The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-16 00:00:00

T PIE WOMEN OP ENGLAND v. THE WOMEN
OF AMERICA.

-
MRS. EX-PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER TO THE
DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND AND OTHERS.
(From the Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 28.)
TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND AND THE LADIES OF
ENGLAND.
Your address to your sisters, the women of the United
States, on the subject of domestic slavery, as it exists
among us, which has appeared in our public journals,
should be acknowledged by some one of the vast number of
those to whom it is addressed, without awaiting the pub-
lication of the more formal communication. There are
some of tho concerns of life in which conventionalities aro
properly to be disregarded, and this is one of them. A
reply to your address must necessarily be the work of some
ono individual among us, or must •go altogether unper-
formed. Woman, in the United States, with but few ex-
ceptions, confines herself within that sphere for which the
God who created her seems to have designed her. Her
circle is literally and emphatically that of her family, and
such she is content that it shall be. Within that circle
her influence is. felt over the relations of life, as wife,
mother, mistress, and as she discharges the duty of one; or
all of these relations, so is she respected or otherwise. To
cast a doubt upon her fidelity in any one of them is to ex-
cite against her the odium of the community, and, in a
great measure, to dethrone her from her high position.
She knows nothing of political conventions, or conventions
of any other sort than such as are hell'under suitable pas-
tors of the Church and are wholly directed. to the advance-
ment of the Christian religion. Such is emphatically
the case with the women of the Southern States. Do
you wish to see them, you must visit their homes. Do
you desire to ascertain the nature of their employ-
ments, you, must enter their family circles ; and, believe.
me, good sisters of England, you would find in their
Christian deportment and perfect amiability of manners
enough at once to insure you with the most ex-
alted respect and esteem. You might find uo splendid
eTetmeniuteLeeseco glittering eliteloues, ao, aristocratic
clesPiayeeeNo !he veetmentslhey We are'theee ,eneek_
ness and charity ; their diamonds are gems of the heart,
and their Splendour the neatness and order and content-
ment which everywhere greets the eye ; and that neatness,
that order, and that contentment, is in nothing more ob-
servable than in the well-clothed and happy domestics who
welcome your arrival, and heap upon you every comfort
during your sojurn under the roofs of their masters. You
will see, then, how utterly impossible it would be to expect
the women of the United States to assemble in convention,
either in person or by proxy, in order to frame an answer
to your address. Nay, I must, however, in all frankness,
declare to you, that the women of the South especially have
not received your address in the kindest spirit. They regard
it as entirely incompatible with all •onfidence in or con-
sideration for them, to invoke the interposition of the
women of what aro called the free States in a matter
with which they have no more to do than have your-
selves, and whose interference in the question can produce
no other effect than to excite disturbance and agitation and
ill will, and, possibly, in the end a total annihilation of
kind feeling between geographical sections. It is the pro-
vince of the women of the Southern States to preside over
the domestic economy of the estates and plantations of
their husbands • it is emphatically their province to visit
the sick, and Atend to the comfort of all the labourers
upon such estates ; and it is felt to be but a poor compli-
ment to the women of the South to suppose it necessary to
introduce other superintendence than their awn over the
condition of their dependents and servants. They see,
too, or they fancy they see, in the fact that the address
which you have made them was handed to you, already
prepared for signature, by the editors of the newspaper
press of England, and that, according to the admission
of the Duchess of Sutherland, in her opening address
offspring of the same political newspaper press—l say,
to your convention, your convention itself is but the
they see enough in all this to excite not their sym-
pathies, but their apprehensions. They also see, or
fancy that they see, in your movement the fingers
of your greatest statesmen. The Countess of Derby,
the Viscountess Palmerston, the Countess of Carlisle, Lady
John Russell, not to mention others of distinction and noto-
riety, would scarcely be complimented by a supposition
that they had signed or openly approved such an address
without the concurrence of their husbands. The women
of the Southern States are, for the most part, well edu-
cated ; indeed, they yield not in this respect to any women
on earth, and they have peculiaieopportunities of acquiring
knowledge in regard to the public concerns of the world.
Politics are almost universally the theme of conversation
among the men. in all their coteries and social gatherings,
and the women would be stupid indeed if they did not
gather much information from this abundant source.
Hence they are not ignorant of the rapid growth of their
beloved country or of the promises of its early future.
Their mothers knew this land when it contained but
3,000,000 inhabitants and numbered but 13 States. Their
children know it now as the gieat confederated re-
public, whose population already equals 26,000,000, and
whose dominions are washed by the waters of two
oceans. Believe me that its magnitude now, and its
tim-
portance in the future, is as fully known to the women of
the United States as it is to your husbands, and editors,
and statesmen. Our census tables show a duplication of
our population in every cycle of 23 years ; so that by the
time the infant now in the cradle shall have attained to
the age of manhood, that population will have increased
to 50,000,000; and by the time that same infant attains
to middle age, it will have swollen into 100,000,000. We
need go no further in the estimate in order to unveil that
immense future which lies before us—a future unrivalled
in point of power by anything the world has heretofore
seen—a future which already fixes upon it the intense and
steadfast gaze of the statesmen of other countries—a
future which unfolds a new destiny, a happier and a
brighter one, I trust, for the human family—a future to
to
be regarded with rapture by the lover of man,
may cause privilege to shiver and tremble with in and which
may in all
its fibres and arteries. I allude not to any power of the
sword. No ; I allude to a power more resistless and more
certain in its results—the power of example— the example
of a free, prosperous, and great people, among whom all
artificial distinctions of society are unknown, where pre-
ferment is equally open to all, and man's capacity for self-
government is recognised and conclusively established. The
women of the United States forsee all this, and they also
thoroughly comprehend the fact that all confederacies have
heretofore, in the history of the world, been broken up and
destroyed by the machinations of foreign Governments ; and
if such has been the fate of other confederacies, how much
more vigilant ought we to be to guard against the fatal re-
sults which have attended on others, and to look with
suspicion, come from what quarter it may, on all interfer-
ence in our domestic concerns ! If the Achaian and other
leagues could not withstand the machinations of the powers
of their day, how truly sensitive ought we to be on a point
which proved so fatal to them ! And if the foreign States
by whom such confederacies were surrounded felt it to be
due to their own safety to destroy them by their machina-
tions, have we not reason to suppose that a tenfold in-
terest is found in our case, in view of the rapid growth of
the United States, and in the early development of that
future which will clothe this country with all the elements
of control in the affairs of the world? Governments and
countries which are now looked upon as stars of the first
magnitude will ere long, if the United States roll on in their
present orbit, be secondary and tertiary in the political
hemisphere. This is as quite as thoroughly known by us as
by you, women of England, and therefore you should not
be in the slightest degree surprised at the suspicion with
which your address is regarded by all the thinking women
not only of the South, but of the whole Union. We
know that there is but ono subject on which there is a pos-
sibility of wrecking the bark of this Union—a possibility,
however, which I trust is very remote--and to that very
subject you have given your attention; and not only so,
but have subscribed an address, not prepared by your-
selves, as the emanation of your own susceptible hearts,
but the admitted production of the newspaper press of
England, which affects a mawkish sensibility on a subject
with which it has nothing properly to do, and all for ends
which every reflecting person cannot fail to understand.
Nor is this suspicion in any degree removed by the fact
on which you predicate your address, viz., the fact that
your country inflicted on her then colonies the " curse" of
slavery in opposition to their frequent and solemn protests.
In.the historical fact you are certainly correct. The colony
of Virginia, and, I believe, most of the other colonies, were
constant and earnest in their remonstrances, and one of the
causes set forth in the Declaration of Independence, as pre-
pared and written by a son of Virginia, was a continuance
of the slave trade by the mother country, in despite of all
remonstrance on the part of the colonies. Thus, then, Eng-
land not only permitted, but encouraged the slave trade,
for a period of a century and a half, as a means of swelling
her coffers, and the infamous traffic could only be expelled
from this country by the force and power of the sword.
Your kings and queens, sustained by your Parliament and
people, entered into treaties and formed contracts for the
purpose of reaping a rich harvest of profit from the trade—.
and the voice of the slave dealer on the shores of Africa was
perfect music in their ears, because it was the music of
m by your
merry England
gold told into the Treasury, and all
danced with joy at the pleasant sound. You have been
in
well informed, doubtless, of the treaties
Queen Anne, of "blessed memory," and the Crown of sp • ,
which stipulated a monopoly of the trade in closeyopuarirtnontehre-
a slaved estab-
ship between those royal personages, to the exclusion of
all the world beside. Yes, you are altogether correct in
ascribing whatever there is of immorality or crime,
trade by
pErengslaenntd.conThditeioconloonif
remonstratedetshreemSoonustthraez,Satantdes,
vain, until driven to desperation by her perseverance they
could not be
lisesvheerdedthtehier binodnedspetuhdaetnbceo,unanddthabemolitosheEdntghle
their only resource, the power of the sword.
83" in
The great
slave market, in which England had enjoyed a monopoly,
was thus lost to her, and from that moment slae began to
discover that there was something rather immoral in the
treasure.traffie. B Before the tgrhoeasluasvoefshiitps was apsptaytevilyetairaargo
heard above the surges of the ocean. Soon after, a faint
cry could be heard, borne on the winds from Africa's coast;
and now the Parliament House resounds with the clank.
ing of the chains and the cries of the victims. Such the
mighty influence of the American revolution, and such the
power of the sword wielded in that ever-glorious struggle.
I desire to tell you, women of England, Plainly, that your
address, prepared not by yourselves, but by others, comes
therefore to us laden with suspicious, when you advert, as'
the groundwork of your interference with our domestic in-
stitutions, to the fact of the former criminality of Enpland.
Would England, with a continuance of a monopoly
of the
trade over our broad acres up to the present day,
have
clothed herself in sackcloth and ashes as she now has done?
Where were her humanity and her Christian philanthropy
for the long paned of 150 years? Our ancestors on this
side of the Atlanticthundered, through their remonstrances,
at the doors of the Parliament House and at the gates of
her Royal palaces : and yet, for all that long period she
had no ears to hear, no heart to understand. No
sym-
pathy and no philanthropy, such as now exists, found
place in the stately palace. How has happened all this ?
It would be well for you to inquire. Doubtless some of
distinguished husbands can. give you plausible ex-
planations—atyour
least such as will content polit* •
politicians on
your side of the water. The editors of the newspaper
press can come
again to your aid ; but will it be
that the people of eat
task to convince usthe present gene-
ration are better, more moral and more Christian than
gone before them—that
all who have your right reverend
bishops and prelates are more pure and orthodox than all
their predeceseors—that your And "ems,
your
noieti