North America, vol 1 | Page 7

the
Northern States, if wise, would have let the Southern States go. I had
blamed Buchanan as a traitor for allowing the germ of secession to
make any growth; and as I thought him a traitor then, so do I think him
a traitor now. But I had also blamed Lincoln, or rather the government
of which Mr. Lincoln in this matter is no more than the exponent, for
his efforts to avoid that which is inevitable. In this I think that I--or as I
believe I may say we, we Englishmen--were wrong. I do not see how
the North, treated as it was and had been, could have submitted to
secession without resistance. We all remember what Shakspeare says of
the great armies which were led out to fight for a piece of ground not
large enough to cover the bodies of those who would be slain in the
battle; but I do not remember that Shakspeare says that the battle was
on this account necessarily unreasonable. It is the old point of honor
which, till it had been made absurd by certain changes of circumstances,
was always grand and usually beneficent. These changes of
circumstances have altered the manner in which appeal may be made,
but have not altered the point of honor. Had the Southern States sought
to obtain secession by constitutional means, they might or might not
have been successful; but if successful, there would have been no war. I
do not mean to brand all the Southern States with treason, nor do I

intend to say that, having secession at heart, they could have obtained it
by constitutional means. But I do intend to say that, acting as they did,
demanding secession not constitutionally, but in opposition to the
constitution, taking upon themselves the right of breaking up a
nationality of which they formed only a part, and doing that without
consent of the other part, opposition from the North and war was an
inevitable consequence.
It is, I think, only necessary to look back to the Revolution by which
the United States separated themselves from England to see this. There
is hardly to be met, here and there, an Englishman who now regrets the
loss of the revolted American colonies; who now thinks that
civilization was retarded and the world injured by that revolt; who now
conceives that England should have expended more treasure and more
lives in the hope of retaining those colonies. It is agreed that the revolt
was a good thing; that those who were then rebels became patriots by
success, and that they deserved well of all coming ages of mankind.
But not the less absolutely necessary was it that England should
endeavor to hold her own. She was as the mother bird when the young
bird will fly alone. She suffered those pangs which Nature calls upon
mothers to endure.
As was the necessity of British opposition to American independence,
so was the necessity of Northern opposition to Southern secession. I do
not say that in other respects the two cases were parallel. The States
separated from us because they would not endure taxation without
representation--in other words, because they were old enough and big
enough to go alone. The South is seceding from the North because the
two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different
appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one
man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to
say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth.
Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which the
two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing that
other points of difference are to be found in every circumstance and
feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be
dissimilar. In the North labor will always be honorable, and because
honorable, successful. In the South labor has ever been servile--at least
in some sense--and therefore dishonorable; and because dishonorable,

has not, to itself, been successful. In the South, I say, labor ever has
been dishonorable; and I am driven to confess that I have not hitherto
seen a sign of any change in the Creator's fiat on this matter. That labor
will be honorable all the world over as years advance and the
millennium draws nigh, I for one never doubt.
So much for English opinion about America in August last. And now I
will venture to say a word or two as to American feeling respecting this
English opinion at that period. It will of course be remembered by all
my readers that, at the beginning of the war, Lord Russell, who was
then in the lower house, declared, as Foreign