THE DUTY OF ENGLAND AND THE AMERICAN CRISIS. 61

osophical Quaker, or even an advocate for peace. He is the Kentuckian who, after liberating his own slaves, set himself to create a free opinion in his state. The attempt was a dangerous one, but for once the chivalry found themselves outmatched on their own field. Mr. Clay unhesitatingly accepted every challenge, pistolled his way to free speech, organized a band of friends to protect his lectures when assailed by force, and succeeded in rearing a free-soil party, which, to this hour, keeps Kentucky, though still a slave state, out of the secession. His last act was to organize the Clay Guard, which saved Washington when first threatened with surprise, and it was hot from the conflict that he reached England and published the sentence so injurious to his cause. Apart altogether from these arguments, which, true or false, Englishmen instinctively repel, our prestige is involved in our sympathy with the North. The power of England in the world is based on opinion rather than on strength. It is as the unswerving friends of orderly freedom that we secure in every country the support of its noblest minds. We have not struck for Italy, yet our consistent advocacy of Italian freedom has secured us in the peninsula a place which the "strong friend" of Cavour has yet to gain. It is as the "only Eden freedom knows," the "rock on which the oppressed a refuge finds," that England lives down the jealousy her prosperity inspires. Already the charge which intercepts European sympathy from her policy is that of selfishness. Already it is said we enfranchised slaves in order to weaken France, and embarrass our rivals of the West. How will that charge, now an absurdity, be justified if we, in a craven anxiety for cotton, consent to regard planters who rebel in order to perpetuate slavery, as men who are contending against wrong? Do "the principles of civil and religious liberty," so earnestly pressed on Spain, extend only to white men and Europeans, or is human freedom to be our policy only when convenient to customers? It may not be wise or even right to declare war to redress a wrong, though England renounced acquaintance with King Bomba on half the provocation, but if England is to retain her position, her sympathy must be with the slave.

But we shall be told slavery is not the issue. The Confederacy arms to support state rights; the Union to maintain the Federal claim. It is a political question, not to be decided on moral considerations. We blankly deny the fact. The Confederate

States seceded because Mr. Lincoln was elected President, an election by which state rights remained wholly unaffected. Nor, accepting for the moment Mr. Davis' theory of the sovereignty of the States, do we admit that encroachment on a state right has even been alleged. The infringement of slavery is no infringement of a right. If it be, why do we not restore escaped slaves, ask the Marshals to identify the colored fugitives in Canada, and send back Anderson to Missouri, and to the stake? The first principle of our foreign action, for a generation, has been that slavery is not a right; that it cannot be made one by any laws; that it is simply an oppression which we are powerless to prevent. Admit that the States are ordinary belligerents, that there is no question of rebellion, no English interest involved, and still the cause of war is one which binds Englishmen of necessity to the North. The North, it is said, is by no means friendly to the slaves, who have in two instances been restored. That may be true, though Governor Andrews has formally rebuked a successful general for interfering on behalf of owners; but what has that to do with the dispute? The cause of war is at all events the extension of slavery, and Englishmen, unless utter hypocrites, are as opposed to the spread of the institution as to the institution itself. If the North wins, slavery, even if it continues to exist, must be restricted to the dominion it has already acquired, will probably lose Kentucky, and certainly forfeit Delaware. If the South is victorious, slavery will be extended from Missouri to Panama. Whatever the issue, those are the results, and on which side are Englishmen to stand?

The quarrel,

We do not care to argue the question apart from this great issue, though there is much to be said even on minor points. English democracy, at least, has no special reason to support the Cavalier against the Puritan, the careless half-Oriental men of the South against the thrifty God-fearing industry of the North. But discussion of that kind is too wide of facts to be more than a literary amusement. cover it with cotton as we may, is between freedom and slavery, right and wrong, the dominion of God and the dominion of the Devil, and the duty of England, we submit, is clear. It is to refuse to recognize the Confederacy, even if in that mysterious Providence which occasionally confounds faith, slavery should for the moment win the game.

sort of commerce most likely to give offence to the other. We are sure to supply both North and South with arms, ammunition, and military stores of every kind: they can

can hardly buy them anywhere else on a sudden and in the quantities which they require. We need not pause to point out how dangerous such a trade is during such a conflict and in the present temper of men's minds.

From The Economist, 1 June. HOW TO KEEP OUT OF IT. THE more the mercantile community reflect on the possible consequences to them of the civil war in America, the more anx-buy them nowhere else so cheaply; they ious they feel upon the subject. There cannot be a doubt or a question but that at any moment very trifling transactions may hurry this country into conflict with one or other of the belligerent parties. Painfully petty transactions have been commonly the cause of the great maritime wars of the world, and in the present case there are several reasons why petty quarrels are more than usually likely at sea. The war is not, as is commonly the case, a war between two great nations with two great fleets which monopolize all the fighting, and which are amenable to strict control:-it is a conflict between the two halves of what was recently a single state-one of which is wholly without a fleet, and both of which intend to rely on privateers as well as on proper ships of war; it is a hand-to-hand battle of individual vessels upon the ocean, and while from the necessity of the case these vessels are exempted from all efficient supervision, they are manned by the most unscrupulous seafaring populations in the world, and are likely to be reinforced by the most accomplished vagabonds from all parts of the earth.

What, then, should be the conduct of our Government? Their first duty, it is certain, is one of extreme caution. A civil war, especially such a civil war, is not a thing to handle for the pleasure of it-is not a matter which should be touched, except after very careful reflection and for a very distinct purpose. We must not intervene in so terrible and anxious a confusion, except upon clear reasons of great duty to our own subjects or to others. There are, unfortunately, many indefinite points of international law which may lead us into considerable difficulty; but, as reasonable men, we should not be anxious to obtain a perfect code of naval warfare from the busy combatants in a rapid revolution. We must wait in the hope that many possible difficulties may never arise, and must deal with them if they come as best we may. But, nevertheless, we must not postpone what is present. One great difficulty has arrived, and others require prevention.

Our own position, too, is very peculiar. We wish to trade with both parties in the strife, and to stand well with both parties. In the first place, the cruisers of the North But in the present state of reciprocal infu- may search our ships for Southern goods, riation our very neutrality is a sort of cen- and may then and there seize those goods. sure upon a kind of aggravation to both. The South have abandoned this right, unEach of them claims, though upon very asked, and without any solicitation or negodifferent grounds, the moral support of Eng- tiation of ours; but the North adheres to the lish public opinion; but that public opinion old rule which we explained at length last is suspended, and will not pronounce a dis- week: they take the enemies' goods whentinct decision in favor of either, because it ever they can find them in English vessels. discerns grievous sins and errors in the con- They have by special treaties abandoned this duct of both, and because it sees a low right as respects several other countries, but combativeness and a shameful bloodthirsti- in our case it remains in full force. Our poness both at the North and at the South.sition, therefore, is this: the cargoes of our While our judgment is thus balanced, we must expect the usual fate of considerate partiality, we must expect to be hated by the greater part of both sides. We must reckon on having to do with privateers from North and South, subject to no effectual control, and almost sure to be very wrath against us, and very likely to indulge in outrages which their respective governments do not approve but cannot prevent.

Moreover, though we are as a nation neutral, and bound by principle and inclination to strict impartiality; yet individuals among us are likely, we may say are sure, to engage with each of the combatants in the

ships may be seized by the privateers and
cruisers of one of the belligerents, although
that belligerent does not pretend to seize
similar cargoes in the vessels of other na-
tions, and the other belligerents would not
seize them in any. We say advisedly that
such a state of things must not continue.
English ships must be put on the same foot-
ing as other ships by the Northern States of
America as well as by the Southern.
the treaties of the United States with vari-
ous other nations recognize the rule that
neutral ships make neutral goods as "abso-
lute and immutable," it is no hardship to
ask them to adhere to it in our case; and

As

we may have war to-morrow if English ships | not-which will be seized as contraband of are searched for every possible article that war and which will be permitted to pass free. may perchance belong to the Confederate On these points our Government have not to States, while side by side the ships of other nations are passing forward unchallenged and unsearched.

negotiate, but to inquire. They have only to ask questions which are necessary to the safety of a very valuable part of our trade, and this we do not doubt they will do.

Secondly, it is most necessary that our traders should know what ports are only The subject before us is not a light one. blockaded, and what articles are contraband A war with either of the belligerents would of war and what are not. This is a far be a terrible calamity, but a war between easier subject for a Government to deal with England and the Northern States of America than the preceding. They have merely to would be the most affecting misfortune which ask that the belligerents will make known could happen to civilization. The single their own decisions to those whom they affect good hope of the present painful instant is on occasions when it is their interest to make that the North may rise into a great, a free, them known. It is the interest of the bel- and a noble community, free from the taint ligerent who establishes a blockade that it of slavery, and able to take that moral place should be effectual, and it cannot really be in the world which the United States ought so unless it is adequately made known to all to have taken, but which they have long traders who are likely innocently to violate ceased to take. If England should be unit. Again, it is the interest of each party to fortunately hurried into a collision with this the conflict that the other should not obtain people at the crisis of their history, the rethe weapons of war-the means of carrying sults must be awful to them, to us, and to on the strife-from England: it is therefore the world; and yet, while ships are subject the interest of both parties to inform all to peculiar and great disadvantages, such an Englishmen what kind of goods are to be event is by no means unlikely. considered weapons of war and which are

Suggestions for the Explorations of Iceland: an Address delivered to the Members of the Alpine Club on April 4, 1861, by William Longman, Vice-President. London: Printed by the Alpine Club.

In this lecture Mr. Longman endeavors to impress upon the society to which he belongs the importance of directing some part of their corporate attention to the exploration of Iceland. The information which he conveys is derived almost entirely from the work of Henderson, the missionary, who, though it is fifty years since he was there, explored the island far more completely than has been done by any subsequent traveller. Mr. Longman has taken great pains to ascertain the best manner of undertaking the expedition; and we hope that he may succeed in enlisting some of his colleagues in favor of the enterprise which he has so much at heart.

Meteorological and Medical Observations on the Climate of Egypt. By Donald Dalrymple, M.I). London: Churchill.

DR. DALRYMPLE, having recently returned from an expedition to Egypt in search of health, wishes to impart the results of his experience to

those invalids who may hereafter be compelled to follow his example. His report on the climate of the country is, on the whole, decidedly favorable; and he thinks that it is likely to be of great service in the less advanced stages of pulmonary disease. Besides a series of meteorological tables, constructed from his own observations, he gives a quantity of detailed instructions respecting the management of a voyage up the Nile, which are likely to be of considerable practical use to any one who wishes to undertake the journey.

Edward

THE SECESSION CONSPIRACY. Everett, in a private letter, recently published, declares his knowledge of the fact that for thirty years leading Southern politicians had been resolved to break up the Union, and that the slavery question was but a pretext for keeping up agitation and holding the South together. The New York World is informed, from a trustworthy source, that one of the latest occupations of the now deceased Senator Douglas, was the partial preparation of a pamphlet exposing, from a personal knowledge similar to that from which Mr. Everett speaks, the secret machinations and public plans of this great Southern conspiracy.-Boston Journal.

O Daniel in judgment, for teaching that word, You cannot conceive what good fortune we wish you:

"Snakes!" you will bellow, "How could we Punch fills up a bumper, the downy old bird,

SHORT ARTICLES. Spinal Curvature, 83. Bishop's Walk, 83. Scripture Law of

Marriage, 83. French Colors, 93. Fresh Water in the Ocean, 110. Encyclopedia

Britannica, 110. Color-making, 110. Cottage History of England, 110. Hepworth

Dixon, 122. Expense of graduating at Oxford, 122. Cotton in Jamaica, 125.

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