Part 21
“The process of preparation has steadily gone on in the loyal States, while that of exhaustion has been going on in the disloyal.... We have the most satisfactory evidence that the Union will be hailed in every quarter just as fast as the army shall emancipate the people from the oppression of the insurgent leaders.”
March 15—“The financial and moral, as well as the physical, elements of the insurrection seem to be rapidly approaching exhaustion.” On 25th March it seems impossible to the sanguine Secretary that the organisation of the insurgents can be longer maintained. On 28th April he asserts that “to-day the country is assuming that the fate of this unnatural war is determined by the great event of the capture of New Orleans.” On the 5th May the fiscal system of the insurgents must, he calculates, have exploded, and their military connections be everywhere broken. On 28th May the Federal Government is said to possess the Mississippi and all the other great natural highways. And on June 2—
“The war in the Mississippi valley may be deemed virtually ended.... The army of General M‘Clellan will be rapidly strengthened, although it is already deemed adequate to the capture of Richmond.... No American now indulges any doubt that the integrity of the Union will be triumphantly maintained.”
24th June:—
“You tell me that in England they still point to the delays at Richmond and Corinth, and they enlarge upon the absence of displays of Union feeling in New Orleans and Norfolk. Ah, well! scepticism must be expected in this world in regard to new political systems, insomuch as even Divine revelation needs the aid of miracles to make converts to a new religious faith.”
On 7th July, after M‘Clellan’s disasters, he says:—
“The military situation is clearly intelligible, and ought to be satisfactory to the cool and candid judgment of the country.... We have a rumour that Vicksburg is actually taken. But the report is premature, though we have no doubt but the capture has before this time occurred.”
And on the 10th November, just before the defeat of Fredericksburg, we find him “apprehending no insurmountable obstacles to complete success.”
Nor are his prophecies addressed only to England. On the 15th April he tells Mr Dayton:—
“A few days will probably complete the opening of the Mississippi river, and restore to the country that national outlet of the great granary of America which disunion, in its madness, has temporarily attempted to obstruct, in violation not more of political laws than of the ordinances of nature.”
22d April:—
“We have reason to expect Savannah to come into our possession within the next ten days.”
5th May:—
“We shall have peace and union in a very few months, let France and Great Britain do what they may. We should have them in one month if either the Emperor or the Queen should speak the word, and say, If the life of this unnatural insurrection hangs on an expectation of our favour, let it die. To bring the Emperor to this conviction is your present urgent duty.”
On the 10th May he has a vision of a Yankee millennium:—
“Less than a year will witness the dissolution of all the armies; the ironclad navy will rest idly in our ports; taxes will immediately decrease; and new States will be coming into the Confederacy, bringing rich contributions to the relief and comfort of mankind.”
On the 10th July he says:—
“The reduction of Vicksburg, the possession of Chattanooga, and the capture of Richmond, would close the civil war with complete success. All these three enterprises are going forward. The two former will, we think, be effected within the next ten days.”
And in September he actually bites his thumb at the Emperor:—
“We have not been misled,” he says, “by any of the semblances of impartiality or of neutrality which unfriendly proceedings towards us in a perilous strife have put on. When any Government shall incline to a new and more unfriendly attitude, we shall then revise with care our existing relations towards that Power, and shall act in the emergency as becomes a people who have never yet faltered in their duty to themselves while they were endeavouring to improve the condition of the human race.”
Compared with these prophecies the ravings of Mother Shipton become respectable oracles. Yet on them was founded the entire foreign policy of the Federal Government; the complaints that foreign statesmen and other sane persons would not confide in them were incessant; and they were the lights by which American envoys were expected to steer.
These gentlemen, with more or less sense and discretion, all write in the stilted creaking style, stuck over with hard metaphors, which distinguishes the master-spirit Seward, and which appears to be the characteristic of American public compositions. They seem to have caught, and to express very honestly, not only his style but his ideas, and to represent perfectly the querulous, arrogant, exacting tone of the Secretary. It is not, probably, from a wish to do him homage that they thus accurately reflect him, but rather because it is natural to American politicians to take abroad with them that idea of the pre-eminence of their country which they have passed their lives at home in asserting, and because their habit of regarding England as the abode of a jealous aristocracy, and as being always in the wrong, places them in a position of natural antagonism to us in every case that can arise. But, granting this to be inevitable, we may consider ourselves very fortunate that America is represented among us by a gentleman in every way so entitled to respect as Mr Adams. The son of one President and the grandson of another, both of whom were elected to the chief place in the Republic at a time when something else besides obscurity and the absence of any quality which could excite the jealousy of aspiring men, was demanded for the attainment of the position which Washington had filled, the claims of Mr Adams as a public man evidently rest on other grounds than those of ordinary American politicians. We do not doubt that the expressions of goodwill and courtesy addressed to him from our Foreign Office are perfectly sincere and deserved. It is true that the tone of his correspondence with that office is often captious, and his demands are sometimes unreasonable. Without prompting from his own Government he seems often to prejudge questions of international law with a bias that blinds him to the true bearing of the question, as in the case of the Emily St Pierre, and leads him to treat as an injury the denial of concessions which are denied because impossible to be granted. But this is the traditionary character of American diplomacy: it thus expresses the spirit of the people, with the promptings of which a Minister may think himself bound to comply; and both Mr Adams and Mr Dayton, Minister to France, appear in their correspondence to discharge their duties with great zeal and fidelity, and, moreover, to display the virtue, not by any means universal among their brethren, of confining themselves to the business of their own legations.
We need not say that our remarks relate only to Mr Adams’s share in the published correspondence, and not to his later acts. The extraordinary step he took on the 9th April, in granting a permit to an English vessel enabling her to pass the blockade, is fraught with consequences too important to be dwelt on here, and, if unexplained, would force us largely to qualify our encomium.
It might be supposed that the ties between Austria and America are neither numerous nor close, and that consequently the Minister to Vienna would find but a narrow field for the display of his qualities as a diplomatist. Accordingly we find Mr Motley, in the dearth of other matter, falling back upon the grand resource of American politicians, and discussing English affairs as the most natural topic possible to engage the attention of an envoy at Vienna. From that convenient point of observation, then, he proceeds to enlighten the Washington Cabinet on the disposition and intentions of the statesmen, and organs of the press, of Great Britain; and as other ministers elsewhere imitate this course, the Government of Mr Lincoln has the advantage of seeing British policy represented, not merely in the aspect in which it is seen by Mr Adams the special photographer, but as it appears when viewed by amateurs from the various capitals of Europe.
Should a Tory Government succeed the present Cabinet, Mr Motley anticipates much trouble. Nothing, he says, can exceed the virulence with which the extreme Conservative party regard America, nor the delight with which they look forward to its extinction as a nation. The hatred to the English Radicals is, he has discovered, “the secret of the ferocity and brutality with which the ‘Times,’ the ‘Saturday Review,’ and other Tory organs of the press, have poured out their insults upon America ever since the war began.” How the journals thus classified may approve being linked together as Tory organs, we cannot say. To ourselves we, of course, see nothing personal in the general allusion, our leaning to Radicalism and Republicanism being too notorious to admit of any mistake. Subsequently Mr Motley writes a long essay about British matters, explaining the sentiments of the “venerable Premier of England” and our Foreign Minister, and criticising the speech made by Mr Gladstone at Newcastle, part of which makes him very angry, and causes him to express a hope that that statesman’s tongue may be blistered. Nor, unusual as his style of diplomatic correspondence may appear, does he stand quite alone in it.
It is possible that the godfathers and godmothers of Mr Cassius Marcellus Clay are, in principal degree, responsible for the efforts made by that gentleman to attain notoriety. It would be mean to sneak obscurely about the world under such magnificent appellations. Better, in such a case, be called John Thomas. Hence, without any quality apparent that would entitle the bearer of these historic names to claim distinction amid the company of a pothouse, his efforts to become known in the world have been as unceasing as if he were some wronged genius entitled to a hearing. At the outbreak of hostilities he launched from Paris a tremendous defiance against our unfortunate country. Then he published a letter in the ‘Times,’ telling us what we ought to do in the American quarrel, and, in case we should not comply, threatening our great-grandchildren with the vengeance of we forget how many millions of unborn Yankees. At this time he was on his way to St Petersburg as United States Minister to Russia. For his guidance he had received one of Mr Seward’s most elaborate moral essays, beginning in this remarkable way: “Sir,—Nations, like individuals, have three prominent wants: first, freedom; secondly, prosperity; thirdly, friends. The United States early secured the two first objects by the exercise of courage and enterprise. But, although they have always practised singular moderation, they nevertheless have been slow in winning friends.” Fortified with a great deal of this kind of composition, Mr Clay arrived in the Russian capital. From his own correspondence we learn that he found the Emperor “absent in the direction of Moscow,” and being advised by the Assistant-Secretary of State to await his Majesty’s return, “I presumed,” he says, “it would not be agreeable to the Emperor for me to follow on.” In a few days he had an interview with Prince Gortchakoff, who “asked after Pickens” (whether Pickens is something, or some place, or somebody, does not appear), “my family, and other things in a familiar way, when I was dismissed by again shaking hands.” Soon after we learn that he and “his suite, Green Clay, William C. Goodloe, and T. Williams,” set out for Peterhoff, where the Emperor received them, and addressed Mr Clay in a set speech, which was delivered in Russian, though, says he, “the Emperor spoke American mostly.” We are at liberty, therefore, to suppose that his Majesty, during great part of the interview, spoke through his nose; and, no doubt, Prince Gortchakoff, who spoke only English, beheld with wonder, not unmixed with envy, this exhibition of his Imperial master’s accomplishments as a linguist.
Mr Clay then addressed to the Emperor an essay on the moral government of Russia, which, from internal evidence, we pronounce to have been learnt by heart from a prize paper by Seward. “The Emperor,” he says, “seemed much gratified and really moved by this last remark,” possibly because it was the last; and, besides speaking Russian and American, Alexander was so ostentatious as to conclude the interview by speaking English, perhaps deeming it appropriate to the subject-matter. “He wanted to know if I thought England would interfere. I told him we did not care what she did; that her interference would tend to unite us the more; that we fought the South with reluctance; we were much intermarried and of a common history; but that the course of England had aroused our sensibilities towards her in no very pleasant manner. The Emperor seemed to like my defiance of old John Bull very much. He wanted to know if I was a relative of Henry Clay, and what was my military rank. I told him I was only a distant relation of Clay, and that I wore the uniform of an American colonel” (borrowed, perhaps, from another relation, Pipe Clay), “which rank I filled in my own country.” His Majesty then shook hands twice with the Ambassador, and dismissed him.
Before concluding the despatch from which we learn the foregoing interesting particulars, it seems to have occurred to Mr Clay that it would be judicious to show Mr Seward that moralising on the war was a game which two could play at; and he wound up in the following style:—
“I have already made this letter too long; but I cannot conclude without saying how much more and more I value the great and inestimable blessings of our Government, and how I trust in God that no compromise will be made of the great idea for which we have so long fought, but that General Scott, following out the programme of Mr Lincoln’s inaugural, will _slowly_ and _surely_ subdue the rebellion, ‘stock, lock, and gun-barrel,’ ‘hook and line, bob and sinker,’ and that we may all be spared to see once more the glorious old banner restored,—‘Liberty and union, now and for ever—one and inseparable.’”
These extracts from the Clay correspondence of 1861 will no doubt cause the reader keenly to regret that we cannot give more. But the fact is that, whether Mr Seward was jealous of Mr Clay’s native humour as displayed in these papers, or considered him a formidable rival as a moral essayist, or whatever the cause might be, the omissions are so numerous that a great part of the Ambassador’s correspondence consists of asterisks, leaving only the driest details, such as any ordinary John Thomas or Green Clay might have written. So numerous are the stars between the stripes of print, that the successive pages look like so many representations of the American banner. But in January last year he wrote an essay on the subject of the perfidy and general villainy of Great Britain, which has fortunately been preserved entire. “In this critical time,” he says, “whether war or peace with England ensues, I deem it my duty to give the President my impressions of European sentiment.” He then details the reasons why the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe have always regarded his republic with jealousy. “Their jealousy, their secret hate, their blind vengeance verges,” Mr Clay thinks, “upon insanity;.... they renew with us the fable of the wolf and the lamb; though we are below on the mountain stream, we are accused of muddying the waters.” His method of dealing with Secession is tersely expressed—“I have always thought that the whole property of the rebels, slaves and all, should be summarily confiscated.” But before prescribing this treatment for the South, he devotes a paragraph to the way in which England should be handled:—
“In case of war with England,” he says, “Canada should be seized at all hazards. A large force should be first placed in fortifications in some place suitable near the coast, which would cut off reinforcements from England. Union with us, with equal rights, should be offered the Canadians, and the lives and property of friends secured. Men and money should be sent to Ireland, India, and all the British dominions all over the world, to stir up revolt. Our cause is just; and vengeance will sooner or later overtake that perfidious aristocracy.”
Such was the esteem in which the Cabinet of Washington held either the practical qualities evinced in this essay, or the diplomatic services veiled under the asterisks, that they were considered to entitle him, on his return to America, to the position of a Brigadier-General. In the records of the war we cannot, however, find that Brigadier Cassius Marcellus ever performed any military achievement worthy either of the foe of Cæsar or the foe of Hannibal. He seems to have worn his warlike honours with remarkable meekness, and never to have done anything to fulfil his own aspiration that “liberty and union may be for ever inseparable,” by taking the smallest step towards the subjugation of the enemy. Under these circumstances Mr Seward, finding his military so inferior to his diplomatic talents, seems to have thought that the Brigadier who had failed to bid defiance to the South would find a more appropriate field of action in resuming his employment of gratifying the Emperor of Russia with other defiances of “old John Bull”—and accordingly we learn that the eminent statesman either is, or is to be, once more Minister to St Petersburg, and may possibly be at this moment engaged in his favourite occupations of shaking the hand of the Emperor, and shaking his own hand at the British monarchy. If it be so, we may perhaps hope to read, in another state paper, of his second reception at the Court of Russia—which, judging from the familiar cordiality displayed in the first, may, if the Czar should again deign to express himself in the American language, open something in this way,—“Wal, Cassius M. Clay, how air you, old hoss? Do you feel pretty brisk and spry, sir? How is it you ha’n’t chawed up them rebels yet, lock, stock, and gun-barrel, hook and line, bob and sinker? What do you think of _our_ insurrection to Poland, sir?”
Future volumes of these documents will probably reveal Mr Seward as still assuring his correspondents that the end of the rebellion is at hand; that foreign Governments will soon see dire reason to repent their hostility; that the Union is growing stronger with every “reverse of our arms;” that discord and desertion and corruption are only “fresh developments of patriotism;” and that the flooding of the lands on the Mississippi, far from being an act of barbarous vindictiveness, will be as beneficent in its consequences as the overflowing of the Nile. We shall probably see, too, that American envoys, addressing themselves, not to Mr Seward, but to the masses behind him, his masters and theirs, are still denouncing our perfidious aristocracy and jealous monarchy. Is it a comedy or a tragedy that these men are acting? If unconscious absurdity and ludicrous unfitness for the conduct of grave affairs were all the elements of the exhibition, we might well afford to laugh; but, unfortunately, the grotesque display has its terrible side, and incapacity and conceit only increase the tremendous power of mischief wielded by the principal characters in the burlesque. Meanwhile the course of foreign Governments is not likely to be materially affected by the lucubrations of the American Secretary of State; and, amidst the strange displays of weakness made by the North, not the least strange will be the futility of its diplomacy.
THE BUDGET.
The soundness of the position taken up by the Opposition last year in regard to the national finances, has this year been fully established by the admissions and procedure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It may seem remarkable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should preface his financial statement by referring to a resolution of the House, which was adopted at the instance of the Opposition,—that he should avowedly base his present Budget upon that resolution. But Mr Gladstone is a Minister of consummate Parliamentary tact, who avails himself of every plea which best serves his purpose for the time; and, as we shall see in the sequel, he had a special reason for thus seeking to cover with the authority of Parliament a Budget which is not quite so accordant with the resolution of the House as he desires it to be thought. The resolution, which was adopted at the instance of the Opposition, and upon which the Chancellor of the Exchequer professedly bases his present Budget, insisted upon the necessity of reducing the national expenditure. It was urged upon the Government that the financial administration of the three previous years had been such as to trench deeply upon the extraordinary resources of the country, and that, while ostensibly adding to the military strength of the country, we were really diminishing our power by exhausting the sources by which the expenses of war and national defence could be sustained. It was pointed out that during these years we had not only abolished, and put out of reach, several important taxes for the remission of which there was no urgent necessity, but that, in order to do so, we had actually incurred a considerable deficit. Of late years not only the leaders of the Opposition, but some of the highest financial authorities on the Ministerial side of the House—including Lord Overstone, Lord Monteagle, and Earl Grey—had denounced as most impolitic the hand-to-mouth system pursued by Mr Gladstone, and had urged the necessity of framing the estimates with a view to obtaining a substantial yearly surplus. These were the considerations which led the House of Commons last summer to adopt the resolution to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer now appeals in justification of his Budget; and they must not be forgotten when examining how far the financial programme of the present year is in accordance with that resolution.
A new critic now takes the field against Mr Gladstone, and adds his protest to those which have already been made by the other leading financial authorities. In a new edition of his work on Taxation, that veteran Liberal and political economist, Mr M’Culloch, severely criticises the recent financial policy of the Government, and endorses with his high and obviously impartial authority the opinions by which that policy has been so often combated by the Conservatives. To all the special features of Gladstonian finance Mr M’Culloch is opposed. He is strongly in favour of the maintenance of a good yearly surplus, as an indispensable feature of a prudent system of finance; he condemns as most impolitic that narrowing of the area of taxation which Mr Gladstone extols as a “simplification of the tariff;” and he moreover objects, in the strongest terms, to the manner in which that principle of “simplification” has been applied.