The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-13 00:00:00

THE AIIIE.RICAI QUESTION.

Mr. A. J. B. Beresford Hope, in a letter to a
contemporary, says:—
The opinion which you express, that the time is
approaching when England, in concert with France,
must offer her mediation to the fratricidal bellige-

rents, if not, also in concert with our neighbour,
recognise the Confederate States as a Power of the
earth, has steadily been gaining strength in the
minds of thinking people in this country of every
condition. It has been my occupation for some time
past to feel the popular pulse upon the matter, and
ascertain the general sentiments of society on the
American contekt. The result which has been forced
on me is that Englishmen and Englishwomen, if

not with perfect unanimity, at all events by a very
preponderating majority, desire to see the strife ter-
minated in the only way which justice and possi-
bility combine to indicate, namely, in the establish-
ment of the Southern Confederacy of, sovereign
States as a recognised and independent Power. Rieh
and poor, High Tories and Conservatives, Whigs
and advanced Liberals, Churchmen, Dissenters,
Roman Catholics, have all expressed the same de-
sire to me in the strongest language. In the spring
of the year I was lecturing upon American matters
to several hundreds of the, inhabitants of a wealthy
town of between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants,
surrounded by the leaders of the two political
parties in the place, and I found the meeting
uanimous and enthusiastic in its support of
a very outspoken argument for Southern inde-
pendence. The growing distress in Lancashire
has since that period intensified public opinion,
while the endurance of the South on the one hand,
and the brutal violence on the other of such Pro-
consuls as Butler, have tended to raise what was
then a strong conviction into a foregone conclusion
that the South cannot be, and ought not to be, dra-
gooned into submission. Common sense pleads that
men who prefer to burn their crops to allowing
them to pass into the enemies' hands, are not likely
to be wooed back to Republican Union by the voice
of authority stigmatising the patriotism of their
wives and daughters as harlotry. Besides, "Union"
itself is no longer the fashionable formula among
the fiercer partisans of the war in the North. "Em-
pire" is the word, and in the name of empire it is
confessed that the conquest of the South is com-
passed. What the significance to England, to
Canada, and other North American colonies, to the
British Weat Indies, and to Europe at large of a
Yankee empire, starting with the old United States
as its first possession, would be, I do not pause to
inquire. I venture to assume that the bulk of the
Northern people may not have realised the whole sig-
nificance of the delusive lure thus dangled before their
eyes by the interested partisans of this well-calcu-
lated warfare. I shall continue to trust that they have
not with their eyes open committed themselves to
principles which are intended by their advocates to
be a defiance to all residuary Christendom. There
is one thing of which 1 am certain—that all over
the North there is a party, undoubtedly and un-
happily a minority, but still a minority possessed of
a moral strength which may make itself felt in
a moment of crucial trial, which hates the war, and
which accepts (whether liking it or not) the future
independence of the South as an irreversible fact.
These are the men who still think as Mr. Everett
thought when he was the " Union party" candidate
for theVice-Presidentship in 1860, and wrote in his
address :
" The suggestion that the Union can be maintained by
the numerical preponderance of one section excited to co-
erce in my judgment, as self-
n otherollryfraoi
smn
it o
fieldsi submission u
dangerous.
It conies loaded with the
hB'
and as Mr. Everett continued to think on February
cdoeatt ri, the
sd m i c
et
22, 1861, four days after Mr. Jefferson Davis had
been installed Southern President, when he wrote
to the Boston Courier :-
4, To expect to hold 15 States in the Union by force is
preposterous. The idea of a cifn war, accompanied as it
would be by servile insurrection (in this he was mistaken),
is too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. If our
sister States must leave us, in the name of Heaven let them
go in peace."
Of such men there are, I believe, hundreds in the
Northern States to every one Unionist in the South,
and in their silent and necessarily cautious, but
sincere co-operation, Europe must confide as a
potent auxiliary in any measure of intervention. I
pass 'over the impending cataclysm of Northern
finance, and the contingent disaffection of the West,
for these are elements
or in the
el consideration which
1 f himsf
every one can supp-y •
Permit me here to testify how much it is to your

ling them to see her children starve, out of defer-'I
ence to the unreaFoning petulance of a nation sprung
from herself, which has systematically been meeting
our greatest sacrifices with vituperative ingratitude.
But we made those sacrifices and we surrendered our
cherished national pride from love of peace and a
keen sensitiveness of honour. There is a point, how-
ever, in the intercourse of nations where the love of
peace degenerates into poltroonery, and the sensi-
tive feeling of honour into self-injurious scrupulosity.
I do not at all say that we have reached that point ;
but a little more delay may bring us into dangerous
proximity to it. Duty and policy alike combine to
show to England and to France the safest and the
noblest way. Tens of thousands here are pining
to see the day which shall dawn upon the first great
step towards allaying the frightful passions of the
combatants, restoring peace to a continent, and
giving free course to the indications of nature and of
Providence. Of course—we all know it, and you
have stated it well—the North will receive the pro-
posal with an outburst of well-affected indignation.
So it treated the demand to give up the Southern
Commissioners, and yet they were surrendered.
What took place in December, 1861, may easily be
repeated in the summer of 1862. At all events, the
trial should be made, or Europe, by its silence, will
be drifting into complicity with the horrors of the
war. Why, then, do people hesitate to speak out,
'When they have so thoroughly made up their minds ?
A little pressure from without is all that is needed,
and then I believe that the Government would not
be chary in taking a course which they must know
to be just and feel to be popular.

THE FINANCIAL CONDITION OF

AIItERMA.

The quotation of gold at New York brought by
.he Great Eastern is but 31 per cent. premium. The

confidence of the American people in the future re-
demption in specie of the Government paper issues
_ _ ..

is therefore still unshaken. This state of feeling

can exist only from a belief that all the laws which
regulate the movements of money in other parts of
the world are inoperative in the United States, or
from a dense ignorance, on the part of all classes of
the people, of even those elementary principles

which in England are familiar to most persons.

Happily, for their present comfort, the former solu-
tion is that which prevails among the Washington

politicians, and, as the recent creations of debt are
held almost entirely at home, foreign nations can

await the result without anxiety. A year ago, when
it was predicted that before the end of 1861 there

would be a suspension of specie payments, there was

he same reliance that America was elevated be-

yond the possibility of any such cdsualty, and the
outside world had for six months to bear heavy

reproaches for the malignity of the suggestion. It
must, however, be admitted that the delay of the

financial catastrophe which has now so long been
anticipated is such as to surprise all observers, and
to demonstrate either that reason is no longer to be

rusted in such matters, or that the infatuation

and absence of the most ru3imentary knowledge
of financial rules in the Northern States is far

more complete than any one conversant with the
fact that most of the people can read and

write had at any time conceived to be pos-
sible. The fancy into which they have been
led regarding their currency seems in a great mea-

sure to have been assisted by the Morrill tariff, and
a remarkable instance has thus been furnished of

the way in which one delusion will help another
until they are both destined to be dispersed by a
storm of double force. If free trade hqd prevailed
in America, the first expansion of the currency
would have been followed by a proportionate in-

crease of importations, which would immediately
have exposed the impending danger, but the im-
mense bounty accorded by the protective tariff to
all classes of home productions has caused capital

and labour to be concentrated upon them to an ex•

tent never previously witnessed. This concentration
of capital and labour upon domestic manufactures
must—unless we are to accept the preposterous
supposition that they have hitherto been previously
redundant in the United States—be followed by a
withdrawal from other branches of industry; and, as
the agricultural interest has of late years been the
mainstay of the North, we must assume that it is
in this direction we are henceforth to look for the
evil consequences of the prevailing policy. Of
course, if the Americans have enough labour at
command to create at home, not only all the food,
but all the clothing and other articles they require,
they can maintain a prohibitory tariff without any
other danger than that which results to civilisa-
tion from the limitation of intercourse with the
rest of mankind, but if it be the fact that
labdur is the material which is most scarce in
America and most abundant elsewhere, then the
consequences of such a system must eventually
prove more terrible to that country than to any
other. To most persons at this day it will seem
almost ludicrous to speak of the possibility of a
deficiency of food in America ; but it is only 25
years since the country was visited by that afflic-
tion in consequence of the gambling mania which
for a few years previously attracted the population
to the great cities, and caused the extension of agri-
culture to be neglected. Every man was then
making his fortune by buying land, instead of
cultivating it. Are there no symptoms to indicate
that a recurrence of this state of affairs is possible ;
and if such should be the case, will not the convul-
sion in consequence be such as has never yet been
witnessed ? It is only three years since, owing to
an adverse season, the United States had no spare
supply of grain to send us, the annual crop being
little more than sufficient for home consumption,
and if even a moderately indifferent harvest should
now be witnessed, it is impossible to say to what
extent the evil might be aggravated by the diminu-
tion in the amount of cultivation that must have
taken place through the war. The 700,000 strong
and youthful men now serving in the army, and
consuming and wasting more than double their
ordinary quantity of food and drink, must pre-
viously have been occupied in some profitable
manner, and it is idle to pretend that the re-
sults of the cessation of this source of wealth
will not soon make themselves visible. When
the North had a bad harvest three years back,
the United States found a compensation in the
extraordinary annual increase of the cotton
crop and its sale in Europe at advancing prices;
but the country has now nothing to depend upon
but its grain. It has just realised, and is still
realising, the profits of the most extraordinary
harvests ever known, and which harvests occurred
at a time when Europe was suffering from a sad
deficiency. Yet, even although the quantities lb
secured are still being shipped to us with all the
speed allowed by the available freight, it is not
enough to preserve the balance of the transactions
between the two countries, and to prevent the
necessity for specie being transmitted to us by each
steamer. When these grain shipments are dimi-
nished or altogether suspended, and when it is dis-
covered by the mass of the people that their Govern-
ment "demand notes," nr " deposit notes," or
certificates of indebtedness" wilt be of no avail to
send to Rio for coffee, to China for tea, to India for
saltpetre, or to France for wine, what will be the
rate at which they are likely to be exchanged for
specie The question has evidently never yet been
entertained among them, and even if it should arise,
the assurance of the Washington politicians that
Europe will soon send millions of gold across the