing its energies for renewed operations than continuing to surprise the world with new and brilliant victories.” Thus much in the way of particular information, but the moral presently follows:—

“It is not upon isolated events, much less upon transitory popular
impulses, that Governments are expected to build their policies in
regard to foreign countries. What I think is important, not less for
foreign nations than for ourselves, is always to hold our civil war
under contemplation, not merely as streams of unequal widths and
intermitting currents, but as one continuous river, and so not to
forget its source, its direction, and not only its immediate and
local, but also its ultimate and universal, effects.”

And before the reader can recover from this tremendous passage, it is followed up by another:—

“It is only the reflecting observer who habitually considers the
course of events occurring in any one country as being determined, or
at least materially influenced, by natural causes lying wholly or in
part outside of that country, and which create a force commonly
recognised under various names as the opinion of mankind, or the
spirit or the genius of the age or of the times.”

After uttering this extraordinary sentence, one might expect the oracle to become exhausted; but not at all: it continues to pour forth pages of reasoning equally close and clear on this same 28th July. And what do our readers think of this splendid passage, written April 14th?—

“It is believed that this survey of the military position of the
Government may serve to satisfy Great Britain that those statesmen
here and abroad who, a year ago, mistook a political syncope for
national death and dissolution, altogether misunderstood the
resources, the character, and the energies of the American Union. The
blood that at first retreated to the heart, is now coursing healthily
through all the veins and arteries of the whole system; and what
seemed at first to be a hopeless paralysis, was in fact but the
beginning of an organic change to more robust and vigorous health than
the nation has ever before enjoyed.”

And when M‘Clellan finally abandoned the peninsula with the wreck of his army, it is announced to Mr Adams, and to Mr Dayton, the Minister to France, in this way:—

“General Halleck, upon taking command of the army, made a careful
survey of the entire military position, and concluded thereupon to
withdraw the army of the Potomac from the peninsula, and to combine
all our forces in front of Richmond. It is believed to have been
substantially accomplished without any casualty. Our new levies are
coming in in great numbers and in fine spirits. The gloom has passed
away from the public mind. Although our arrangements for resuming
offensive operations are yet incomplete, we have much confidence in
being able to do so speedily and with decisive effect.... It is
represented to us that the popular determination to maintain the Union
has at no time been as unanimous and as earnest as it is now.”

And so on of all events, whether promising success or ending in disaster; the object being to persuade foreign Governments what a mistake they made in countenancing such a failing business as Secession. And when the prospect is especially cheerful—when patriots under arms are counted by hundreds of thousands, and when any successes call for a fresh enumeration of the triumphs of the Republic—a judicious menace is insinuated in the despatch, by hinting that as soon as the rebellion is crushed (which it is always just going to be) the shortcomings of those whose duty it was to assist the Union in its “hour of distress,” will not be forgotten by the victorious and thrice-potent Northern people. For instance, on January 31 he says:—

“I have observed that the British people were satisfied with the
vigour and the energy of the preparations which their Government made
for the war which they expected to occur between them and ourselves.
_It may be profitable for us all to reflect_ that the military and
naval preparations which have been made by this Government to put down
the insurrection have, every day since the 1st of May last, equalled,
if not surpassed, the daily proportion of those war-preparations which
were regarded as so demonstrative in Great Britain.”

And again, 2d June 1862:—

“The President thinks it desirable that the Government of Great
Britain should consider, before the war closes, what are likely to be
the sentiments of the two nations in regard to each other after that
event shall have occurred.”

We wonder whether it ever occurred to Mr Seward that if the imaginary injuries of one nation upon another are to be visited with such remote vindictiveness, it may be probable that very real and deep sufferings may leave still more indelible rancour behind them; and that there is a people at this moment not only undergoing treatment at the hands of the Union which excites the horror of civilised nations, but proving itself perfectly capable of executing future vengeance.

But in providing for the probability that Great Britain will be indifferent to the high moral ground which he indicates for giving her sympathies to the Union, Mr Seward does not trust entirely to threats. A lower argument, better suited to her defective moral sense, consists in pointing out that it is the interest of European countries to see the war terminate as quickly as possible; that it is also the interest of the Union to terminate the war as quickly as possible: _ergo_, the way to attain the common object is to unite in procuring it. But he omits to show why the same argument might not apply with equal force to an alliance with the South.

All this eloquence and logic has a double object—first, to avert the recognition of the South, followed by subsequent intervention; and, secondly, and chiefly, to induce the European Powers to retrace the step they had taken of acknowledging the South as a belligerent. The original protest against this step had been on the particular ground that the Government had taken it more hastily than was needful, and ought to have awaited the arrival of Mr Adams, charged with the reasons which the Federal Government might urge in protesting against it. As the measure was one of neutrality, it was manifestly proper that it should be adopted without hearing the arguments of one side only. However, the North considered itself injured, and expressed its sense of injury; but until we read these papers we had thought that the precipitation of the measure was the chief ground on which it was complained of. But so far from that being the case, the measure itself constitutes, down to the present time, the chief point of dispute. It is not going too far to say that, had the Federal Government accepted the position of neutrality of foreign Governments, and conducted its relations with them on that basis, the greater part of these despatches need never have been written. Nine-tenths of them are the result of looking at the same facts from two points of view—of looking at the war, on the one side, as a conflict between great sections, each possessed of power sufficient to maintain itself against the other, and to produce consequences highly important to neutrals; on the other side, as a domestic difficulty caused by a weak and failing faction, and which should not be noticed by foreign Powers any more than any other insignificant outbreak. Our Government saw in it the division of the Republic into portions, strongly defined by a territorial line, arming themselves for a conflict in which the balance of right was a subtle question open to opposite interpretations, but in which, it was evident, the Federal Government could never be victorious consistently with its own principles. The magnitude of the quarrel was such as powerfully to affect our own interests, and to render the probability imminent that the Queen’s subjects would be involved in the struggle, on the one side or the other, in such a manner as to compromise themselves, perhaps the Government. That the nature of the war was rightly estimated, events have more than sufficiently proved; that it was the first duty of the Government to protect its own subjects will probably be admitted by most moralists. But there is one moralist, Mr Seward, who thinks that the British Government, however bound to protect the interests of its own subjects, as it might be, he admits, in an inferior degree, is still more bound to consider the interests of the human race as involved in the maintenance of the Federal Union,—of the system, be it remembered, whose inevitable results have been to make a Lincoln the chief magistrate, and a Seward the chief minister—a system which has for years been the most corrupt ever known, and the inability of which to produce any kind of political merit is one of the wonders of the world.

Mr Seward’s view, which he insists that foreign Governments should adopt, is that they must not admit the existence of any war at all; that Bull’s Run and Fredericksburg, and all the disasters of M‘Clellan and Pope, are the work of a small insurrectionary faction; that the inability of the Federalists to recover authority in the South does not at all affect the integrity of the Republic; and that the millions of men whom he so complacently describes as determined to restore the Union have been called to arms to quell a few “misguided fellow-citizens” who have taken the “bad resolution” of seceding from its authority. But neither great defeats, nor vast armaments, nor huge debt, nor impending dissolution, can divert Mr. Seward from his singular efforts to persuade foreign Governments, chiefly ours, to adopt his extraordinary fiction as their rule of action. If mere acquiescence in his view were all that he demanded, it might be no great matter; but he requires that we shall not merely admit the fictitious view, but proceed to found thereon the extraordinary measures which we shall presently find indicated in his correspondence. What the view itself is may be gathered from a few extracts.

19th June 1861:—

“The United States are still solely and exclusively sovereign within
the territories they have lawfully acquired and long possessed, as
they have always been.... Great Britain, by virtue of these relations,
is a stranger to parties and sections in this country, whether they
are loyal to the United States or not; and Great Britain can neither
rightfully qualify the sovereignty of the United States, nor concede
nor recognise any rights or interests or power of any party, State, or
section, in contravention to the unbroken sovereignty of the Federal
Union.”

6th March 1862:—

“If Great Britain should revoke her decree conceding belligerent
rights to the insurgents to-day, this civil strife, which is the cause
of all the derangement of those relations, and the only cause of all
apprehended dangers of that kind, would end to-morrow. The United
States have continually insisted that the disturbers of their peace
are mere insurgents, not lawful belligerents. This Government neither
can nor is likely to have occasion to change this position; but her
Majesty can, and it would seem that she must, sooner or later desire
to relinquish her position. It was a position taken in haste, and in
anticipation of the probable success of the revolution. The failure of
that revolution is sufficiently apparent. Why should not the position
be relinquished, and the peace of our country thus be allowed to be
restored?”

10th March 1862:—

“Let the Governments of Great Britain and France rescind the decrees
which concede belligerent rights to a dwindling faction in this
country, and all their troubles will come to a speedy end.”

15th March 1862:—

... “We are brought to lament anew the precipitancy with which foreign
Powers so unnecessarily conceded to the insurrection belligerent
rights. The President trusts that you are sparing no efforts to
convince Earl Russell that the time has come when that concession can
be revoked with safety to Great Britain and advantage to the great
material interests of that country.”

To which Mr Adams responds, 27th March:—

“I am bound to notice in several of your late despatches a strong
disposition to press upon the British Government an argument for a
retraction of its original error in granting to the rebels the rights
of a belligerent. There may come a moment when such a proceeding might
seem to me likely to be of use. But I must frankly confess that I do
not see it yet.”

We will now show by a few other extracts what consequences Mr Seward expected to follow the adoption of his view.

6th March 1862—Mr Seward to Mr Adams:—

“Is it not worth your pains to suggest to him the inquiry whether it
would not be wiser and better _to remove the necessity for our
blockade_ than to keep the two nations, and even the whole world, in
debate about the rightfulness or the expediency of attempting to break
it, with all the consequences of so hostile a measure?”

2d April:—

“It is a matter of deep regret to us that our troubles at home render
it hazardous to withdraw a part of our great land and naval forces
from operating here, and send them to China to co-operate with the
forces of the Allies there. As you are well aware, the continuance of
the insurrection in the United States is due to the attitudes of Great
Britain and France towards our country. It would seem to be desirable
for those two States to have our co-operation in China in preserving a
commerce of vast importance to them as well as to ourselves. _That
co-operation we could give if we were relieved from the necessity for
maintaining a blockade and siege of our southern ports._”

Whether Mr Seward desired that Great Britain should herself undertake the blockade of the Southern ports, or should pass a law, and persuade other States to pass similar laws, prohibiting all commercial intercourse with the South, and should enforce the prohibition, does not appear. But that he desired one of these measures to be adopted is clear, and the one would not be more extraordinary than the other.

Another operation of the adoption of Mr Seward’s fiction is seen in the case of the British Consul at Charleston. The British and French Governments agreed that it was expedient to communicate to the persons exercising authority in the Confederate States the desire of those Governments that certain articles of the Declaration of Paris should be observed by them in the prosecution of hostilities. Mr Seward remarks thereupon—

“It is enough to say that in our view the proper agents of the British
Government to make known its interest here, are the diplomatic, not
the consular agents of her Majesty; and that the only authority in
this country to which any diplomatic communication whatever can be
made is the Government of the United States itself.”

The articles to which France and England desired to call attention were those which relate to the capture of the property of neutrals at sea. It was very necessary to the protection of our commerce that they should be made known, and to do so was not in any way contrary to any of the pretensions of the Federal Government. Yet because the Powers had chosen the English Consul as their medium, instead of the Federal authorities, who did not acknowledge or maintain communications with the Southern Government, the Consul’s exequatur was withdrawn.

The case of the Trent is too well known, and that of the Alabama is too recent, to need recapitulation here. It is only necessary to remind the reader that in the late debate in Parliament it was shown that Mr Seward’s demands could only be complied with by passing a special law, having for its exclusive object to aid the Federal Government by stopping vessels, not on evidence, but on suspicion, that they were intended to become Confederate ships of war. In the case of the Emily St Pierre he expressly tells us his views. That vessel had been captured in attempting to run the blockade, and had then been recaptured from the prize-crew and brought into Liverpool. Whereupon the Federal authorities demanded that she should be restored to them by the British Government. Lord Russell replied that “neutral nations are not bound to punish their subjects for offences committed only against the laws of war as enforced by belligerents, nor to restore property rescued by their subjects from foreign captors.” When our Government communicated its decision declining to restore her, Mr Seward remarked—

“I think it proper to observe at present that the reasons seem to be
limited to a want of power vested in the Government to restore, and do
not bear at all on the justice or legality of the demand. Under such
circumstances this Government has in more than one instance admitted
the claim, _and appealed to legislative authority for the power to
satisfy it_, and it has been promptly conferred and exercised.”

The American Minister was directed to press these demands for an alteration of the law. In reply, Lord John Russell, after adverting to the injury sustained by England in the blockade, says:—

“Yet Her Majesty’s Government have never sought to take advantage of
the obvious imperfections of this blockade, in order to declare it
ineffective. They have, to the loss and detriment of the British
nation, scrupulously observed the duties of Great Britain towards a
friendly State. But when Her Majesty’s Government are asked to go
beyond this, and to overstep the existing powers given them by
municipal and international law, for the purpose of imposing arbitrary
restrictions on the trade of Her Majesty’s subjects, it is impossible
to listen to such suggestions.... If, therefore, the United States
consider it for their interest to inflict this great injury on other
nations, the utmost they can expect is that European Powers shall
respect those acts of the United States which are within the limits of
the law. The United States Government cannot expect that Great Britain
should frame new statutes to aid the Federal blockade, and to carry
into effect the restrictions on commerce which the United States for
their own purposes have thought fit to institute, and the application
of which it is their duty to confine within the legitimate limits of
international law.”

Mr Seward’s demand, that we should adopt his interpretation of the character of the war, would entail the consequences that we should ourselves enforce the Federal blockade; that we should refuse all Southern vessels admission to our ports, while allowing the freest use of them to the Federal ships; that we should stop all exports of commodities to the South, while granting fullest commercial intercourse with the North: and that we should alter our own laws for the purpose of making ourselves the agents of the belligerent interests of the Federal Government. His interpretation of neutrality in affording supplies to the belligerents is amusingly, though we daresay quite unintentionally, illustrated by himself in a couple of sentences. It will be recollected that, at the time of the Trent affair, Federal agents had bought up a great quantity of saltpetre here, and that, in expectation that this might be used against ourselves in case of war, the export of the article was prohibited by an Order in Council. This prohibition was withdrawn when the settlement of the Trent affair removed the apprehension of war. “It affords me pleasure,” says Mr Seward thereupon, “to know that the inhibition of saltpetre, which was so unnecessary, has been rescinded.”

“It has been only European sympathies and European aid,” he proceeds in the next sentence, “that have enabled our disloyal citizens to prolong the civil war.” The coupling of his pleasure at getting munitions of war from England with his complaint against European aid to the South, is too impudent not to be, we hope, accidental.

Now, does any foreign European statesman living think that it would be a light task to persuade England to restrain the liberty of her subjects, or to change her laws? Would any such statesman think that he was labouring for a practicable object, if he were to found his efforts on the assumption that such changes would be made at his suggestion? Would any European people, of whose Government he should be the agent, regard such efforts with other feelings than derision? Yet there are ministers of potent Governments who could show plausible reasons for expecting that their efforts might prevail, and who could urge their arguments with skill and eloquence. But even if, confident in their long experience and profound knowledge of diplomacy, they might venture on the experiment, is it possible to suppose that, when the failure should be manifest, they would, instead of abandoning the ground for surer footing, continue to build an entire policy on the shadowy foundation, though certain to see the baseless fabric sink as often as it should be raised? Yet such is the hopeless task in which the American Secretary persists with dreary pertinacity. Some malign spell seems to rule his course like that by which Michael Scott compelled the devil to make ropes of sand, and to bale out the sea with a limpet-shell. All his arguments, all his complaints, all his homilies, are based on the delusion that he can compel the British Government, by the marvellous force of his persuasive eloquence, to occupy with him a cloudland of his own creation; where a resolute people in arms is a dwindling faction; where a strife that drenches a continent in blood is a waning insurrection; where the victorious result always seems close, yet is always receding; where in the obstruction of a commercial system there is nothing which the partners in that system are entitled to take note of; where the Union, repelled at all points, and staggering under a load of debt, is said to exercise authority in all but a few rebellious spots, and to keep firm hold on the affections of all but a few misguided men; and where nefarious contracts, armies of mercenaries and deserters and plundering generals, are bright examples of the virtue and patriotism of a great people elicited in the hour of trial. All his instructions, all his remonstrances, all his prophecies, proceed upon the assumption that these delusions are facts. If it were not so, the vast volume of despatches would shrink to the size of a pamphlet; for every dispute, every argument, every feeling of injury, has its root in the shadowy standing-ground which he chooses to occupy. Of this he appears sensible himself when he says:—

“I have not failed to see that every wrong this country has been
called to endure at the hands of any foreign Power has been a natural
if not a logical consequence of the first grave error which that Power
committed in conceding to an insurrection, which would otherwise have
been ephemeral, the rights of a public belligerent. It has seemed,
therefore, to be wise, as well as more dignified, to urge the
retrogression upon that false step, rather than to elaborate
complaints of the injuries that have followed it.”

It would have been well had he done so; but instead he has, without ceasing to urge retrogression, indulged in ceaseless complaints. Wrapt in his delusions, he drifts calmly on the tide of events that is bearing him and his despatches to chaos, and takes the crack of doom for a wholesome thunderstorm which is to clear the political atmosphere. Nothing can surpass the feeble complacency with which he records his perpetual illusions as incontrovertible facts. On Feb. 19, 1862, he writes to Mr Adams:—

“I was just about instructing you how to answer the querulous
complaints in Parliament which you have anticipated, the chief of
which is the assumed incompetency of Government to suppress the
insurrection. But a very shrewd observer, a loyal, and at present
exiled Virginian, fell in at the moment, and expressed to me the
opinion that the end of the war is in sight; that there will be a
short and rapid series of successes over a disheartened conspiracy,
and then all will be over. I give you these opinions as entitling us
to what is sometimes granted by candid tribunals—namely, a suspension
of judgment.”

It is a pity that the name of the shrewd observer has not been preserved. So sagacious a man ought not to be anonymous.

On the 10th of February he tells us:—

“The process of preparation has steadily gone on in the loyal States,
while that of exhaustion has been going on in the disloyal.... We have
the most satisfactory evidence that the Union will be hailed in every
quarter just as fast as the army shall emancipate the people from the
oppression of the insurgent leaders.”

March 15—“The financial and moral, as well as the physical, elements of the insurrection seem to be rapidly approaching exhaustion.” On 25th March it seems impossible to the sanguine Secretary that the organisation of the insurgents can be longer maintained. On 28th April he asserts that “to-day the country is assuming that the fate of this unnatural war is determined by the great event of the capture of New Orleans.” On the 5th May the fiscal system of the insurgents must, he calculates, have exploded, and their military connections be everywhere broken. On 28th May the Federal Government is said to possess the Mississippi and all the other great natural highways. And on June 2—

“The war in the Mississippi valley may be deemed virtually ended....
The army of General M‘Clellan will be rapidly strengthened, although
it is already deemed adequate to the capture of Richmond.... No
American now indulges any doubt that the integrity of the Union will
be triumphantly maintained.”

24th June:—

“You tell me that in England they still point to the delays at
Richmond and Corinth, and they enlarge upon the absence of displays of
Union feeling in New Orleans and Norfolk. Ah, well! scepticism must be
expected in this world in regard to new political systems, insomuch as
even Divine revelation needs the aid of miracles to make converts to a
new religious faith.”

On 7th July, after M‘Clellan’s disasters, he says:—

“The military situation is clearly intelligible, and ought to be
satisfactory to the cool and candid judgment of the country.... We
have a rumour that Vicksburg is actually taken. But the report is
premature, though we have no doubt but the capture has before this
time occurred.”

And on the 10th November, just before the defeat of Fredericksburg, we find him “apprehending no insurmountable obstacles to complete success.”

Nor are his prophecies addressed only to England. On the 15th April he tells Mr Dayton:—

“A few days will probably complete the opening of the Mississippi
river, and restore to the country that national outlet of the great
granary of America which disunion, in its madness, has temporarily
attempted to obstruct, in violation not more of political laws than of
the ordinances of nature.”

22d April:—

“We have reason to expect Savannah to come into our possession within
the next ten days.”

5th May:—

“We shall have peace and union in a very few months, let France and
Great Britain do what they may. We should have them in one month if
either the Emperor or the Queen should speak the word, and say, If the
life of this unnatural insurrection hangs on an expectation of our
favour, let it die. To bring the Emperor to this conviction is your
present urgent duty.”

On the 10th May he has a vision of a Yankee millennium:—

“Less than a year will witness the dissolution of all the armies; the
ironclad navy will rest idly in our ports; taxes will immediately
decrease; and new States will be coming into the Confederacy, bringing
rich contributions to the relief and comfort of mankind.”

On the 10th July he says:—

“The reduction of Vicksburg, the possession of Chattanooga, and the
capture of Richmond, would close the civil war with complete success.
All these three enterprises are going forward. The two former will, we
think, be effected within the next ten days.”

And in September he actually bites his thumb at the Emperor:—

“We have not been misled,” he says, “by any of the semblances of
impartiality or of neutrality which unfriendly proceedings towards us
in a perilous strife have put on. When any Government shall incline to
a new and more unfriendly attitude, we shall then revise with care our
existing relations towards that Power, and shall act in the emergency
as becomes a people who have never yet faltered in their duty to
themselves while they were endeavouring to improve the condition of
the human race.”

Compared with these prophecies the ravings of Mother Shipton become respectable oracles. Yet on them was founded the entire foreign policy of the Federal Government; the complaints that foreign statesmen and other sane persons would not confide in them were incessant; and they were the lights by which American envoys were expected to steer.

These gentlemen, with more or less sense and discretion, all write in the stilted creaking style, stuck over with hard metaphors, which distinguishes the master-spirit Seward, and which appears to be the characteristic of American public compositions. They seem to have caught, and to express very honestly, not only his style but his ideas, and to represent perfectly the querulous, arrogant, exacting tone of the Secretary. It is not, probably, from a wish to do him homage that they thus accurately reflect him, but rather because it is natural to American politicians to take abroad with them that idea of the pre-eminence of their country which they have passed their lives at home in asserting, and because their habit of regarding England as the abode of a jealous aristocracy, and as being always in the wrong, places them in a position of natural antagonism to us in every case that can arise. But, granting this to be inevitable, we may consider ourselves very fortunate that America is represented among us by a gentleman in every way so entitled to respect as Mr Adams. The son of one President and the grandson of another, both of whom were elected to the chief place in the Republic at a time when something else besides obscurity and the absence of any quality which could excite the jealousy of aspiring men, was demanded for the attainment of the position which Washington had filled, the claims of Mr Adams as a public man evidently rest on other grounds than those of ordinary American politicians. We do not doubt that the expressions of goodwill and courtesy addressed to him from our Foreign Office are perfectly sincere and deserved. It is true that the tone of his correspondence with that office is often captious, and his demands are sometimes unreasonable. Without prompting from his own Government he seems often to prejudge questions of international law with a bias that blinds him to the true bearing of the question, as in the case of the Emily St Pierre, and leads him to treat as an injury the denial of concessions which are denied because impossible to be granted. But this is the traditionary character of American diplomacy: it thus expresses the spirit of the people, with the promptings of which a Minister may think himself bound to comply; and both Mr Adams and Mr Dayton, Minister to France, appear in their correspondence to discharge their duties with great zeal and fidelity, and, moreover, to display the virtue, not by any means universal among their brethren, of confining themselves to the business of their own legations.

We need not say that our remarks relate only to Mr Adams’s share in the published correspondence, and not to his later acts. The extraordinary step he took on the 9th April, in granting a permit to an English vessel enabling her to pass the blockade, is fraught with consequences too important to be dwelt on here, and, if unexplained, would force us largely to qualify our encomium.

It might be supposed that the ties between Austria and America are neither numerous nor close, and that consequently the Minister to Vienna would find but a narrow field for the display of his qualities as a diplomatist. Accordingly we find Mr Motley, in the dearth of other matter, falling back upon the grand resource of American politicians, and discussing English affairs as the most natural topic possible to engage the attention of an envoy at Vienna. From that convenient point of observation, then, he proceeds to enlighten the Washington Cabinet on the disposition and intentions of the statesmen, and organs of the press, of Great Britain; and as other ministers elsewhere imitate this course, the Government of Mr Lincoln has the advantage of seeing British policy represented, not merely in the aspect in which it is seen by Mr Adams the special photographer, but as it appears when viewed by amateurs from the various capitals of Europe.

Should a Tory Government succeed the present Cabinet, Mr Motley anticipates much trouble. Nothing, he says, can exceed the virulence with which the extreme Conservative party regard America, nor the delight with which they look forward to its extinction as a nation. The hatred to the English Radicals is, he has discovered, “the secret of the ferocity and brutality with which the ‘Times,’ the ‘Saturday Review,’ and other Tory organs of the press, have poured out their insults upon America ever since the war began.” How the journals thus classified may approve being linked together as Tory organs, we cannot say. To ourselves we, of course, see nothing personal in the general allusion, our leaning to Radicalism and Republicanism being too notorious to admit of any mistake. Subsequently Mr Motley writes a long essay about British matters, explaining the sentiments of the “venerable Premier of England” and our Foreign Minister, and criticising the speech made by Mr Gladstone at Newcastle, part of which makes him very angry, and causes him to express a hope that that statesman’s tongue may be blistered. Nor, unusual as his style of diplomatic correspondence may appear, does he stand quite alone in it.

It is possible that the godfathers and godmothers of Mr Cassius Marcellus Clay are, in principal degree, responsible for the efforts made by that gentleman to attain notoriety. It would be mean to sneak obscurely about the world under such magnificent appellations. Better, in such a case, be called John Thomas. Hence, without any quality apparent that would entitle the bearer of these historic names to claim distinction amid the company of a pothouse, his efforts to become known in the world have been as unceasing as if he were some wronged genius entitled to a hearing. At the outbreak of hostilities he launched from Paris a tremendous defiance against our unfortunate country. Then he published a letter in the ‘Times,’ telling us what we ought to do in the American quarrel, and, in case we should not comply, threatening our great-grandchildren with the vengeance of we forget how many millions of unborn Yankees. At this time he was on his way to St Petersburg as United States Minister to Russia. For his guidance he had received one of Mr Seward’s most elaborate moral essays, beginning in this remarkable way: “Sir,—Nations, like individuals, have three prominent wants: first, freedom; secondly, prosperity; thirdly, friends. The United States early secured the two first objects by the exercise of courage and enterprise. But, although they have always practised singular moderation, they nevertheless have been slow in winning friends.” Fortified with a great deal of this kind of composition, Mr Clay arrived in the Russian capital. From his own correspondence we learn that he found the Emperor “absent in the direction of Moscow,” and being advised by the Assistant-Secretary of State to await his Majesty’s return, “I presumed,” he says, “it would not be agreeable to the Emperor for me to follow on.” In a few days he had an interview with Prince Gortchakoff, who “asked after Pickens” (whether Pickens is something, or some place, or somebody, does not appear), “my family, and other things in a familiar way, when I was dismissed by again shaking hands.” Soon after we learn that he and “his suite, Green Clay, William C. Goodloe, and T. Williams,” set out for Peterhoff, where the Emperor received them, and addressed Mr Clay in a set speech, which was delivered in Russian, though, says he, “the Emperor spoke American mostly.” We are at liberty, therefore, to suppose that his Majesty, during great part of the interview, spoke through his nose; and, no doubt, Prince Gortchakoff, who spoke only English, beheld with wonder, not unmixed with envy, this exhibition of his Imperial master’s accomplishments as a linguist.

Mr Clay then addressed to the Emperor an essay on the moral government of Russia, which, from internal evidence, we pronounce to have been learnt by heart from a prize paper by Seward. “The Emperor,” he says, “seemed much gratified and really moved by this last remark,” possibly because it was the last; and, besides speaking Russian and American, Alexander was so ostentatious as to conclude the interview by speaking English, perhaps deeming it appropriate to the subject-matter. “He wanted to know if I thought England would interfere. I told him we did not care what she did; that her interference would tend to unite us the more; that we fought the South with reluctance; we were much intermarried and of a common history; but that the course of England had aroused our sensibilities towards her in no very pleasant manner. The Emperor seemed to like my defiance of old John Bull very much. He wanted to know if I was a relative of Henry Clay, and what was my military rank. I told him I was only a distant relation of Clay, and that I wore the uniform of an American colonel” (borrowed, perhaps, from another relation, Pipe Clay), “which rank I filled in my own country.” His Majesty then shook hands twice with the Ambassador, and dismissed him.

Before concluding the despatch from which we learn the foregoing interesting particulars, it seems to have occurred to Mr Clay that it would be judicious to show Mr Seward that moralising on the war was a game which two could play at; and he wound up in the following style:—

“I have already made this letter too long; but I cannot conclude
without saying how much more and more I value the great and
inestimable blessings of our Government, and how I trust in God that
no compromise will be made of the great idea for which we have so long
fought, but that General Scott, following out the programme of Mr
Lincoln’s inaugural, will _slowly_ and _surely_ subdue the rebellion,
‘stock, lock, and gun-barrel,’ ‘hook and line, bob and sinker,’ and
that we may all be spared to see once more the glorious old banner
restored,—‘Liberty and union, now and for ever—one and inseparable.’”

These extracts from the Clay correspondence of 1861 will no doubt cause the reader keenly to regret that we cannot give more. But the fact is that, whether Mr Seward was jealous of Mr Clay’s native humour as displayed in these papers, or considered him a formidable rival as a moral essayist, or whatever the cause might be, the omissions are so numerous that a great part of the Ambassador’s correspondence consists of asterisks, leaving only the driest details, such as any ordinary John Thomas or Green Clay might have written. So numerous are the stars between the stripes of print, that the successive pages look like so many representations of the American banner. But in January last year he wrote an essay on the subject of the perfidy and general villainy of Great Britain, which has fortunately been preserved entire. “In this critical time,” he says, “whether war or peace with England ensues, I deem it my duty to give the President my impressions of European sentiment.” He then details the reasons why the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe have always regarded his republic with jealousy. “Their jealousy, their secret hate, their blind vengeance verges,” Mr Clay thinks, “upon insanity;.... they renew with us the fable of the wolf and the lamb; though we are below on the mountain stream, we are accused of muddying the waters.” His method of dealing with Secession is tersely expressed—“I have always thought that the whole property of the rebels, slaves and all, should be summarily confiscated.” But before prescribing this treatment for the South, he devotes a paragraph to the way in which England should be handled:—

“In case of war with England,” he says, “Canada should be seized at
all hazards. A large force should be first placed in fortifications in
some place suitable near the coast, which would cut off reinforcements
from England. Union with us, with equal rights, should be offered the
Canadians, and the lives and property of friends secured. Men and
money should be sent to Ireland, India, and all the British dominions
all over the world, to stir up revolt. Our cause is just; and
vengeance will sooner or later overtake that perfidious aristocracy.”

Such was the esteem in which the Cabinet of Washington held either the practical qualities evinced in this essay, or the diplomatic services veiled under the asterisks, that they were considered to entitle him, on his return to America, to the position of a Brigadier-General. In the records of the war we cannot, however, find that Brigadier Cassius Marcellus ever performed any military achievement worthy either of the foe of Cæsar or the foe of Hannibal. He seems to have worn his warlike honours with remarkable meekness, and never to have done anything to fulfil his own aspiration that “liberty and union may be for ever inseparable,” by taking the smallest step towards the subjugation of the enemy. Under these circumstances Mr Seward, finding his military so inferior to his diplomatic talents, seems to have thought that the Brigadier who had failed to bid defiance to the South would find a more appropriate field of action in resuming his employment of gratifying the Emperor of Russia with other defiances of “old John Bull”—and accordingly we learn that the eminent statesman either is, or is to be, once more Minister to St Petersburg, and may possibly be at this moment engaged in his favourite occupations of shaking the hand of the Emperor, and shaking his own hand at the British monarchy. If it be so, we may perhaps hope to read, in another state paper, of his second reception at the Court of Russia—which, judging from the familiar cordiality displayed in the first, may, if the Czar should again deign to express himself in the American language, open something in this way,—“Wal, Cassius M. Clay, how air you, old hoss? Do you feel pretty brisk and spry, sir? How is it you ha’n’t chawed up them rebels yet, lock, stock, and gun-barrel, hook and line, bob and sinker? What do you think of _our_ insurrection to Poland, sir?”

Future volumes of these documents will probably reveal Mr Seward as still assuring his correspondents that the end of the rebellion is at hand; that foreign Governments will soon see dire reason to repent their hostility; that the Union is growing stronger with every “reverse of our arms;” that discord and desertion and corruption are only “fresh developments of patriotism;” and that the flooding of the lands on the Mississippi, far from being an act of barbarous vindictiveness, will be as beneficent in its consequences as the overflowing of the Nile. We shall probably see, too, that American envoys, addressing themselves, not to Mr Seward, but to the masses behind him, his masters and theirs, are still denouncing our perfidious aristocracy and jealous monarchy. Is it a comedy or a tragedy that these men are acting? If unconscious absurdity and ludicrous unfitness for the conduct of grave affairs were all the elements of the exhibition, we might well afford to laugh; but, unfortunately, the grotesque display has its terrible side, and incapacity and conceit only increase the tremendous power of mischief wielded by the principal characters in the burlesque. Meanwhile the course of foreign Governments is not likely to be materially affected by the lucubrations of the American Secretary of State; and, amidst the strange displays of weakness made by the North, not the least strange will be the futility of its diplomacy.

THE BUDGET.

The soundness of the position taken up by the Opposition last year in regard to the national finances, has this year been fully established by the admissions and procedure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It may seem remarkable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should preface his financial statement by referring to a resolution of the House, which was adopted at the instance of the Opposition,—that he should avowedly base his present Budget upon that resolution. But Mr Gladstone is a Minister of consummate Parliamentary tact, who avails himself of every plea which best serves his purpose for the time; and, as we shall see in the sequel, he had a special reason for thus seeking to cover with the authority of Parliament a Budget which is not quite so accordant with the resolution of the House as he desires it to be thought. The resolution, which was adopted at the instance of the Opposition, and upon which the Chancellor of the Exchequer professedly bases his present Budget, insisted upon the necessity of reducing the national expenditure. It was urged upon the Government that the financial administration of the three previous years had been such as to trench deeply upon the extraordinary resources of the country, and that, while ostensibly adding to the military strength of the country, we were really diminishing our power by exhausting the sources by which the expenses of war and national defence could be sustained. It was pointed out that during these years we had not only abolished, and put out of reach, several important taxes for the remission of which there was no urgent necessity, but that, in order to do so, we had actually incurred a considerable deficit. Of late years not only the leaders of the Opposition, but some of the highest financial authorities on the Ministerial side of the House—including Lord Overstone, Lord Monteagle, and Earl Grey—had denounced as most impolitic the hand-to-mouth system pursued by Mr Gladstone, and had urged the necessity of framing the estimates with a view to obtaining a substantial yearly surplus. These were the considerations which led the House of Commons last summer to adopt the resolution to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer now appeals in justification of his Budget; and they must not be forgotten when examining how far the financial programme of the present year is in accordance with that resolution.

A new critic now takes the field against Mr Gladstone, and adds his protest to those which have already been made by the other leading financial authorities. In a new edition of his work on Taxation, that veteran Liberal and political economist, Mr M’Culloch, severely criticises the recent financial policy of the Government, and endorses with his high and obviously impartial authority the opinions by which that policy has been so often combated by the Conservatives. To all the special features of Gladstonian finance Mr M’Culloch is opposed. He is strongly in favour of the maintenance of a good yearly surplus, as an indispensable feature of a prudent system of finance; he condemns as most impolitic that narrowing of the area of taxation which Mr Gladstone extols as a “simplification of the tariff;” and he moreover objects, in the strongest terms, to the manner in which that principle of “simplification” has been applied.

It is not surprising that the voice of protest should thus be raised from all quarters against the principles of Mr Gladstone’s finance. To begin with, he has been a most prodigal financier, and cares not a jot for the future. At a time when the charges on the National Debt were reduced by the falling-in of the terminable annuities, to the extent of two millions a-year—when there was an unexpected repayment of a portion of the Spanish loan, and other windfalls—and when he found a surplus of considerable amount left to him by his predecessors in office,—then surely, if ever, the country had a right to expect from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a succession of good annual balance-sheets. If the policy of maintaining a substantial surplus is not carried out under these favourable circumstances, the fault must lie with the administrator of the national finances. Yet, so far has Mr Gladstone been from adhering to the old and sound maxim of financial policy, that he has not only given us no surplus, but has recklessly incurred us a deficit, of which he now makes no mention. Had this bad condition of the finances been incurred in consequence of an exceptional increase of the national expenditure which could only be met by the imposition of new taxes, it might have been excusable. But there was no such difficulty: the revenue was sufficient, if let alone, to have more than kept pace with the expenditure. The peculiar culpability of Mr Gladstone as a financial Minister—the pernicious feature of his system which called forth the eloquent denunciation of Lord Overstone, and the emphatic protest of Earl Grey and Lord Monteagle, and of the ablest financial journal of the Liberal party, the ‘Economist’—is, that during this period of so-called exceptional expenditure he has deliberately thrown away the means which were at his disposal for meeting it. He has abolished taxes against which there was no peculiar ground of complaint, and he has reduced others in order to cheapen certain commodities for which there was no general demand.