Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/50



century? It was not enough that the English people should hold to views as liberal or work for ends as lofty as ours. They had taken higher ground and had claimed for themselves a nabler position. For twenty years they had sneered at the flaming lie stereotyped in every edition of the fundamental laws of the land, and declaimed from every village green upon the anniversary of the nation's birthday, that all men were born free and equal. At last by necessity or from principle, (and which it was was no concern of theirs) we had learned to look upon slavery from an English point of view. We expected a hearty welcome into the ranks of the abolitionists of Europe. We were now all of one mind, and slavery should no longer disgrace the land. And we claimed and expected the reward due to the laborer who had begun at the eleventh hour. We did not receive the expected welcome. So much in fact did we look for from England and from Englishmen, that we were not prepared to make any allowance for the influence of greed and avarice when operating upon the minds of our cousins across the waters. New York merchants might clear millions of tons of goods nominally for Matamoras, but in reality for Brownsville in Texas, with scarcely an aspersion upon their loyalty, but the Liverpool and Glasgow trader who attempted the same adventure by way of Nassau was deemed guilty of an offence of the most heinous character. And while a majority of Americans declared that Juarez and his companions were fighting as we were fighting, the cause of republicanism for the whole world, the sympathies of a wealthy steamship company of San Francisco were scarcely thought to be misplaced by sending from our own port cargo after cargo of goods contraband of war to aid Maximillian in his effort to found an Empire on the ruins of our nearest sister Republic. We have never heard that beyond the seizure of one steamer by

the Liberal party, the managers or stock-holders of that corporation have been visited with any punishment or damage for this violation of the law of the land or the cause of Constitutional liberty. And when Spain was carrying on her late war with the South American. Republics, waged as it undoubtedly was for the re-establishment of Spanish dominion in that quarter of the globe, and a steamer of two thousand tons burthen was fitted out with arms and equipments in this port by merchants of San Francisco, so flagrantly as to be within the common knowledge of all, and sent to sea to be delivered to the Spanish authorities off the beleagured port of Valparaiso, almost, if not absolutely beneath the guns of an American cruiser, who thought that the crime of Mr. Laird of Birkenhead was being committed at our own doors and by our most respected citizens? Indeed, it is even probable that those merchants who fitted out the "Uncle Sam" to sell to Her Catholic Majesty to be used in the Chilian war, have old grievances against England for Alabama depredations. But we did not look for Englishmen to be avaricious. They were expected to rise above all selfishness, to be careless of gain. Nay more, they were expected now that we had left off slave-driving, or were about to do so if we could no longer avoid it, to join with us in the glorious work with heart and hand, nor rest till the whole world had become free, and made to acknowledge the universal brotherhood of man.

But the disappointment came, and in our opinion was from the first inevitable. We do not believe that it was ever possible for the people of England, as represented by the governing classes— we had almost said the thinking classes —to look upon the American war in such a manner as to satisfy the susceptibilities of the North.

And this not because of any difference in the spirit or character of the two peo