The Portland daily press., 1866-09-25

speech as should exclude him from the society
OF gentlemen and consign him to the low
haunts frequented by his kind"
Now, Mr.. Editor, all this from print which
loftily undertakes to read lessons TO the press
on scurrility and to the politician on "black
guardism." Can it be beaten?
ONDERLoT.
rs Right also Might i'm Americas
AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE AMERICAN CRISIS
From the London Spectator
Is the governing class ofGreat Britain about
to make another American blunder? 1t looks
like it, if we may judge from symptoms to be
observed both in the press and in society iden-
tical with those which appeared in 1860 and in
1861. In every comment upon this quarrel be-
tween the President and Congress, there is the
same ferocity of prejudice on the side of the
South, the same disposition to applaud its lead
ers, the same refusal to look beyond its narrow
est legal issues for the principles of the strug-
gle. Above all, there is the same inability to
look the facts of the matter in the face, to dis
Germ where power really lies, to reckon up
forces, or calculate, as men would calculate in
any European contest, to which side the prob
abilities incline Names have changed since
1861, but everything else remains as unaltered
as if all English publicists were Stuarts or
Dou1uouS, cqudily uudDl6 10 learn ana TO for
get. All that was said of the South is now
said ofthe great Democratic party" Mr.. john
son is exalted instead of Mr.. Davis; Gen. Sher-
man has taken-without his own consent-the
place of Gen. Beauregard, and the calumnies
once heaped upon "the North" are now spatter-
ed over the Radical fanatics" that is the ma
jority of Northern men. The cause at stake
is forgotten in silly gossip about the follies of
those who defend it, every outrage committed
by Democrats is blankly denied, every betise
committed by Radicals illustrated with pictor-
ial coloring and imaginary additions Above
all, the ancient constitutional" arguments are
refurnished, and anybody who ventures to sug-
gest that the true quarrel is between ideas
which cannot be equally triumphant, slavery
ana freedom, privilege and equality, caste and
Cnr1Stanlty, is beaten down under o hail of
puerile LOCALITIES about Conventions and Legis-
latures, and the divine right of white majori-
ties everywhere except in New England to do
what seems pleasant in their own eyes. ili ~
This is the blunder Englishmen, as we con-
ceive, are once more going to Make the blum
der which has already produced such disas-
trous effects. Blinded by a prejudice against
color which in its strength and permanence is
to cool reasoners scarcely Ineligible, they
could not see the most brutal facts of the old
war, could not perceive that, apart from jus
tice, and morality, and Providence altogether,
WOOO,OOO of people earnest enough to send
their male population into the field must in
evitably beat 100000 of the same race, and
they are blind to the same facts now. They
hear that Democrats carry this and that cleo
ton, that State Legislatures are elected who'll
~ OF Confederate soldiers, that the Irish are
with the President, that even Congress con-
tanned Representatives ready to support his
poicy, that his opponents are silly persons,
and that Radicals are very much hated and
they think that strong man as he clearly is.
and armored in prerogative, he must defeat a
mere House of Commons guided BY ideologues.
and capable in an hour of extreme excitement
OF voting an immense increase to its own sala-
ry. Very likely if the parties to the contest
were as the Times and Telegraph describe
them, he would defeat his adversaries, and
certainly we should raise no dirge over their
fall With all the will in the world with
profound sense that they are, unconsciously
even TO themselves, the vanguard of the only
cause worth fidelity even unto Staying, we
are wholly unable to sympathize with the ma
]or1ty OF Congress, with men who import into
the grandest of earthly struggles the meanest
OF petty trickeries. But Mr.. johnson does not
happen to be fighting Congress, but a foe of
very different stamp-the foe which has already
defeated man probably greater than himself,
backed by allies undoubtedly stronger than
any he is at all likely to secure-the great
American people, f stt
them, the one solid power within the Union.
fought out the terrible struggle of four wears.
at first incidentally and then consciously in or
ger that propaganda abolition should have
free course within the United States, and
rather than surrender that object thew will
fight it out again. From the day when they
clearly perceive that the President intends that
This result of the war shall be thrown AWAY
That the South shall build up its own civiliza-
lion on basis hostile to the civilization of the
Sortn, tney VIII at once become an organized
mass, before whose steady advance the Presi-
lent and his allies will be as powerless as a
iyke before storm wave. That thew will be
very slow to perceive the truth is exceedingly
probable. Masses of agricultural persons liv-
ng on their own farms are always slow. and !
Americans, penetrated from birth with an idea
of their future, are the most sanguine of man
kind; but from the day they do perceive it the
country will be divided, as in 1861, into two
camps, of which one will contain 2O,OOO,OOO of
this time fully conscious of the
end to be reached, rich, educated, and flushed
With victory; the other, some 100000 equally
brave, but poor, exhausted with battle, and
conscious OF a certainty of their own ultimate
defeat What has the President to trust in
tnat the original seceders had not? His own
genius? 1t is not greater than that of Mr..
Davis. The South, which, saws a Democratic
correspondent of the Times, is ranging itself
IKE wall behind him? The South is not
stronger than it was in 1861, for if it has gained
Kentucky, which then stood neutral, it has
lost the youth of Virginia The Border States?
Apart from Kentucky, they are, what they al
ways have been, reservoirs of partisans for
either side, the Southern one being the more
exhausted. The Democratic party? 1t is no
stronger when the test of actual battle is an
Piled than it was in 1851, when its ORGAN. IN
'he center OF its own stronghold, purchased
existence by sudden enlistment in the ranks
If its enemies i II -os ~ "
New England is as determined as ever. and
New England is the brain of the Union; the
est is as free-soil as ever, and the West is the
'ody of the nation. The Radicals would with
ma week from the commencement of the strug-
lie be again the North, and the North is In
America irresistible, if only because it receives
very year an army of emigrants which must
III up any vacancies In the field. The Radi-
ais have no organization, we shall be told, but
n 1850 the little organization existing was in
Southern hands. They have no leaders, but
low many had they when Lincoln was distrust-
u as man who had passed through Baltimore
~ y ai, sg The President controls the army?
ne mas himself decreed its reduction to less |
man $4,000 men. He commands the navvP-
ust 30 long as the navy, now differed by
y oreuelners, conceives itself bound to obey-
ne 1 m,s. ene control of Washington? Possibly,
'u n CI" o;n Hlucn more fitting center Of |
ition consecrated by hundred vasrs of cpS-
ON, by Constitution which seems tn Amer;. |
ans almost divine, by the habitual reveranna
# three generations? And so has ConoraSs
md while Congress has the legal power ~ ;n,,
,eaching him, he has not the legal power of nro-
cribing Congress. One advantage we concede |
% him, The possesses MIR. Seward, the states
nan who, when the revolution began, declared |
J would end in 80 days, and who, now that its |
curtin act has closed, cannot see, cannot even
suess, whittier the plot of the drama tends, has
not, we verify believe a susnicion that 2OjOOO-
~ ~ teemen did not fight to the death in or
Ter tnat their defeated foes should be constitu-
ionally admitted to govern them. We saw |
1otnn en Of the cause the energy it has
Wy; aeh " - ~ nen willing to die its behalf
'sophers define in the phrase the spirit Of the
ge," nothing even of our own belief that there
) power in right. We simply state the brutal
act, that the force which wins on battle-fielSs
against the President and entreat English,
nen not rendered insane by prejudice to pause
nd reflect, before for the second time they wi
en- the gulf between them and the only race |
whom in the hour of extremity they could !