512 LIBERAL STATESMANSHIP OF THE SOUTH. [SECT. XIII. The blow struck by the North against English trade. nothing against the rebellion, but has struck a blow against free trade. In Birmingham, nearly £3,800,000 worth of cutlery is made worthless. Ill will against the North is every where arising. We can only wonder at the madness. Protection was quite as much a cause of the disruption as slavery. We warn the government of the United States that in attempting to exclude at one blow £20,000,000 of exports from their territory, they have undertaken a task quite beyond their power. They can not prevent English manufactures from permeating the United States from one end to the other. The smuggler will redress the errors of the statesman. "In the South we find the most convincing proofs of Superior statesman- forethought and deliberation. The leaders ship of the South. are hurried away by no momentary impulse. There are strong evidences of a deep-laid and carefullymatured conspiracy—a perfect understanding between the chiefs of the movement and the Federal officials. Reunion can never be expected. Men do not descend to such depths of treachery and infamy unless they are about to take a step which they believe to be irrevoca ble. The men who devised and directed the great plot of secession knew that they must appeal for recognition to the world without, but they thought that, as the world could not do without cotton, it could not do without them. They have lost that monopoly. The policy of the North has been equally suicidal. By enriching a few manufacturers at the expense of the whole country, they have played into the hands of the seceders. They have alienated the feelings of Europe. While the North is passing a prohibitory tariff, and speculating on balancing the loss of the cotton regions by annexing Canada, the Liberality of South- Confederates are on their good behavior. ern trade views. They are free-traders. The coasting trade CHAP. LX.] COMMON INTEREST. OF ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH. 513 from Charleston to Galveston is thrown open to the British flag, but the North interprets a coasting trade to include a voyage from New England round Cape Horn to California. It is not for us to sneer when an American community abolishes its navigation laws, declares that duties shall never be levied to foster particular branches of industry, and adopts a resolution for establishing an international copyright. But that is what the South has done. Will the South ever return to a Union in which native manufactures are, by an advantage taken of the absence of Southern representatives, defended by something like a prohibition? The South offers to the Border States a market for their slaves, and a law against the slave-trade to protect their commodity; the North requires them to contribute to New England and Pennsyl vania. The high price of manufactures and a good mar ket for slaves will avail more than the conof England and the stitutional lectures of Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural. It is for their trade that the South are resolved to fight. They dissolved the Union to create more slave states-that is, to make more cotton. They undertook the war for the very object that we have most at heart." A common interest South. England admits Before Mr. Adams, the minister accredited by Lincoln's administration to the British court, could reach his post, the British government, in accordance with a previous understanding with the French, had admitted the belligerent rights of the Southern Confederacy. It was not possible but that this measure should be regarded by the Amer ican government as unfriendly, and, considering the haste with which it was taken, as offensive. It made so profound and ineffaceable an impression that the conse II-K K 514 CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS. [SECT. XIII. quences of it will doubtless be recognized in the foreign policy of the republic for many generations. The neutrality proclamation was issued by the British government on the 13th of May. It was shortly followed by a circular from the Foreign Office interdicting the armed ships and privateers of both parties. This was succeeded, on the 11th of June, by a proclamamations of France tion of neutrality issued by the Emperor Napoleon, and still again (June 17th) by a neutrality proclamation of the Queen of Spain. The three governments, Great Britain, France, and Spain, were at this time in perfect accord on American affairs. Neutrality procla and Spain. CHAPTER LXI. THE FRENCH EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. ITS INFLUENCE ON THE OPINION OF EUROPE RESPECTING AMERICAN AFFAIRS, The Southern conspirators had intrigued with the Mexicans for a new Union. The Emperor Napoleon resolved to turn that scheme to his own advantage in his relations with the Austrian Empire. He encouraged the disruption of the American Union with a view of neutralizing the power of the republic. He drew England and Spain into a joint expedition to Mexico. After the expedition had reached that country, those powers discovered his real intentions and withdrew. His army entered the City of Mexico. He established an empire, and presented its crown to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian, who accepted it. Meantime, to his disappointment, the United States overthrew secession. The American government insisted that he should abandon his Mexican undertaking. Finding that it would be hopeless to contend with the Republic, he ordered the withdrawal of the French army, abandoning to its fate the empire he had created. The Mexican expe the disruption of For the clear comprehension of the agreement which had been entered into between England, dition was based on France, and Spain, it is necessary to underthe United States. stand the adventurous projects in which they were about to engage, affecting the whole North American continent. The Mexican expedition-a drama the scenes of which were acted in Rome, London, Washington, Charleston, Paris, Mexico-was the immediate result of this unhappy coalition, and the basis on which that ill-starred tragedy rested was the breaking of the United States into separate confederacies. Secret intention of After the peace of Villafranca, the Emperor Napoleon III. was sincerely desirous to heal the polit Napoleon, ical wounds which had been made by his military operations in Italy—to find some compensation for the injuries he had inflicted on the Emperor of Austria. 516 Mexican refugees of a proposed union between the ico. THE FRENCH EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. [SECT. XIII. There were certain Mexicans of eminence-among them who is informed by Almonte, Gutierrez de Estrada, the ex-President Miramon, and La Bastida, the Archbishop of Mexico-who were residing in Paris, and carrying on various political intrigues with the Papal government and with the Tuileries. From these the em peror learned that attempts had been made by leaders. of influence in the Southern States to come to an understanding with persons of similar position in Mexico with a view to a political union. These neern States and Mex-gotiations had taken a serious aspect shortly after Fremont was made the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1856, when it had become plain that the South must before long inevitably lose its control of the government of the Union. Among the advantages expected by the South from such a scheme were deliverance from the threatened domination of the Free States, and another period of political supremacy in a new Union, of which the members would be bound together by a community of interest, and be the dispensers of some of the most valuable products of the New World. Slavery had without difficulty been re-established in Texas; it was supposed that the same might be done in other provinces of Mexico. There was, moreover, the alluring prospect of a future brilliant empire, encircling the West India Seas, and eventually absorbing the West India Islands. To the Mexicans there would be the unspeakable advantage of a stable, a strong, a progressive government. Contemplated advantages of that scheme. Napoleon turns that scheme to his own The Mexican refugees in Paris saw in the success of this scheme an end of their influence in their native country. It was better for them to introduce a French protectorate. The emperor perceived with satisfaction that an opportunity had use. |