The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-22 00:00:00

MR. SEWARD'S SPEECH AT DETROIT.

Senator Seward's speech to the citizens of Detroit, Michi-
gan, on the 4th inst., is a noble effort, and reads like the
first song of triumph in honour of the beneficent revolution
in the national party of the United States which will be
inaugurated by the election of Mr. Lincoln in next Novem-
ber. While Mr. Seward was yet a candidate for the presi-
dency the composition of his speeches was alloyed by a too
evident desire to conciliate the " Conservatives" of the
North, and disappointed the earnest men of his party.
His laboured speech in the Senate, after his return from his
Oriental tour, called forth the fierce sarcasm of the great
abolitionist, Mr. Wendell Phillips, upon his " parade of
the dictionary." Since the Republican National Conven-
tion set the New York senator aside in favour of " honest
old Abe" of Illinois, the play of his intellect is freer, and
the speech at Detroit has never been surpassed either by
himself or the other Republican orators of the United
States. He begins by saying that the Federal Government
of the United States " has failed to secure respect and good-
will abroad," and "good order, contentment, and harmony
at home :"
" The Canadians certainly neither envy nor love us. All
the independent American powers, from the Rio Grande to
Cape Horn, while they strive to construct Governments for
themselves after our models, fear, and many of them bate
us. European nations do indeed revere our constitutions
and admire our progress, but they generally agree in pro-
nouncing us inconsistent with our organic principle, and
capricious. The President inveighs against corruption
among the people. The immediate representatives of the
people in Congress charge the President with immoral prac-
tices, and the President protests against their action as sub-
versive of the executive prerogative. The House ofßepre-
sentatives organises itself convulsively amid confessed
dangers of popular commotion. The Senate listens unsur-
prised, and almost without excitement, to menaces of vio-
lence, secession, and disunion. Frauds and violence in the
territories are palliated and rewarded. Exposure and re-
sistance to them are condemned and punished, while the
just, enlightened, and reasonable will of the people there,
though constitutionally expressed, is circumvented, dis-
obeyed, and disregarded. States wateh anxiously for un-
lawful intrusion and invasion by citizens of other States,
while the federal courts fail to suppress piracies on the
high seas, and even on our own coasts. The Government of
the Union courts and submits to State espionage of the
Federal mails, while the States scarcely attempt to pro-
tect the personal rights of citizens of other States, peace-
ably pursuing harmless occupations within their fraternal
jurisdictions. The people are not satisfied. The Republi-
cans are not, neither are the constitutional union men. Even
the democrats are no less dissatisfied. They certainly are
dissatisfied with the Republicans, with the National Union
men, with their own administration, with each other, and
as I think even individually with themselves. The North
is not satisfied. Its masses want a suppression of the Af-
frican slave trade, and an effectual exclusion of slavery from
the territories, so that all the new and future states may
surely be free states. The south is not satisfied. Its masses,
by whatever means, and at whatever cast, desire the esta-
blishment and protection of slavery in the territories, so
that none of the new states may fail to become slave states.
The East is discontented with the neglect of its fishery,
manufacture, and navigation, and the West is impatient
under the operation of a national policy hostile to its agri-
cultural and social developments. What government in
the world but ours has persistently refused to improve
rivers, construct harbours, and establish lighthouses, for
the protection of its commerce ? New and anomalous com-
binations of citizens appear ; in the north, justifying armed
instigators of civil and servile war, in the south, devising
means for the disruption and dismemberment of the union.
It is manifest that we are suffering in the respect and con-
fidence of foreign states, and that disorder and confusion
are more flagrant among ourselves now than ever before.
I do not intend to be understood that these evils are thus
far productive of material suffering or intolerable embarras-
ment, much less that the country is, as so many extrava-
gant persons say, on the high road to civil war or dissolu-
tion. On the contrary, this fair land we live in is so blessed
with all the elements of human comfort and happiness, and
its citizens are at once so loyal and wise, and so well sur-
rounded by yet unbroken guarantees of civil and religious
liberty, that our experience of misrule at the very worst
never becomes so painful as to raise the question how much
more of public misery we can endure ; but it leaves us at
liberty to stop now as always heretofore with the inquiry
how much more of freedom, prosperity, and honour, we
can secure by the practice of greater wisdom and higher
virtue ? Discontentment is the wholesome fruit of a dis-
covery of maladministration, and conviction of public error
is here at least always a sure harbinger of political reform.
The last 40 years have constituted a period of signal and
lamentable failure in the efforts of statesmen to adjust and
establish a federal policy for the regulation of the subject
of slavery in its relations to the Union. The failure has not
resulted from the faults of individual statesmen, but from
the character of the political parties on which they relied
for power. An individual statesman is of small account un-
less he has a powerful party to sustain him, and even when
the leader in administration is thus sustained, he is, although
never so earnest or wise, everywhere and at all times ineffi-
cient and imbecile, just in the degree that the party on which
.Bust, Q.- cap. telous.-
Having averted the blame from individuals, and directed
it towards parties, he arraigns at the bar of history the late
Whig and native American and the present disrupted de-
mocratic party.
"What has become of the several political parties which
have flourished within your time and mine ? That dashing,
unterrified, defiant party, whose irresistible legions carried
the honest and intrepid hero of New Orleans on the shields,
through so many civil encounters, that generous though not
unprejudiced whig party, which apprehensive of perpetual
danger from too radical policies of administration, so often,
with unabated chivalry and enthusiam, magically recom-
bined its bruised and scattered columns, even when a capri-
cious fortune had turned its rare and hard-won triumphs
into defeats more disastrous than the field fights which it
had lost—the recent American party, that sprang at one
bound from ten thousand dark chambers and which seemed
only yesterday at the verypoint of carrying the government
by a Coup de main—all these parties that for brief periods
seemed so strong and so unchanging, have perished,
leaving no deep impression on the.history of the coun-
try they aimed to direct and rule for ever. The de-
mocratic party, too, that has clothed itself so com-
placently with the pleasant traditions of all preceding
parties, and combined so felicitously the most popu-
lar of our national sympathies with the most inveterate and
repulsive of our conservative interests, that has won the
South so dextrously, by stimulating its maddest ambition,
and yet has held the North so tenaciously and so long, by
awakening its widest and most demoralising fears—what is
its condition ? It is distinguished in fortune from its extin-
guished rivals only by the circumstance that both portions
of its crew, divided as the hulk breaks into two not unequal
parts, retain sufficient energy in their despair to seize on the
drifting wrecks of other parties, and by a cunning though
hopeless carpentry, to frame wretched and rickety rafts on
which to sustain themselves for one dark night more on the
tempestuous sea of national politics. All these parties, it is
now manifest, were organised not specially to establish
justice and maintain freedom and equality among an honest,
jealous, and liberty-loving people, but to achieve some
material public advantage of temporary importance, or to
secure the advancement of some chief to whose discretion,
as if the government were an elective despotism instead of
a republic, the distribution of its patronage and the direc
tion of its affairs should be implicitly confided.

" These views of the characters of our modern parties are
by no means newly conceived on my part. In that high
and intensely exciting debate in Congress in the year 1850,
which brought the two then dominating par ties into a com-
promise at the time solemnly pronounced irrevocable and
eternal, but which was nevertheless scattered to the winds
of heaven only four years afterwards, the great statesman of
Kentucky denounced party spirit, as he assumed it to be rag-
ing throughout the country, as pregnant with the imminent
and intolerable disasters of civil war and national dissolution.
I ventured then to reply that, in my humble judgment, it

was not a conflict of parties that we then were seeing and
hearing, but it was, on the contrary, the agony of distracted
parties, a convulsion resulting from the too narrow founda-
tions of both of the great parties and of all the parties of

the day, foundations that had been laid in compromises of
natural justice and human rights—that a new and great
question—a moral question transcending the too narrow
creeds of existing parties had arisen—that the public con-
science was expanding with it, and the green wither of
party combinations were giving way and breaking under
the pressure—and it was not the Union that was decaying
awl dying, as was supposed, of the fever of party spirit,
but that the two great parties were smitten with paralysis,
fatal indeed to them, unless they should consent to be im-
mediately renewed and reorganised, borrowing needful ele-
ments of health and vigour from a cordial embrace with
the humane spirit of the age."
[Mr. Seward grows bolder, and asks why political parties
have been low-toned and ephemeral ]

" But, fellow-citizens, to exempt our statesmen by cast-
ing blame on our political parties, does not reach, but only
approximates the real source of responsibility. The parties
of our country, what are they at any time, but ourselves,
the people of our country ? Thus the faults of past admi-
nistration, and of course the responsibility for existing evils,
_ _

are brought directly home to yourselves and myself--:to the

whole people."

When did a departure from the right and safe way occur ?
Not in the revolutionary age, not at the date of the estab-
lishment of the constitution, not in 1800, nor in 1812. Mr.
Seward fixes upon 1820 as the point, when the virtue of
the people of the United States failed them.

"In 1820 the nation had unconsciously reached and en-
tered a new stage in its successful career, namely, that of
expansion. We all know the advantages of expansion.
They are augmented wealth and population. But we all
know equally well, if we will only reflect, that no new ad-
vantage is ever gained in national more than in individual
life without exposure to some new danger. What then is
the danger which attends expansion ? It is nothing less
and can be nothing less than an increase of the strain upon
the bonds of the union. The time had come to organise
government finally in the newly-acquired territory of Lou-
isiana, on principles that should be applied hereafter in all
cases of further expansion. This necessity brought into

glaring light a new object, namely, since the only existing
cause of mutual alienation among the states was slavery,
which was already carefully circumscribed by the ordinance
of 1787, that anomalous institutions must now be further
circumscribed by extending the ordinance to cover the new
states to be established in the Louisianian purchase. To
this end a new and humane impulse naturally moved the
country, namely, the freedom of human labour. But
although statesmen qualified for the crisis appeared, no
party stood forth to support them with constancy, and the
country, after a temporary glow of free-soil excitement,
subsided into cold indifference and so a compromise was
fmr
eaed e
labourwh ich
and divided
capitalthi s newly-acquiredin
slaves,
iat
wiwhich,
he,dn ftoamfraeeirendao
trial
n
rbetweenaalodf
slavery—a memorable compromise,
only 34 years, proved to be effective only in its concessions
to slavery, while its greater guarantees of freedom were
found unavailing and worthless. History says that the
compromise of 1820 was necessary to save the Union from
disruption. I do not dispute history, nor debate the settled
moral question of the past. I only lament that it was
necessary, if indeed it was so. History tells us that the
course then adopted was wise. Ido not controvert it. I
only mourn the occurrence of even one case, most certainly
the only one that ever did happen, in which the way of
wisdom has failed to be also the way of pleasantness, and
the path of peace. It was, in 1820, therefore, that the national
deviation began. We have continued ever since the divergent
course then so inconsiderately entered, until at last we have
reached a point where, amid 'confusion, bewilderment, and
mutual recriminations, it seems alike impossible to go for-
ward or to return. We have added territory after terri-
tory, and region after region, with the customary bold-
ness of feebly resisted conquerors, not merely neglecting to
keep slavery out of our new possessions, but actually re-
moving all the barriers against it which we found standing
at the times of conquest. In doing this we have defied the
moral opinions of mankind, overturned the laws and sys-
tems of our fathers, and dishonoured their memories by
declaring that the unequalled and glorious constitution
which they gave us carried with it, as it attends our eagles,
not freedom and personal rights to the oppressed, but
slavery and a hateful and baleful commerce in slaves.
wherever we win a conquest by sea or land over the whole
habitable globe. While we must now, in deference to his-
tory, excuse the first divergence, it is manifest that our sub-
sequent persistence in the same course has been entirely
unnecessary and unjustifiable. New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, and Canada, what remains of Mexico, all the Wes t
Indies and Central America, are doubtless very desirable,
but we have waited patiently for them, and now likely to
wait until they can be acquired without receiving slavery
with them, or extending it over them. Nay, all the re-
sistance we have ever met in adding Spanish American ter-
ritories to our Republic has resulted from our wilful and
perverse purpose of subverting freedom there, to blight the
fairest portion of the earth, when we found it free, by ex-
tending over it our only national agency of desolation. We
may doubtless persist still further. We may add conquest
to conquest, for resistance to our ambition daily grows
more and more impossible, until we surpass in extent and
apparent strength the greatest empires of ancient or modern
times, all the while enlarging the area of African bondage ;
but after our already ample experience, I think no one will
be bold enough to deny that we equally increase the evils
of discontent and the dangers of domestic faction."
Deviation once begun it was easier to continue on than to
return. The country was all the time growing more pros-
perous and populous. The African race was abject and
unpopular. Few realised that the whole human race suf-
fers somewhat in the afflictions which befall the most de-
spised of its members. Alarms of disunion were also sounded
to terrify the northern masses.
"We love and we ought to love the fellowship of our
slaveholding brethren. How natural, therefore, has it been
to make the concessions so necessary to silence their com-
plaints rather than by seeming impracticability, in what
was thought a matter of indifference, to lose such genial
companionship. Again, at least, present peace and safety
together, with some partial guarantees and concessions of
freedom, were from time to time obtained by compromises.
Who had the right, or who the presumption to say with
the certainty of being held responsible for casting imputa-
tions of bad faith upon our southern brethren, that these
compromises would, when their interests should demand it,
be disavowed and broken? Other nations, we have assumed,
are jealous of our growing greatness. They have censured
us, perhaps with unjust asperity, for our apostacy in favour
of slavery. How natural, and even patriotic, has it been
on our part to manifest by persistence our contempt and
defiance of such interested and hostile animadversions."
Lastly, the subject of slavery in the territories is a little
complex, and the masses of the people could not be made
to understand its importance all at once. Mr. Seward then
advises the people to retrace the course they have been
pursuing for forty years.
" It seems a bold suggestion to say that a great nation
ought to reconsider a practice of forty years' duration ; but
forty years of a nation's life, are equivalent to only one year
in the life of an individual. The thought is at least con-
sistent with political philosophy, for it is not more true than
it is that every nation exists by obedience to the same
moral laws which direct individual life, that they are
written in its original constitution, and it must continually
reform itself according to the spirit of te--ele--, perish.
My humble .uviee, men, xeuow-citizens, is that we return
and re-establish the original policy of the nation, and
henceforth hold, as we did in the beginning, that slavery
is and must be only a purely local, temporary, and excep-
tional institution, confined within the slave States where it
already exists, while freedom is the general, normal, en-
during and permanent condition of society within thejuris-
diction and under the authority of the constitution of the
United States."
Mr. Seward then sums up the reasons which prompt him
to give this advice. Slavery is unjust and inhuman in its
very nature, and it can never be wise voluntarily to perse-
vere in extending an institution that is intrinsically wrong
or cruel. Slavery is a source of weakness. Virginia and
Texas are thrown into a panic by the appearance or even
the suspicion of a handful of men within their borders in;.
stigating civil war. Thirdly, there is no room for African
slaves in the Federal territories. They are wanted for
European and American free labour.
" If Elope wanted more sugar and cotton, let her send
her free labourers hither, or into Italy, or into the West
Indies, or into the East ; or if it suits them better, let them
engage the natives of the cotton growing regions in the old
world, to produce cotton and sugar voluntarily and for
adequate compensation. Such a course, instead of fortify-
ing and enlarging the sway of slavery here, will leave us
free to favour its gradual removal. It will renew or intro-
duce civilisation on the shores of the Mediterranean and
throughout the coasts of the Indian Ocean. ,
Nor will the argument that the party of slavery is national
and that of freedom sectional, any longer avail, when it is
fully understood that, so far as it is founded in truth, it is,
only a result of that perversion of the constitution which
has attempted to circumscribe freedom, and to make slavery
universal throughout the republic. Equally do the re-
proaches, invectives, and satires of the advocates of slavery
extension fail, since it is seen and felt that truth, reason,
and humanity can work right on without fanaticism, and
bear contumely without retaliation. I counsel this course
farther, because the combinations of slavery are broken
up, and can never be renewed with success. Any new
combination must be based on the principle of the Southern
democratic faction, that slavery is inherently just and be.
neficent, and ought to be protected, which can no longer
be tolerated in the North ; or else on the principle of the
Northern democratic faction, that slavery is unworthy or
federal protection; which it is insufficient in the South.,
while the national mind has actually passed far beyond
both of these principles, and is settled in the conviction
that slavery, wherever and howsoever it exists, exists only
to be regretted and deplored. I counsel this course farther,
because tke necessity for a return to the old national way
has become at last absolute and imperative. We can ex-
tend slavery into new territories, and create new slave
states only by re-opening the African slave trade, a pro-
ceeding which, by destroying all the existing values of the
slaves now held in this country, and their ieeeeeee, would
bring the north and south into complete unanimity in
favour of that return. Finally, I counsel that return be-
cause a statesman has been designated• who possesses, in
an eminent and most satisfactory degree, the virtues and
the qualifications necessary for the leader in so great and
generous a movement; and I feel well assured that
Abraham Lincoln will not fail to reinaugurate the an-
cient constitutional policy in the administration of the
Government successfully, because the republican
party, after ample experience, has at last acquired
the courage and the constancy necessary to sustain him,
and because I am satisfied that the people, at last fully con-
vinced of the wisdom and necessity of the proposed refor-
mation, are prepared to sustain and give it effect. But
when it shall have been accomplished, what may we ex-
pect then ; what dangers must we incur ; what disasters
and calamities must we suffer ? I answer no dangers, dis-
asters, or calamities. All parties will acquiesce, because it
will be the act of the people, in the exercise of their sove-
reign power, in conformity with the constitution and laws,
and in harmony with the eternal principles of justice and
the benignant spirit of the age in which we live. All par-
ties and all sections will alike rejoice in the settlement of a
controversy which has agitated the ccuntry and disturbed
its peace so long. We shall regain the respect and good
will of the nations, and once more, consistent with our
principles, and with our ancient character, we shall, with.
their free consent, take our place at their head, in their ad-
van progress towards
genialdsahig tioheeirvialniadamon.,,rehappy, because
more humane Prumangre and more

We fear that the state of affairs in New Zealand
will render it necessary to despatch another regiment to that
colony. The 2d battalion of the 14th, which sailed about
a fortnight since, had been under orders before intelligence
of the disturbances reached this country, being intended to
• relieve the 65th Regiment, whose period of colonial service
had more than expired. Although the battalion might do
very well for ordinary service, yet it is only about two years
in existence, and we fear that a regiment so young is not
very well calculated to contend with enemies so formidable
as the rebels have unfortunately proved themselves to be,
and a seasoned regiment from India or from home would be
invaluable to the interests of the colony, which would be
most seriously affected by anything like a prolonged contest.
—Army and Wavy Gazette.