by exhibit the process so plainly, as it has gone forward in both hemispheres, that posterity will ask how it was possible for the Americans to be so blind, and to allow themselves to be made tools of as they have been,—befooled to the level of the wit of their least wise fellow-citizens.
Many living Americans understand very well how it has happened. Looking at French transactions under the present régime, they see that this affair has nothing to do with republicanism. The Russian autocrat, the French revolutionary despot, and the American oligarchy have all been following the same course of aggression and annexation; and it has been done apart from all republican considerations, and by no means in virtue of them in any of the cases.
Here we lay our finger on the secret. Here we find the ground of sympathy between the Americans, as they have been governed by a slave-holding oligarchy, and the despotisms of Europe. The serf-holding and the slave-holding country had a common interest in aggression upon neighbours, just as the military governments of Russia and France have had the same tendency in common for politico-military reasons. We see, by meditating a little in this direction, that the international favouritism between Russians and Americans is largely accounted for without any reference to the republicanism of the latter. It is the oligarchical pro-slavery interest in the United States which was in such close affinity with the Russia of the Emperor Nicholas.
This leads us into a path on which we shall find a good deal of light shed by events within the memory of us all. There are two aspects under which Europeans have to observe the conduct of the great Republic—viz.: in its aggressions and in its alliances. These are its two classes of foreign relations. How do its citizens behave in them?
About the aggression I will say only a few words. I need not reprobate it, for nobody de fends it. All that is necessary is to remind my readers that it has nothing to do with republicanism. The Dutch and the Swiss have never been aggressive as to neighbouring territory, nor have the Americans of the Northern States, except in as far as they have been compelled by unworthy fears and vanities to answer the requisitions of the Southern oligarchy established at Washington. It is as slave-holders that the Southern citizens have needed fresh territory, and have sent their agents, Lopez and Walker and the like, into Cuba and Mexico and Nicaragua and St. Domingo. We constantly hear the question asked in every country in Europe, "Why cannot the Americans keep at home in their own half-peopled territory, and enjoy themselves in peace and plenty and progress?" Ay! why cannot they? The answer is, that some of them are slave-holders, and that, as they impoverish their own soil, they need fresh, and must be always on the move. The contrast between them and their countrymen in New England (who are far more truly republican) is as strong as between an Alabama speculator and a Lincolnshire or Lothian farmer.
Thus, as to this feature of their international relations—their aggressions on foreign territory—it is not their republicanism but their slave holding that is answerable for it.
And now for the other aspect—their foreign alliances.
Their international partialities are clearly not a matter of political philosophy or every-day common sense. Neither philosophy nor common sense justifies the partiality towards France and Russia and the touchiness and testiness towards England, which are notorious and undisputed everywhere. To what are these owing?
Large allowance must be made for the feelings left behind by the former colonial connection with England, and the mode of its rupture, and for the share which France took in sustaining that rupture. It is scarcely possible to overrate the allowance which should be made for these influences: but we must admit, first, that they have nothing to do with the republicanism of the Americans; and, next, that there is something remarkable in the revival of ill-humour and impracticable manners, after a course of good understanding and mutual good manners, during the very reign in which the separation took place. During many years of the reign of George III., there was a succession of dignified and thoroughly well qualified ambassadors from the United States to the Courts of Europe: whereas, what have we seen of late years? The Southern party sent to England Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Everett, who showed himself the Southern bully complete on his return, in his notorious letter to Lord J. Russell, and his manifestoes on the Monroe doctrine and the Slave Trade; Mr. Bancroft, who could do nothing but quail before the difficulties of his position; and Mr. Buchanan, who immortalised himself here as the author of the Ostend Manifesto. The same party favoured Spain with the loan of Mr. Soulé, who employed himself in working at the Ostend Manifesto, in intriguing on behalf of filibustering schemes, in plotting to deprive Spain of Cuba, and in fighting duels, and spouting venom and insult so intolerable that his patrons were compelled to recall him. When the Republican party came into power, their leaders sent Mr. Cassius Clay and Mr. Burlingame to Courts where they could not be endured, and whence they have been recalled, after having done all possible mischief by their effusions in speech and writing, in England and France. Here we seem to arrive at an implication of republicanism with the case; and it is true that in a republic only is it probable that citizens should be appointed to diplomatic missions who are conspicuously deficient in the first requisites for their office,—a dispassionate and patient temper, a knowledge of history and political philosophy, and courteous, or at least decent manners. But, though the republicanism did not check such appointments, something else originated them. Mr. Soulé was the pro-slavery bully; and Mr. Cassius Clay was the anti-slavery bully. Their respective parties sent the men; and the party feud, now intensified into civil war, was altogether due to slavery.
All the quarrels and bickerings with England have been due to slavery, for two generations past. The aggressiveness about territory is as directly owing to that cause as the dispute about the Right