New-York Daily Tribune. Nr. 5846,19. Januar 1860

English Feeling on the American Slavery Question.

Correspondence of The N. Y. Tribune. London, Dec. 31, 1859.

It ought always to be chronicled whenever one of the influential London journals emancipates itself from temporary bondage, and returns to the rank of the independent Press. In the case of The Economist this event calls the more for notice, since that paper, although opposed to the economical doctrines of The Tribune, has repeatedly acknowledged the fairness and ability with which The Tribune is conducted. Being a weekly paper, principally devoted to economical questions, The Economist was placed under more favorable circumstances than the great bulk of its metropolitan contemporaries for a superior analysis of political events at home and abroad. It could almost act the part of a calm arbiter between the discordant and passionate pleadings of the daily press, and for many years it undoubtedly wielded a considerable influence in this sense. Its impartiality was not that of The Spectator, affecting to blow neither hot nor cold, and to decide neither one way nor the other; but aimed at judging a case by its own merits, without regard to parliamentary or ministerial watchwords. Of late years, however, a strange change broke in upon the conduct of the paper. The change became visible when Mr. James Wilson, who, with the aid of the chiefs of the Anti-Corn-Law League, started The Economist in 1844, became absorbed into the subaltern ranks of the Coalition Cabinet. Subsequently, when he served in the Board of Trade under the consecutive Palmerston Cabinets, the unprincipled partisan character of The Economist, tinging its strictures on the Persian War, the Indian Rebellion, the Canton bombardment, and the Reform question, gave rise to-public remonstrances anything but complimentary to Mr. Wilson. The Tory papers even held him out as a striking specimen of middle-class parvenu morality, Mr. Wilson having, by dint of industry, been converted from a hatter into a public personage. His recent promotion to the post of Indian Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to have dissevered his old connection with The Economist, which at once attempted to recover its lost ground, and in the stand it made against the present

Chinese War to give an earnest of independence. The part now taken by The Economist in the dispute on the American Slavery question proves its altered tone not to have been accidental, but, on the contrary, to proceed from a settled determination.

With regard to the American Slavery question, The Economist has published two 5 articles, the one headed "The Impending Crisis in the Southern States of America," the other, "English sympathy with the Slavery party in America"; the former being, as will be inferred from its title, a comment on Mr. H.R. Helper's volume, while the latter embodies a manly protest against the recent Pro-Slavery Manifesto of The London Times. In the first article The Economist states, that "to England the im- 10 pending crisis is one of the most profound interest—not because the Slave States threaten to appeal to us to defend them against the North in case disunion comes, and ends in civil war, for such an appeal is too foolish to be made, but, because, while our interests as a manufacturing country are bound up, with somewhat painful closeness, with the prosperity of the South, our political sympathies and good wishes would 15 go heartily with the North." Proceeding from the position that Manchester and Glasgow depend on cotton, and that the prosperity of the Cotton States depends on the Union, The Economist does not try to blink the fact that the British trader and manufacturer may feel a strong bias for the pretensions, on the yielding to which the Southern States affirm the Union to hinge. Nevertheless, The Economist avers that 20 if the progress of Slavery was only to be checked by the separation of the North from the South, such an "event" must be "welcome" to every true Englishman. "So long," it says, "as the ambition and power of the North is interested in extending the boundaries of the Union southward into Mexico and the Isthmus, the extinction of Slavery is a hopeless thing. The one condition of its vitality and profitableness is 25 constant extension of territory. Once draw a cordon round, beyond which it cannot pass, and Slavery would soon become utterly profitless with that cordon. It is only virgin soils which can be profitably cultivated by slave labor—a kind of labor that requires constant and minute overlooking, to answer at all. Unless the slaves work in gangs, under sufficient supervision, their labor is worthless, and so soon as the 30 land is exhausted it can again be made profitable only by a different system of farming—one, namely, which requires much sub-division, and free, pams-taking, drilled labor, instead of farming on a large scale, by forced, and, therefore, unskillful labor."

The Economist, according to this view of the case, differs from the argument put 35 forward in Mr. Helper's book, so strangely discussed at Washington—an argument amounting to this, that because the Slave States do not increase in population nearly so rapidly as the Free, and because land is so much cheaper there, and because so much more of it is needed to yield a given value in products, Slavery must, consequently, be dying out of itself, and, as it were, committing suicide. The Economist, 40 on the contrary believes that its progress can be checked only by the most strenuous efforts, and that what is assigned as a reason against the profitableness of Slavery, is just the only circumstance that can make it worth while to be maintained. Since Slavery could only be profitable on rich, large, and sparsely populated soils, "it will not cease to pay while rich land, suitable for the cultivation of cotton, and coffee, 45

and sugar, is found in abundance, directly the first fertility of the old is worked off. Should Slavery once spread to the Isthmus of Panama, it would have before it an indefinite career. All the power of the Anti-Slavery party ought now to be exerted to bring the matter, if possible, to a decisive issue with the South. Then we need not fear for the rest."

The following is the protest of The Economist against the Pro-Slavery manifesto of The London Times:

English Sympathy with the Slavery Party in America.

We have said little concerning the Harper's Ferry insurrection, and have not attempied to palliate the gross folly, and therefore the great wrong of the undertaking. But when we find the principal organ of English opinion openly expressing its sympathy with the South, slandering the Abolitionists with the amazing and unscrupulous falsehood that they are ‘instituting a crusade for the slaughter of the white people, and the institution of a half-caste republic after the model of the Central American communities,’ and putting forth as the only wish which Brown's attempt suggests, that 'the Federal Government may be strengthened and the Southern States protected against such malefactors for the future, —we feel compelled to express, on behalf of the vast number of Englishmen who would be outraged by the supposition that they concur in such opinions, the entire dissent, as well as the disgust, with which we regard

them. When the native troops of India revolted the other day and murdered their own

officers, after a course of treatment so indulgent that in the English army it would have been considered subversive of all discipline, we were not greatly surprised, though we were greatly disappointed, to hear the selfish and insolent doctrines of race which were put forth by the Anglo-Indian press, and half echoed by the most

popular organ of English opinion. But when, after half a century of fruitless preaching

and hoping on the part of the Anti-Slavery party in America, the Southern States are more than ever eager to extend their peculiar institution; when the Abolitionists hear on all hands proposals for fostering Slavery by a renewal of the slave-trade; when their own representatives are caned in the Senate House; when new States, like Kansas, are all but bullied into adopting an institution which its population detest; when a law is past compelling Free States to restore fugitives flying from the cruelty of the slave-owners; when the Supreme Court of Justice reverses all the traditional law in deference to the Southern planters’ interests; when President after President triumphs by the mere popularity of his Slavery tenets ; when the press of the Southern States, so far from merely standing on its own defense, exhausts the resources of language in the effort to express its detestation for free principles, and its purpose of obtaining a final triumph over the North in the Federal Government, or else of declaring war; when all this is so, what but the most insolent and aggressive partisanship with the Slave States could dictate an expression of warm sympathy with them as the aggrieved sufferers, and of vehement detestation toward the enthusiast, who, despairing of any moral persuasion, had recourse to the last resort of force?

We have no wish to defend Capt. Brown's step, which was simply the step of a fanatic. In the first place, hope of moral success to be gained by using the ordinary constitutional organization of the country was not exhausted, nor anything like exhausted. In the next place, even if it had been, no precautions were taken to provide for that success which could alone justify a step so dangerous. But when we come to apportion the blame—to see who are the "malefactors," as The Times calls Capt. John Brown and his adherents—who are innocent sufferers, as it considers the Southern planters—we arrive at a very different conclusion. Capt. Brown was a fanatic—noble-minded, and presumptuous. But the heavy blame should fall where the true provocation originated—with that head-strong, domineering, insolent, and cruel Slavery party, which, for years back, has grown in arrogance and in every violent, offensive, and irritating party quality far more rapidly, unfortunately, that it has lost ground in political importance for power. Who can wonder that when with every victory their demands have enlarged—the Missouri Compromise being followed by the annexation of Texas—this, again, by the Fugitive Slave Act—that Act by the organized effort to press Kansas into the Slavery States—and this, again, by a loud agitation for the open renewal of the slave trade—the Anti-Slavery party, strong in the sense of immutable justice, should set law altogether at defiance, and attempt to gain by open rebellion what they could not gain by constitutional agitation? Were the end, indeed, come—were that the only possible mode of gaining the Anti-Slavery party's aim—no one could deny that the end would be as great and noble as that for which the United States appealed to force against the irritating rule of England. When The Times speaks of the iniquities of provoking a servile war, it forgets that a servile war is only so far worse than a civil war as the slaves are more fierce and less under command than freemen. If gross oppression and despair of any relaxation would justify a civil war, then still grosser oppression and completer despair of any relaxation would justify a servile war. Moreover, the leaders of the Anti-Slavery party have never, so far as we know, contemplated exciting the slaves to war. It was Captain Brown's plan not only to effect a peaceful liberation, but to pledge the slaves to ultra-pacific principles as they joined him. This was, no doubt, in every way a dreamer's scheme. Still, even his most fanatical admirers who have talked at Boston of armed men springing from John Brown's ashes to carry on the war for the liberation of the slaves have not contemplated arming the slaves against their masters, but compelling the masters to liberate the slaves.

Whatever, at all events, be the danger of the attitude now assumed by the AntiSlavery party, the sin is almost wholly on the heads of the Slave States. It is all very well for Mr. Everett, supported by The Times, to talk of the impossibility of any ‘immediate’ abolition. If the most cautious and gradual abolition of Slavery were commenced, nay were it even thought of or advocated in the Slave States, the guilt of such schemes as those of Capt. Brown would be great beyond measure. But every one knows that there is no such dream in the Slave States. All their active measures have been hot and furious for the extension and perpetuation of Slavery. They glory in it. They are propagandists, and most successful propagandists of it. They talk occasionally of admitting the poorer whites to the benefits of this merciful institution. It is they who threaten civil war, rather than relax an iota of the shameful

oppression of the system. And yet we are called upon to pity them, and to call the fanatical Abolitionists 'malefactors.' We are utterly ashamed that such thoughts should go forth to the world with that imprimatur of English public opinion on them which their mere insertion in The Times gives. And we are sure that in indignantly

disowning them, we represent far more truly English public opinion than our powerful contemporary."