Humanity in England, like liberty in France, has now become an
export article for the traders in politics.* We recollect the time
when Tsar Nicholas had Polish ladies flogged by soldiers and
when Lord Palmerston found the moral indignation of some
parliamentarians over the event “impolitic’. We recollect that
about a decade ago a revolt took place on the Ionian Islands ?”°
which gave the English governor” there occasion to have a fairly
considerable number of Grecian women flogged. Probatum est,‘
said Palmerston and his Whig colleagues who at that time were in
office. Just a few years ago proof was furnished to Parliament
from official documents that the tax collectors in India employed
means of coercion against the wives of the ryots,”’ the infamy of
which forbids giving further details. Palmerston and his colleagues
did not, it is true,-dare to justify these atrocities, but what an
outcry they would have raised, had a foreign government dared to
publicly proclaim its indignation over these English infamies and
distinctly indicate that it would step in if Palmerston and
colleagues did not at once disavow the Indian tax officials. But
Cato the Censor himself could not watch over the morals of the
Roman citizens more anxiously than the English aristocrats and
their ministers over the “humanity” of the war-waging Yankees!

The ladies of New Orleans, yellow beauties, tastelessly bedecked
with jewels and comparable, perhaps, to the women of the old
Mexicans, save that they do not devour their slaves in natura,“ are

© Approved.— Ed.

this time—previously it was the harbours of Charleston—the
occasions for the British aristocrats’ display of humanity. The
English women who are starving in Lancashire (they are, however,
not ladies, nor do they possess any slaves), have inspired no
parliamentary utterance hitherto; the cry of distress from the Irish
women, who, with the progressive eviction of the small tenant
farmers in green Erin,’ are flung half naked on the street and
driven from house and home quite as if the Tartars had
descended upon them, has hitherto called forth only one echo
from the Lords, the Commons, and Her Majesty’s government "—
homilies on the absolute rights of landed property.”? But the
ladies of New Orleans! That, to be sure, is another matter. These
ladies were far too enlightened to participate in the tumult of war,
like the goddesses of Olympus, or to cast themselves into the
flames, like the women of Saguntum.”? They have invented a new
and safe mode of heroism, a mode that could have been invented
only by female slaveholders and, what is more, only by female
slaveholders in a land where the free part of the population
consists of shopkeepers by vocation, tradesmen in cotton or sugar
or tobacco, and does not keep slaves, like the cives‘ of the ancient
world. After their men had run away from New Orleans or had
crept into their back closets, these ladies rushed into the streets in
order to spit in the faces of the victorious Union troops or to stick
out their tongues at them or, like Mephistopheles, to make in
general “an unseemly gesture’”,’ accompanied by insulting words.
These Magaeras imagined they could be ill-mannered “with
impunity”’.

This was their heroism. General Butler issued a proclamation ° in
which he notified them that they should be treated as street-
walkers, if they continued to act as street-walkers. Butler has,
indeed, the makings of a lawyer, but does not seem to have
undertaken the requisite study of English statute law.?** Otherwise,
by analogy with the laws imposed on Ireland under Castlereagh,”””
he would have prohibited them from setting foot on the streets at
all. Butler’s warning to the “ladies” of New Orleans has aroused

b Marx gives the English words: “Lords,” “Commons” and ‘Her Majesty’s
government” .— Ed.
© Citizens.— Ed.
© B. F. Butler, A Proclamation (May 15, 1862], The Times, No. 24272, June 14,
1862.— Ed. .

English Humanity and America 211

such moral indignation in Earl Carnarvon, Sir. J. Walsh (who
played so ridiculous and odious a role in Ireland) and Mr.
Gregory, who was already demanding recognition of the Confed-
eracy a year ago,* that the Earl in the Upper House, the knight and
the man “without a handle to his name”? in the Lower House,
interrogated the Ministry to learn what steps it intended to take in
the name of outraged “humanity”. Russell and Palmerston both
castigated Butler, both expected that the government at Washington
would disavow him; and the so very tender-hearted Palmerston,
who behind the Queen’s* back and without the foreknowledge of his
colleagues recognised the coup d’état of December 1851 ”*° (on which
occasion “ladies” were actually shot dead, whilst others were violated
by Zouaves”’) merely out of “human admiration”—the same
tender-hearted Viscount declared Butler’s warning to be an
“infamy”.* Ladies, indeed, who actually own slaves—such ladies
were not even to be able to vent their anger and their malice on
common Union troops, peasants, artisans and other, rabble with
impunity! It is “infamous”.

Among the public here, no one is deceived by this humanity
farce. It is meant partly to call forth, partly to fortify the feeling in
favour of intervention, in the first place on the part of France.
After the first melodramatic outbursts, the knights of humanity in
the Upper and Lower House, as if by word of command,
discarded their emotional mask. Their declamation served
merely as a prologue to the question whether the Emperor of the
French had communicated with the English government in the
matter of mediating, and whether the latter, as they hoped, had
received such an offer favourably. Russell and Palmerston both
declared they did not know of the offer. Russell declared the
present moment extremely unfavourable for any mediation.
Palmerston, more guarded and reserved, contented himself with
saying that at the present moment the English government had no
intention of mediating.

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

5 Marx gives the English phrase.— Fd.

¢ Victoria’s.— Ed.

d The reference is to the speeches of H. Carnarvon and J. Russell in the House of
Lords and of J. Walsh, W. Gregory and H. Palmerston in the House of Commons on
June 13, 1862 published in The Times, No. 24272, June 14, 1862.— Ed.

¢ Napoleon III.— Ed.

The plan is that during the recess of the English Parliament
France should play her role of mediator and, in the autumn, if
Mexico is secure, should open her intervention. The lull in the
American theater of war has resuscitated the intervention
speculators in St. James and the Tuileries from their marasmus.
This lull is itself due to a strategic error on the part of the North.
If, after its victory in Tennessee, the Kentucky army had rapidly
advanced on the railway junctions in Georgia, instead of letting
itself be drawn South down the Mississippi on a side track, Reuter
and Co. would have been cheated of their business in “interven-
tion” and “mediation” rumours. However that may be, Europe
can wish nothing more fervently than that the coup d’état? should

attempt “to restore order in the United States” and “to save
civilisation” there too.