The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-17 00:00:00

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effects, and cannot be misled by subtle refinements
and vague theories. When you speak of civil liberty
to an Englishman, visions of certain great guarane
tees, great historical institutions, rise up to ;is
mind, such es the habeas corpus, trial by jury, the
supremacy of the law, the subordination of the nine.
t ary to the civil power—these constitute in the Eng-
lish mind the true exponent of civil liberty—(cheers)
—and their history teaches them that wherever a
despot or a tyrant under any disguise seeks to pros-
trate the liberties of the people, and to trample
down their rights, these great guarantees are the
first object of attack. (Hear, hear.) I repeat, that
when a despot seeks to oppress a free pecple he finds
in these great bulwarks the first impediment, and
seeks to hew them froea his path. Now, test the
contest in America by that. I say we are contend-
ing for civil liberty and constitutional government,
Cast your eyes over the Northern States. Do you
see the great bulwarks of Anglican liberty existing
there ? Why, the chief of the Cabinet, the Secretary
of State, is said to have boasted to the representatia e
of your Government, as his own evidence of his
strength, that sitting in his private chamber he
could touch a bell to his left which would consign
to prison a citizen of the far distant State of Michi-
gan, and that by touching the bell to his right he
could imprison another in the distant States of
Maine or New Hampshire. Way is it that the citi-
zens of that great country are not exempt from ille-
gal arrest ? Why is it that the houses of Americans
are not, like the houses of Englishmen, their castles,
but are subject to illegal and unwarrantable
searches ? I will tell you that Government is not
seeking to establish civil liberty; but cruel despotism
glooms over the land, and liberty stands naked and
defenceless before it. Spies, police officers, provost
marshals, dog the heels of the purest and the wisest
statesmen, and report every chance word they may
utter. The legislators of sovereign States broken
up by armed men, together with judges, are dragged
from the bench and imprisoned. Men are arrested
without the warrant of law, and undergo a long and
in fact indefinite imprisonment without the slightest
examination into their case. Conscripts are march-
ing through the streets menacled together, and shot
before the armies ; and all this is done in the name
of constitutional liberty and free government. If
you look to the other side of the Potomac—a plain
invaded by a million of armed men at different
times—you will not see that spectacle. You will
see in the Confederate States a constitution in peace-
ful operation, safe in the affections of the people.
You will see the majesty of the law unimpaired and
operating with undiminished vigour. You will see
the courts of law everywhere, except where hostile
armies stand confronting each other, open to every
citizen, the judges deciding in many cases against
the Government and its officers, and all bowing to the
justice of .its decrees. When, gentlemen, the
Southern States by a spontaneous vote of their peo-
ple, too spontaneous to have been the result of pre-
concert orconspiracy , by a vote that leapt from the
nation as freely as the water from the fountains of
the earth, withdrew the powers which they dele-
legated to a common Government which was using
those powers to its destruction, there was not a
break in the social institutions of the country, nor
even a pause in the internal administration of the
Government--not a cord of civil society loosened,
but everything went on precisely as if there had
been no change in our political relations. Why was
that ? It was because it was a movement inaugu-
rated in the interests of order and for the conserva-
tism of liberty and law, and the supremacy of the
Constitution ; for even while the question stood in
abeyance before the convention was made at Mont-
gomery which formed the new Government, the
people obeyed the law, although they held in a
nerveless hand, with power to enforce it, a sceptre
of sovereignty over the hearts of a people mightier
than that which an Emperor now waves over his
subjects. Thus stands the issue between these two
peoples. lam willing for you, gentlemen, as Eng-
lishmen, to decide who are the representatives in
America of intelligent liberty and constitutional
government. They have made sacrifices for that in-
dependence—sacrifices of everything but their civil
liberties. They have preserved them unimpaired
under trials which might have caused a less Con-
servative people not to stand by their Government
and their laws. The two armies have o ten met in
conflict, and the result of that conflict it does not
become me to describe. Englishmen have formed
their own opinion on that point, and the South has
I had the good fortune to fight battles and let her ene-
mies write an account of them. My friends spoke of
his hospitality to those who come from a down-
trodden and oppressed nationality. I thank him
for his kindness and hospitality to the Southerners;
but they are not downtrodden and oppressed, and,
by the blessing of God, they never will be. (Hear,
hear.) No; liberty may sometimes be crushed
under the armed heels of despots ; but if you will
go to that Southern country, and sea men,
old and young, standing up with hearts pure,
their bayonets glistening in the sun, unstained
by anything but the blood of the enemy--might
going side by side with right. But, gentlemen, it
is well to know this fact—that the South, so much
abused, pallid and bleeding, her lifeblood almost
drained from her, is this day
contending
for her own liberties, but for the liberty of the
very people who are sending armed millions to sub-
jectby murder, and by civil in-
surrection.she is striking a blow
her by rapine,
that
More than ,
for freedom everywhere, and seeking to rid the
world of the most r intolerant, aggressive, and
overwhelming Power that ever disturbed the
repose of Europe or the peace of the civilised
world—a Power which stands
h as the embodiment
of brute force, which will yet, if it stands on its
defence, be a fireship among the nations, and even
now, in
anticipation of its triumphs, laughs to scorn
the faith of treaties, the obligations of humanity,
and the laws of civilised warfare. (Hear.)
It has been said by those whose interest it is to mis-
represent the South, that although she may be en-
gaged in defending her own independence, her great
object is to
perpetuate the degradation of another
race whom she has enslaved. I have no desire to
comment upon any of the social institutions of the
South to Englishmen. Ido not stand here to de-
fend any of her institutions. With all your opi-
nions made up and pronounced upon the subject of
some of those institutions, I believe
that
you are
fair men, that you are willing to hear the truth ;
and I can assure you that the truth has not been
told to England on this subject. With
the full and
distinct understanding, that between you and me
there exists adversity of opini • '
on on the subject, not
asking you to take my view, I , do assert in the face
of this intelligent
audience, and before the world,
that that statement
is a calumny on the South, and
that the white race of
the South has been the guar-
dian, the protector of the black man there, that he
has elevated him in the scale of rational existence,
and that he has Christianised him to an extent that
he has never •
attained to through any other pro-
cess of education to which he has been subjected.
I have no objection to dissent on the part of
others to these statements, for I always feel in
the ring of honest ;dissent that there is a true
heart. But I do ask you to listen, not to opinions, to
misrepresentations, to exaggerations, but to facts._
Since the American continent was discovered and
occupied by the European race, it has come in con-
tact with two savage races.
One was the noble
Indian race, which it found already occupying the
continent, and which was the highest type of savage,
m ,nhood—a race noble, free, bald • impetuous ; going
into history, as it would go, as the poetic emboli_
ment of the savage man. But it has come into con-
was brought
there, with another race, a race which
there, not by any agency of ours, but by an agency
discuss.
That race which I will not at present Was
and one which all historians the African race, and
hers have pronounced to be
all philosophers the lowest
natural man in his native type of the country—a
race who knew not God, who had no rational
idea