Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/245

Rh human industry and the great cause of human civilization. It would be of the deepest interest to such a government to preserve peace, and to improve its opportunities for the pursuit of the useful arts. The residue of the world would find here, too, sources of supply of more than one of the great staples in which manufactures and commerce are most deeply interested, and these sources would probably prove to be not only constant, as being little likely to be troubled by the chances of war, but also of easy access to all who might desire to resort to them. In presenting the great importance of this question to the Government of Great Britain in its connection with their material interests, you will not omit its bearing upon the future political relations between the old and the new world. With a balance of power established between the great Confederacies on the North American continent, the fears of a disturbance of the peace of the world from the desire for the annexation of contiguous territory on the part of a vast and overshadowing political and military organization will be dissipated. Under the former Union the slaveholding States had an interest in the acquisition of territory suitable to their institutions in order to establish a balance of power within the Government for their own protection. This reason no longer exists, as the Confederate States have sought that protection by a separation from the Union in which their rights were endangered. It is manifest from the nature of its interests that the Southern Confederacy in entering as a new member in the family of nations would exercise not a disturbing but a harmonizing influence on human society, for it would not only desire peace itself, but to some extent become a bond of peace amongst others. In offering these views to the Government of Great Britain, you will be able to say with truth that you present a case precisely and entirely within the principles upon which it has acted since 1821,—principles so well stated by Lord John Russell in his dispachesdispatches [sic] upon the Italian question that they can not be better defined than in his own words. In his letter to Lord Cowley, of the 15th November, 1859, after adverting to the action of Great Britain in 1821 in regard to the declarations of the Congresses of Troppan and Laybach; in 1823 in regard to the Congress of Verona, and in 1825, 1827 and 1830 in the cases of the South American Republics, of Greece and of Belgium, he says: "Thus in these five instances the policy of Great Britain appears to have been directed by a consistent principle. She uniformly withheld her consent to acts of intervention by force to alter the internal