The Express.
London, England, 1862-05-02 00:00:00

THE WAR IN AMERICA.

PO PO IDITOI OP THE WPM.
Srs.,—l read in the Times a few days ago that
Mr. Spoor had shown "in his admirable work"
that the -war now raging in America "was not a
war for slavey or emancipation, but for political
predominance." I have since read the " admirable
work " in question ; and the only thing I can
gather from it distinctly is, that, in Mr. Srpence's
opinion, the Union is too large and had better be
broken up. What he really considers the cause of
the civil war I have been totally unable to discover;
and I have been so much struck by his contradic-
tions, as well as by his blunders, that I can only
account for the success of his work upon the theory
that any reason is good enough to support a fore-
gone conclusion. A large portion of the public
must have been determined to believe the worst of
Americana or their institutions before Mr. Spence's
book appeared at ally or it could not possibly have
run through four editions in twelve months. It is
iin 14e to suppose that any considerable number
of en can have sat down to read it without
a strong. hiss, and have risen up either convinced
that he is right or knowing what he means.
That portion of his work which treats of the
causes of the war is naturally the one which pos-
sesses most interest here, and it furnishes such
abundant proof not only that he is not competent
to reveal them to the public, but does not know
what they are himself, that I cannot help asking
your permission to prove my charges by a few cita-
tions from it
He assign., in Chap. 111., three causes for the
disruption of the Union :—"First, a political
cause—the reversal of the balance of power by the
immigration into the Northern States ; secondly,
embittered feeling, existing originally, but aggra-
vated by the continued agitation of the Northern
abolitionists ; thirdly, endangered interests, exposed
now to the action of the protectionistparty on their
emulsion to power." I
Had he remained content with stating these con-
clusions as they stand here it might have been dif-
ficult
to upset them, but he has unfortunately at-
tempted
to prove them at length, and thus plunges
himself and his readers at once into the mire.
He starts lsy asserting, what is very true, that
the immigration of Irish and Germans into the
Northern 13tates during the last thirty years has
caused the Northern population to increase in a I
much larger ratio than that of the South, which
was kept down by the prohibition of the slave trade.
What effect this had in " reversing the balance
of power," as he calls it, does not, however, clearly
appear, inasmuch as though it increased the popu-
lation of the North, the vast majority of the votes
of the new camera were given to the ' democratic"
or pro-slavery party, or, in other words, to the
cause of the South. The Irish catholics at the
North were, as is well known, the most bitter
enemies of the anti-slavery agitation to be found on
the Continent. What use the South made of
them Mr. Spence explains as follows. Speaking of
the republican party, which elected Mr. Lincoln,
lie says, " This party comprises the great mass of
the intellect and wealth of the North. It is also
the protectionist party. Its leaning is in favour of
a strong government, and whatever there may be
of aristocracy at the North belongs to it. To this
party the &nth, whose system as regards the
ruling political class is essentially aristocratic,
should naturally have been allied. But here arises',
a singular result of the complexity of .American
government. The aristocracy of the South act in
conjunction rich with the cooservation, but with
the democracy of the North. From the first the
Southern Stites anticipated danger at the
hands of I. strong government which might
pass into other hands than their own.
Slavery wall originally on the defensive,
and under *Auld of their own State governments
they were in seety ; all beyond was insecure. They
were the supporter of state right, as opposed to
the powers of the central government Conser-
vatives themselves, they became the opponents
of conservative principles in the Federal body. I
By means of tins alliance the South maintained
its original political supremacy not only long after ,
the change in relative population had removed its
1
solid foundation, but down to the present day."
(Pp. 103-4.) A few lines before this he remarks
also, " in the House of Representatives the num- I
bar of members from the free States had long pre-
ponderated ; but here th,. effect of numbers was'
neutralised bypolitieal skill. Had the North acted
as one body it would have been irresistible ; but by
its division into two parties bitterly opposed it was in
the power of the South by uniting with one of them
to outvote the other, and command a constant
majority."
So that it would appear from this that the immi-
grants, so far from helping to "reverse the balance
lop of power," pod to keep it as it was, by fur-
nishin the th with tools in the shape of what
Mr. Spence elsewhere, " foreigners in com-
mand of political power without either training or
association to fit them for it"
Now, what is this "balance of power"
which was " reversed " 1 Mr. Spence nowhere
explains in direct terms ; but what its use was, and
what the loss of it involved, in the eyes of the
South, we presume we may gather from the follow-
ing passage (let me say here that the italics through-
out this letter are mine) :—" And it is necessary to
consider that to the mind, and in the sincere
(though it may be erroneous) convictions of the
Southerner, this transfer is far more than the loss
lof prestige, of influence, or the emoluments of
power. The election of Mr. Lincoln represents to
him the determination of the North, as a body, to
act on the question of slavery in opposition to
and disregard of the constitution that pro-
' tads it. it is true that such action would
be at first indirect, by excluding him from
the territories which belong as much to the South
as the North, by surrounding him with a cordon of
free States„ by compressing him, by suffocating hon.
He anticipates injury to his material interests at
the hands of the Northern monopolists, but in the
action of the abolitionists now impelling those in
power he forebodes the destruction of his pro-
perty, the ruin of his State, and the danger of his
" (p. 106). Now, as the republican party has
always
proposed to itself to " suffocate " slavery,
and compress it by "surrounding it with a cordon
of free States," and as the foregoing passage
describes exactly the feelings about Lincoln's election
which writers on the Northern side have always
attributed to the Southerners, when I read it I con-
cluded Mr. Spence took the Northern view of the
matter. But a few pages further on I found that
I was totally mistaken ; that the Southerners were
not in the least afraid that the North was going to
meddle with slavery, and thatanybody who thought
they were was an ignoramus. Our author, by the
time he got to page 134, had either totally forgotten
what he midst page 106, or else had changed his
mind in the interval. Instead of " feeling them-
pelves in safety under the shield of their own State
governments,' and thinking "all beyond insecure"
(pp. 103-4), we are requested " to see clearly that
looking only to slavery, its maintenance, and pro-
tection, the Southerner can desire nothing more
than he already has in the constitution of the
Union. What, indeed, has he to gain by such a
change as the present one ? Instead of the whole
liower of the Continent to support him, two-thirds of
it will be lost to him—perhaps arrayed against
him. In place of the Northern States to prevent,
to act as a prison wall to the escape of his slaves,
and return them at his bidding, he makes them
foreign and jealous powers. Instead of abolitionism
being the doctrine of a small sect, regarded as fana-
tical by the great majority of the North, he will
have it adopted as an article of the general creed.
It is difficult to imagine a change more dan-
gerous, more disastrous to his interest as a
slaveowner ; for to these permanent effects is added
at once an enormous depreciation in the value of