The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1860-01-19
ALLIANCE OF THE SOUTH WITH
ENGLAND.
The Charleston Mercury, in alluding to Gov.
Wise's recent Union speech, says

ter no condemnation of the people of the North,
why does he drag England into the controversy,
and attempt to draw off the indignation of the
Southern people from the Northern people,
their only aggressors, to the people of England
That England and France, and all other ma
tons on the continent of Europe, would be glad
to see the Southern States an independent peo
pie, we have not doubt, because it will pro-
mote their interests. England and France
want, in exchange for our productions, that we
receive directly their manufactured commodi-
ties. Their interests and the interests of the
South are thus identical. The North, in the
Union, steps in by the force of our navigation
and tariff law, and interrupts this natural re-
lation of natural customers, and compels us to
take their manufactured commodities at higher
prices, and to use their shipping in all our COM
merce. The South is thus made tributary to
their ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and enrichment. Gov.
Wise seems fully to understand this relation OF
the South towards the North, for, in this speech,
he urges most strenuously the policy of not
consuming Northern productions, and of estab-
fishing a direct trade with our European Gus
toners. Who will most be benefited by this
policy? Why, England, 1.-THE very nation which
he denounces as conspiring against the South.
This harping upon England, as our chief enc
the South, is an old device of Unionism, un-
worthy of any one, except perhaps, an aspirant
for the Presidency. The truth is, there are no
two people in the world more identified in in
terests than Great Britain and the Southern
States; and there are no two people in the
world more antagonistic in interest than the
people of the North and Of the South now in
this Union. The hostility of England to the
Southern States is Just as real as it seems was
the organized military force in Ohio and Penn.
sylvania, which rendered it expedient, in the
opinion of Gov. Wise, to hang old Brown with
FIVE thousand men. We have never been able
to see any facts justifying either assertion. Nor
have we been able to admire his everlasting
importantly for help from the General Govern
ment in the Brown affair, even for the exercise
Of unconstitutional powers"
1t was the objectionable sin of the old Fed
eral party, that it opposed the war with Eng
land, which was found to be highly detrimental
to the commercial interests of the North. But
we believe that the Federalists never went the
length of this Southern advocate of disunion,
who shamelessy avows his reasonable prefer
ence for a foreign country over his own. The
Mercury expresses the prevalent sentiment in
South Carolina, in the above paragraph For
thirty years, that weakest and most ambitious
State of the Union has cherished its disunion
schemes, and time only seems to add intensity
to the bitterness of it's discomfort The people of
South Carolina are conscious of having fallen
far behind the Northern free States, and they
are devoured by spirit off envy, impotent wrath.
and disappointed ambition. A century ago,
Charleston was perhaps the largest town in the
North American colonies, and at the period of
the formation of the Constitution ranked with
Boston. AT the present day, it is interior to
some scores of Western towns, which had no
existence thirty or forty years ago. This hu-
initiating fact is unreleved by the prosperity of
any other place within the State, or of any
other indication of progress. The condition Of
South Carolina is still colonial, and even more
distinctively so than when she owed subsection
to Great Britain. The pride of her people is
CALLED by this conscious inferiority, which every
year renders more striking and instead of
tracing it to its true cause, slavery, they at
tribute it to the bonds of the Federal Union.
1t is vain to reason with them on the subject.
Their pride and their passions have closed up
the inlets of reason. They believe that, ont of
the Union, South Carolina would at once enter
upon a career of prosperity never before known,
and that Charleston would soon rival in wealth
and population the great cities of the North.
Never was there a whole people possessed of
a more absurd infatuation. When the CONT
nent was first settled by the English, the South
nh oh - 4
indigo, enjoyed great prosperity as these ar
ticles were greatly sought after by Europeans.
The Northern colonists, at the time, could only
live, and lay the foundation of future greatness,
by the education of their children in habits of
industry and economy as well as school learn.
ing. They could produce very few arscles
which Europe wanted, except fish, which were
caught on the sea coasts but fishing prepared
the way for commerce, while the necessity of
living within themselves compelled them to
learn the mechanic arts.
The planters of the South were engaged in
the production of the valuable staples of COM
merce with negro slave labor, and the mer-
chants of England were happy to do their car
rying trade for them. The Southerners we're
supplied, in return for their crops of tobacco,
rice, and indigo, with the manufactures of
Great Britain in the greatest profusion, and
lived life of luxury, which caused them to be
envied by their Northern neighbors.
But they made no progress From year to
year, their occuptions, their ideas, and their
civilization, remained the same, or rather de-
Perforated. No arts were introduced. Every
thing was imported. They learned nothing of
navigation or of commerce. Their valuable
trade was in the hands of the British merchants
or the New England fishermen. The wealthiest
among them sent their sons to be educated in
England and thus was kept up the cid high
toned spirit of the English aristocracy = the
country aristocracy-whilec civilization among
the masses was on the decline. The lower
classes of the whites, and to some extent the
upper, seem to have divided their stock Of
civilization with the negro slaves and while
the latter have ceased to be savages, their gain
has been the loss of the white race.
The Northern colonies established common
schools, and, having no profitable employment
for negro slaves, they were saved from thai
greatest of calamities. They therefore made
progress in civilization during their colonia
existence. They learned to manufacture fo
themselves, and to be their own shippers and
merchants; and when the non-intercourse will
England came, as a consequence of the revo
lutionary struggle, they were ready to profit b.
1t. They became the carriers not only for them
| selves, but for their Southern neighbors. Du