. Through the
political and pecuniary support which the public men of that section
have derived from slavery, they have been able to take and maintain
social positions at Washington, which, by circumstances, were denied to
much the larger number of northern representatives, and thus they have
influenced the politics of this country and the opinions of other
nations. Consider by how many sympathies and interests England is bound
to encourage the policy and promote the fortunes of the South. There is
the sympathy of the governing class in England for the governing class
in the South, even though they are slaveholders; there is the hostility
of the ignorant operatives in their manufacturing towns, who, through
exterior influences, have been led to believe that whatever hardships
they are brought to endure are caused by the desire of the North to
subjugate the South; there is the purpose of English merchants and
manufacturers to cripple, or if possible to destroy the manufactures and
commerce of the North; and, finally, there is the hope of all classes
that by the alienation or separation of the two sections England would
derive additional commercial advantages, and that the scheme of here
establishing a continental republic would be abandoned, never to be
again revived. There is, moreover, a reasonable expectation, founded in
the nature of things, and possibly already supported by positive
promises and pledges, that England is to stand in the relation of
protector to the confederated States. Nor will she be in the least
disturbed by the institution of slavery, if perchance that institution
survives the struggle. If she can be secure in the monopoly of the best
cotton lands on the globe, if she can be manufacturer and shop-keeper
for the South, if she can deprive the North of one half of its
legitimate commerce, if she can obtain the control of the gulf of
Mexico, of the mouth of the Mississippi, if she can command the line of
sea-coast from Galveston to Fortress Monroe or even to Charleston, and
thus compel us to make our way to the Pacific by the passes of the Rocky
Mountains exclusively, there is no sacrifice of men, or of money, or of
principle, or of justice, that would be deemed too great by the English
people and government. But what then? Are we to make war upon England
because her sympathies and interests run thus with the South? Is it not
wiser to consider why it is that the South is sustained by the interests
and