Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Untitled]
From the Times, December 5,
1865.
There are few Englishmen of any feeling who would not have a host of
once vivid impressions revived by the sight of Mr. Seward’s despatch
to the American minister in our Saturday’s columns. It is only seven
months since we heard the news of a crime which grows in magnitude
and in horror as we drift away from it down the swift stream of
time. The intervening period has not been uneventful or unexciting.
We too, like the Americans, have lost the political chief of our
government, and quietly accepted the next in authority. The United
States themselves have been pacified, reorganized, and reunited,
with a rapidity and ease that command our admiration. Our own
immense empire has never failed to produce, somewhere or other,
objects of anxious or agreeable interest. At home we are dividing
our time between domestic economies and organic reconstruction. Our
hands are never idle, but we can still feel the shock of the
frightful tragedy which only in the spring of this year threw into
the background every lesser or older misery, and might atone for any
number of errors. It so happened that Abraham Lincoln, by the
progress of or the amendment of truth, had righted himself in
English esteem, and then stood as well in our regards as any foreign
potentate could ever hope to stand. We admired the man, and were
beginning to like him, seeing in him the able and kind-hearted
administrator of the greatest work of social peace-making the world
had yet seen. So we felt his murder as we should have done that of a
leading British statesman at the hands of a political fanatic. There
was more, indeed, in his case than there would ever be in this
country, unless we could suppose half the realm making head against
the other half for several years. There was the grand ceremony of a
national reconciliation to be performed, and, as Heaven would have
it, there lay bleeding before us the victim to consecrate it. Other
victims were intended, and the assassins so far succeeded that one,
the foremost statesman on the federal side, and the man with whom we
had most to do, had to endure for months a living martyrdom. The
strong will, the active intellect, and the ready tongue lay
trembling between life and death when the most difficult stage of
his great task had only just begun. We could not but be deeply
impressed with a catastrophe that appealed to the chief qualities of
our race, and the national sympathy burst out at a thousand
openings, wherever many or few had been wont to come together and
make a common utterance. It was the same elsewhere. So mail after
mail took across the Atlantic such piles of condolence as had
probably never before been evoked by any national bereavement.
Answer could hardly be expected, for the man to answer was himself a
dying man, for the time as helpless as his chief. So we were all
content to wait; and now, after seven months, we find that we can
revert to that crisis with undiminished horror at the deed, and
larger and more certain knowledge of its place in the work of
American reconstruction.
The American Secretary of State has done all that could be done under
the circumstances. Any attempt to produce a form of words specially
appropriate to every address and every community would have been
only a ridiculous effort of literary clerkship. Even in this country
people are little aware of the pressure of work in the principal
departments on an extraordinary crisis or in a busy season. At
Washington there was a war to be brought to an end, a great empire
to be rebuilt, and a good many questions with other countries to be
settled, if possible, to the satisfaction alike of the American and
of the foreigner. Mr. Seward, who has recovered slowly from his
terrible succession of injuries, has only just been able to speak
for himself and his government. The British public will not have
failed to notice the modesty with which the Secretary alludes to the
cause of this delay. His department was indeed crippled when he lay,
as many thought, on his death-bed, with wound upon wound; for that
was “the peculiar calamity” which then impaired the efficiency of
the American foreign office. That a government simply constructed
for the transaction of necessary affairs in the ordinary course of
public business should have been able to do its share in the work of
the war was itself a wonder to this country. But when a new calamity
involved new “obligations”—the calamity a partial massacre of the
government, and the “obligations” the duty of answering
condolences—the worst foe of republican institutions could not but
do justice to the government which went on at all under such
circumstances. We all saw, and duly appreciated, that there was not
the least symptom of failure or collapse. Everything went on as
usual, as far as met the eye. Our own difficulties, indeed, are so
different in kind that it is not easy to make a just and
intelligible comparison; but after witnessing the confusion apt to
take place in other States upon the sudden withdrawing or the
disabling of those at the head of critical affairs, we seemed to
recognize a character like our own in a
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people whose chief rulers fell or were
prostrated in a day, at a time when they were more than ever wanted,
but which went on just as usual.
The simple but Very hearty acknowledgments of the American Secretary
seem to give us an opening for a word or two on the prevalent
feelings of this country towards the United States. It would be
quite idle to deny that there are points upon which this country is
jealous, or sore, or without the perfect sympathy that obtains
between two similar social systems. With long arrears of quarrels
upon one trifle or another, and a new one every year, and with a
very strong opinion on this side that our rights were often
sacrificed to political exigencies in the United States, we
certainly have found it difficult to appreciate the Americans as we
really wish to do. We can afford to make this confession when we
state what we believe to be the truth as to the great extent of our
good wishes for America. We have not the least objection to the
United States increasing to any extent, and annexing any amount of
territory or number of States, so long as it is all done honestly,
above-board, and by fair appeals to the sympathy and good sense of
the people. If the population, either of our own provinces or of
Mexico, freely and spontaneously declared that they thought this
their best chance of peace and prosperity, the British people would
only feel the most passing regret at the loss of a name, and the
proportionate aggrandizement of the United States. Of course the
case is altered if the object is to be obtained, by fraud, by force,
or by intimidation. In that case, not only is there actual wrong
done upon our own loyal fellow subjects, and others entitled to our
sympathy, but there is also established a prescription, a policy,
and a temper ruinous to the future peace and even progress of the
world. History contains some very colossal instances of continual
annexation by fraud and by violence; in fact, by policies
constructed with a special View to perpetual aggrandizement. But the
event yet condemns them; the moral sense is opposed to them; and
modern politics are mainly directed to prevent the recurrence of the
evil. It is from no special jealousy of the United States that we
dread their indefinite enlargement by the means too often employed,
and vainly denounced by American demoralists. It is our English
habit, our second nature, our historical teaching, our European law.
Even in Europe we are glad to see Italians or Germans achieve more
comprehensive unions than circumstances have hitherto allowed. Nor
should we object to any amount of aggregation in America by equally
allowable means. Only, as a great State we cannot bear to be ousted,
outwitted, and coerced, and to see our own people, suffer for their
loyalty.
