The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-18 00:00:00

ENGLISH PRESS AND AMERICANS.

If our American brethren judge of English pp -
nion by our newspapers, and suppose the Times to
be our mouthpiece, they must occasionally stand
amazed at our ignorance and inconsistency. bee
day the Times takes the Address of the venerable
Josiah Quincy as its text, and exhibits the condi-
tion of the American Union under the crisis of its
sectional difficulties ; and presently it finds fhult
with Mr. Quincy for leaving out half the question,
and failing to show how the slaveholders ari to
abolish slavery. One would think the writer had
not read the pamphlet he professes to review;lnot
even the title-page. The subject of Mr. Quincy's
Address is "The Nature and Power of the Slave
States, and the Duties of the Free States." This is
what the aged patriot undertook to show, and what
he has shown, according to the views which he
holds. Mr. Quincy is not an Abolitionist. He ex-
pressly disclaims the title in the pamphlet before
us. lie treats, not of the condition of the
negro, but of the condition and prospects
of his country. He is a citizen of a sove-
reign State, which abolished slavery long ago,
and which is one of a federation of above thirty
sovereign States, which find themselves no* no
longer enjoying the equal rights and privileges
which are the declared foundation of their Union.
The thirty-one states contain a populationl of
twenty-six millions. This population is at present
suffering under intolerable oppression from a mere
fraction of its number. The slaveholders are Only
between a half and a quarter of a million ; ;and
this number--of whom not more than one thou-
sand are believed to be active and powerful—con-
trouls the political and social action and fate bf all
the rest of the twenty-six millions. The Free
States, which long ago abolished slavery, ' find
themselves now made the slave catchers and the
political serfs of the Slave States, which are moved
by the thousand or few thousands of slaveowners
who have usurped the political power of the Fede-
ration. It is becoming understood now that the
slave power, which is thus oppressive and upurp-
ing, is not that of the Slave States at large.
Besides that the slaveowners themselves ai
creasingly wretched and discontented unde

in;
the

fin-
pub-
hree-

1 system which had impoverished their fortune
paired their social reputation, and made their r
licanism a laughing-stock, it is now becoming k
that the whole body of slaveholders are only t
tenths of the white population of the Sou
States. Seven-tenths of that Southern white 1
lation have the strongest possible interest i
establishment of free labour. Such is the distri-
bution of power and of numbers in the United
States. Mr. Quincy's undertaking was to nhow
how it came to pass that the power resides in the
hands of so insignificant a minority, and what ought
to be done to chock the usurpation which should
never have been permitted. He shows thtit the
unconstitutional admission of Louisiana intio the
Union, by Southern intrigues, was the fatal
" usurpation " against which Washington I had
warned his country. Ha traces the progress Of the
encroachment of the South upon the rights df the
North ; he refers his readers to the territorial ag-
gressions which have been perpetrated because
slavery wears out old soil, and perpetually deniands
a new extension ; and he shows how the final usur-
pation of the soil of Nebraska and Kansas—the free-
dom of which was formerly constitutionally secured,
must occasion the final conflict between the
rights of twenty-six millions of republican citizens
and the usurpation of 330,000 slaveholders.' An
eminent citizen, between 80 and 90 years old, who
bas_s " n tjuaeen the fill_ rant' 111 io sold ir,n own
its nrst generationatrisLigtesmen, stands forth in the
crisis of events, not to deliver an abolition lecture,
but to exhibit the peril of the republic, and to give
his counsel about saving it ; and the Times com-
plains that he does not show the slaveholders how
to de 11 with slavery ! What has he to do with the
methods they must use t The citizens of his State
have not been slaveholders for two generations ;
and they now at length refuse to be made the tools
and the victims of those who aro. The first thing
that ensues on such a protest always is that the
slaveholders demand that the protesters shall show
how the evil is to be dealt with. Dr. Charming
was assailed in the same way that Mr. Quincy is
now, and he nearly fell into the snare. Happily
some experienced persons warned him th t the
Southern leaders would ride off on objecti ns to
i:
every method he could be induced to p opose
—even supposing him qualified to proposes any.
The same dodge was tried in Congress' with
John Quincy Adams when he ' was remonstrat-
ing against the . breach of constitutional safe-
guards. The Times now attempts to encounter Mr.
Quincy in the same way. What Dr. Churning had
to do was to assert the principles of human free-
dom. What ex-President Adams had to do was to
vindicate the right of petition. What Mr. Quincy
undertook to do was to exhibit the actual position
of affairs, and to point out " the duties of the Free
States"—not the procedure of the Slave States.
No one has a right to make the demand ; and if it
were otherwise, the most ineffectual appeal possible
would bo that adopted by the Times—urging that
the slaveholders did not create their " peculiar in-
stitution," and intimating that it cannot be mended.
There is an answer to such an appeal, though
Mr. Quincy is no way bound to offer it. If the
slaveholders did not create slavery, they pre-
ferred it when the crisis of 1820 compelled them
to a choice. Slavery was the choice of the South
first when the Missouri Compromise was formed ;
and again when it was repealed. It is not true—
and the Times must know it, unless it is ignorant
of the whole history of the case—that slavery is
the doom and not the choice of the slaveholders.
The North abolished it ; the South chose to pre-
serve it; and now both must act in accordance
iwith their decision. The Northern citizens must
guard the area of the free labour which they
have preferred to slave industry. The area is now
attacked in the form of an usurpation of the soil of
Kansas. The Free States must induct free labour
into it, and support and protect it there, as the al-
ternative to the subjection of twenty-six millions
of republican citizens to the self-will and self-in-
terest of half a million. As for the Southern men
--i-they may choose for themselves whether to secede
from the Union in which they must henceforth
bear only their due share of power and privilege,
or to yield to the conditions under which alone
they can remain in the Union. They must decide
for themselves whether to uphold or abolish slavery
within their own boundaries. The North will no
longer help them to uphold it, nor permit the Con-
gressional District of Columbia to be peopled by
slaves. But within their own frontiers the sove-
reign States of the South can do as they please about
their institutions of every kind. The world sees how
poor those States are in wealth—how deteriorated in
fertility, how scantily peopled, and how barbaric in
morals and manners; and the world therefore thinks
it would be wise in the citizens to abolish the cause
of their poverty and barbarism. But about this
the citizens can please themselves. When the
seven-tenths of the whites to whom we have re-
ferred—the whites who do not hold slaves—obtain
a true knowledge of their position, they will use
their majority for the abolition of slavery. Mean-
while, the South must submit to equality of federal
rights with the North, or quit the Union. This is
all Mr. Quincy has to say, and very clearly he has
said it.

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Whenever the Southern States find it necessary
to abolish slavery, they will find it can be done.
What is necessay is always possible. The Times
writes as if slavery had never been abolished be-
fore ; whereas the thing has been done repeatedly,
and always with final success. Hayti is not a case
in point ; for it was an internecine war between
the whites and free mulattoes which incidentally
occasioned the liberation of the black, and not any
anti-slavery movement. Our sugar production has
recovered as high a point of success as it reached
in the palmiest days of protection ; and American
cotton will be produced by free labour, or ex-
changed for some. other product. All considera-
tions combine to indicate that the negroes will work
better as paid labourers than as slaves, if only
the masters will treat them as paid labourers are
treated everywhere. If not so, the world cannot
go backward for the sake of a quarter of a million
of slave-owners. Cotton is rising in many places,
in successful rivalship to that of the Southern