Karl Marx

THE SECESSIONISTS’ FRIENDS IN THE LOWER HOUSE.—
RECOGNITION OF THE AMERICAN BLOCKADE’?

London, March 8

Parturvunt montes!* Since the opening of Parliament the English
friends of Secessia had threatened a “motion” on the American
blockade. The resolution has at length been introduced in the
Lower House” in the very modest form of a motion in which the
government is urged “to submit further documents on the state of
the blockade’”—and even this insignificant motion was rejected
without the formality of a division.

Mr. Gregory, the member for Galway, who moved the resolution,
had in the parliamentary session of last year, shortly after the
outbreak of the Civil War, already introduced a motion for
recognition of the Southern Confederacy.‘ To his speech of this
year a certain sophistical adroitness is not to be denied. The
speech merely suffers from the unfortunate circumstance that it
falls into two parts, of which the one cancels the other. One part
describes the disastrous effects of the blockade on the English
cotton industry and therefore demands removal of the blockade.
The other part proves from the papers submitted by the ministry,
two memorials by Messrs. Yancey and Mann and by Mr. Mason
among them, that the blockade does not exist at all, except on
paper, and therefore should no longer be recognised. Mr. Gregory
spiced his argument with successive citations from The Times. The
Times, for whom a reminder of its oracular pronouncements is at

a Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus!—-The mountains are in labour, a
ridiculous mouse will be born! (Horace, Art of Poetry, 139.)— Ed.

b W. H. Gregory [Speech in the House of Commons, March 7, 1862], The
Times, No. 24188, March 8, 1862.— Ed.

¢ W. H. Gregory [Speech in the House of Commons, May 28, 1861], The Times,
No. 23945, May 29, 1861.— Ed.

d Marx gives the English word.— Ed.

The Secessionists’ Friends in the Lower House 183

this moment thoroughly inconvenient, thanks Mr. Gregory with a
leader* in which it holds him up to public ridicule.°

Mr. Gregory’s motion was supported by Mr. Bentinck, an ultra-
Tory who for two years has laboured in vain to bring about a seces-
sion from Mr. Disraeli in the Conservative camp.

It was a ludicrous spectacle in and by itself to see the alleged
interests of English industry represented by Gregory, the rep-
resentative of Galway, an unimportant seaport in the West of
Ireland, and by Bentinck, the representative of Norfolk, a purely
agricultural district.

‘Mr. Forster, the representative of Bradford, a centre of English
industry, rose to oppose them both. Forster’s speech deserves
closer examination, since it strikingly proves the vacuity of the
phrases concerning the character of the American blockade given
currency in Europe by the friends of secession. In the first place,
he said, the United States have observed all formalities required by
international law. They have declared no port in a state of
blockade without previous proclamation, without special notice of
the moment of its commencement or without fixing the fifteen
days after the expiration of which entrance and departure shall be
forbidden to foreign neutral ships.

The talk of the legal “inefficacy” of the blockade rests,
therefore, merely on the allegedly frequent cases in which it has
been broken through. Before the opening of Parliament it was
said that 600 ships had broken through it. Mr. Gregory now
reduces the number to 400. His evidence rests on two lists handed
the government, the one on November 30 by the Southern
commissioners Yancey and Mann, the other, the supplementary
list, by Mason. According to Yancey and Mann, more than 400
ships broke through between the proclamation of the blockade
and August 20, running the blockade either inwards or outwards.
According to official customs-house reports, however, the total
number of the incoming and outgoing ships amounts to only 322.
Of this number, 119 departed before the declaration of the
blockade, 56 before the expiration of the time allowance of fifteen
days. There remain 147 ships. Of these 147 ships, 25 were river
boats that sailed from inland to New Orleans, where they lie idle;
106 were coasters; with the exception of three ships, all were, in

a Marx uses the English word.— Ed.
b “The demand which Mr. Gregory makes...”, The Times, No. 24188, March 8,
1862.— Ed.
© The speeches of Bentinck and other members of the House of Commons on
March 7, 1862 are cited according to The Times, same issue.— Ed.

the words of Mr. Mason himself, “quasi-inland” * vessels. Of these
106, 66 sailed between Mobile and New Orleans. Anyone who
knows this coast is aware how absurd it is to call the sailing of a
vessel behind lagoons, so that it hardly touches the open sea and
merely creeps along the coast, a breach of the blockade. The same
holds of the vessels between Savannah and Charleston, where they
sneak between islands and narrow tongues of land. According to
the testimony of the English consul, Bunch, these flat-bottomed
boats only appeared for a few days on the open sea. After
deducting 106 coasters, there remain 16 departures for foreign
ports; of these, 15 were for American ports, mainly Cuba, and one
for Liverpool. The “ship” that berthed in Liverpool was a
schooner, and so were all the rest of the “ships”, with the
exception of a sloop. There has been much talk, exclaimed Mr.
Forster, of sham blockades. Is this list of Messrs. Yancey and
Mann not a sham list? He subjected the supplementary list of Mr.
Mason to a similar analysis, and showed further that the number
of cruisers that slipped out only amounted to three or four,
whereas in the last Anglo-American war” no less than 516
American cruisers broke through the English blockade and
harried the English seaboard.

“The blockade, on the contrary, has been wonderfully effective from its
commencement.”

Further proof is provided by the reports of the English consuls;
above all, however, by the Southern price lists. On January 11 the
price of cotton in New Orleans offered a premium of 100 per cent
for export to England; the profit on import of salt amounted to
1500 per cent and the profit on contraband of war was
incomparably higher. Despite this alluring prospect of profit, it
was just as impossible to ship cotton to England as salt to New
Orleans or Charleston. In fact, however, Mr. Gregory does not
complain that the blockade is inefficacious, but that it is too
efficacious. He urges us to put an end to it and with it to the
crippling of industry and commerce. One answer suffices:

“Who urges this House to break the blockade? The representatives of the
suffering districts? Does this cry resound from Manchester, where the factories
have to close, or from Liverpool, where from lack of freight the ships lie idle in the
docks? On the contrary. It resounds from Galway and is supported by Norfolk.”

On the side of the friends of secession Mr. Lindsay, a large
shipbuilder of North Shields, made himself conspicuous. Lindsay

4 Marx gives the English words: ‘“‘quasi-inland”’.— Ed.
b Of 1812-14.— Ed.

The Secessionists’ Friends in the Lower House 185

had offered his shipyards to the Union, and, for this purpose, had
travelled to Washington, where he experienced the vexation of
seeing his business propositions rejected. Since that time he has
turned his sympathies to the land of Secessia.

The debate was concluded with a circumstantial speech by Sir
R. Palmer, the Solicitor-General,* who spoke in the name of the
government. He furnished well grounded juridical proof of the
validity of the blockade in international law and of its sufficiency.
On this occasion he in fact tore to pieces—and was taxed with so
doing by Lord Cecil—the “new principles” proclaimed at the
Paris Convention of 1856.'** Among other things, he expressed his
astonishment that in a British Parliament Gregory and _ his
associates ventured to appeal to the authority of Monsieur de
Hautefeuille. The latter, to be sure, is a brand-new “authority”
discovered in the Bonapartist camp. Hautefeuille’s compositions
in the Revue contemporaine on the maritime rights of neutrals?
prove the completest ignorance or mauvaise foi° at higher
command.

With the complete fiasco of the parliamentary friends of
secession in the blockade question, all prospect of a breach
between Britain and the United States is eliminated.

€

March 12, 1862

a Marx gives the English title.— Ed.

b L. B. Hautefeuille, ‘““Nécessité d’une loi maritime...”, “Le réglement du 31
janvier 1862 sur l’asile maritime...” and “Le droit maritime international devant le
parlement britannique”, Revue contemporaine, 2° série, Tomes 25, 27, Paris,
1862.— Ed.

© Unconscientiousness.— Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels