SPEECH OF JOHN BRIGHT. * 149 ing troops to Canada, deprecated the policy of arming to the teeth in time of peace. It was significant of the excitement caused by the Trent affair that Lord Shaftesbury, who was supposed to share these views in November, now declined an invitation to a united prayermeeting at his favorite Exeter Hall, on the ground that his presence might interfere with the idea that the country was united on the redress question. the war of Independence, in taxation, for the representation of the South, by virtue of its slave privileges, was in excess; not, as had been alleged, on account of tariffs, for they had been passed while the South was dominant in the national councils, but in a question of a graver character. "For thirty years," said this calm observer, "slavery has been constantly coming to the surface as the difficulty of American politicians. The object of the South in seceding is to escape from When the appropriation for the army the votes of those who wish to limit the expenses, incurred by the British Govarea of slave territory." He pointed out ernment in its conduct of the Trent the geographical, the moral necessity of affair, were under discussion in Parliathe struggle, and vindicated the course of ment in its next session, Mr. Bright, from the North. He thought the seizure on his seat in the House of Commons, preboard the Trent might be unauthorized, faced a pungent review of the course and presciently pronounced that repara- pursued with the remark, "It is not custion would be made. Deprecating war, tomary in ordinary life for a person to he dwelt upon the number of Englishmen send a polite messenger with a polite who had emigrated to America, upon the message to some friend or neighbor, or unprecedented development of the North, acquaintance, and at the same time to and prayed it might not be said among send some man of portentous strength her growing millions "that in their dark- handling a gigantic club, making every est hour of need the English people, from kind of ferocious gesticulation, and at whom they sprung, had looked with icy the same time, to profess that all this is coldness on the trials and sufferings of done in the most friendly and courteous their terrible struggle." The friend and manner." The friend and manner." In conclusion, he added that associate of the great commoner in po- he was rejoiced to see a remarkable litical life, Richard Cobden, also spoke change operating from day to day, in for peace. He thought the question Parliament and out of it, since the course suggested a complete revision of the In- of the American Government had been ternational Maritime Code. On a pre- known. There is a more friendly feelvious occasion, at the same place, he said, ing," he said, "towards the Washington My friend, Mr. Bright, and myself Government. A large portion of the have been called the two members for people of this country see in it a govthe United States," and, looking to the ernment, a real government, not a govenlargement of the cotton producing area, ernment ruled by a mob and not a govhad expressed his regret "that the most ernment disregarding law. They beextensive, the most ingenious, and the lieve it is a government struggling for most useful industry that ever existed the integrity of a great country. They on this earth, should have been depend- believe it is a country which is the home ent almost exclusively for the supply of of every man who wants a home, and, the raw material upon an institution, the moreover, they believe this that the institution of Slavery, which we must all greatest of all crimes which any people regard as a very unsafe foundation, and, in the history of the world has ever been in fact, to the permanency of which we connected with-the keeping in slavery can none of us, as honest men, wish God four millions of human beings-is in the speed." He also, in reference to send * Speech at Rochdale, June 26, 1861. providence of a power very much higher than that of the Prime Minister of England, or of the President of the United States, marching on, as I believe, to its entire abolition."* General Scott, a few days after his arrival in Paris, published a letter dated the 2d of December, in which the case of the Trent was stated with great sagacity and moderation, and the action subsequently taken by his government at home presciently indicated. "The two nations," said he, "are united by interests and sympathies-commercial, social, political, and religious, almost as the two arms to one body, and no one is so ignorant as not to know that what harms one must harm the other in a corresponding degree." The words of the venerable Nestor were poured like oil upon the troubled waters. Doubtful, however, of the issue, he hastily returned to America by the steamer which had carried him to Europe. In America the denunciations of the British Press and the warlike preparations of the Government, were received as thunder out of a clear sky. Contrary to the predictions and suppositions abroad of a popular desire in the United States for a war with Great Britain, and an overwhelming manifestation of this feeling, never was the voice of the people more calmly uttered or their deference to the Administration more assuredly exhibited than in their acquiescence in the whole treatment of this matter by the Secretary of State. The popular fury was all on the other side of the Atlantic. Undoubtedly much soreness was created by the affair; but it arose, not from an unwillingness on the part of the American people to do justice in the premises, or, if that were asked, conciliate the offended pride of England, but from the conviction forced upon the nation of the utter lack of sympathy with its cause, or of consideration for the un * Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, Feb ruary 17, 1862. happy position-the severe trials which Simultaneously with the agitation of the Trent affair in England, no little excitement was produced by the circumstances growing out of the arrival at Southampton of the Confederate war steamer Nashville, in which it was at first supposed Messrs. Mason and Slidell had sailed from South Carolina. This vessel which became noted for her depredations on the high seas and for her success in breaking the blockade of the Southern coast, was a side-wheel steamer of about 1,200 tons, built in New York, and previously to the rebellion had been regularly running between that city and Charleston. After the secession she was retained at the Southern harbor, and fitted out as a Confederate war steamer. She was armed with two 12-pounder rifled cannon, and carried a crew of eighty men. Her commander, Captain Robert B. Pegram, a Virginian by birth, had passed nearly thirty-two years in the United States Navy, in which, at the outbreak of the rebellion, he held the rank of a lieutenant. He had been in service in the Paraguay and Japan expeditions, and of late had been engaged in the Coast THE CONFEDERATE WAR STEAMER NASHVILLE. 151 affair," the steamer Nashville now lying Survey. Attaching himself to the fortunes of the South, he was commissioned in Southampton waters is a hideous by President Davis a lieutenant in the navy of the Confederate States. Three of the officers of the Nashville, Lieutenants Fauntleroy and Bennett and a midshipman named Cary, had been in the action at Manassas or Bull Run. Leaving Charleston on the night of the 26th of October, the Nashville escaped the vessels of the blockading squadron off the harbor, made her way in safety to Bermuda, where she obtained supplies of coal and stores from the inhabitants, while her officers were received with cordiality by the best society at St. George's; and leaving the island on the 5th of November, crossed the the Atlantic to the British coast, where, off the entrance to the Irish Channel, on the 19th of the month, fell in with the ship Harvey Birch of New York, three days out from Havre. With his guns unlimbered and decks ready for action, Captain Pegram, flying the Confederate flag, bore down upon the packet and ordered her captain to haul down his United States flag and come on board the Nashville. This demand was complied with, when Captain Nelson was informed that he was a prisoner of war by authority of the Confederate States, and was ordered to send his crew on board the steamer as quickly as possible. On reaching the deck they were put in irons. The Harvey Birch, meanwhile stripped of her fresh stores and provisions, was set on fire, and in sight of her captain and crew burnt to the water's edge. The Nashville kept on her course to England, steamed up the English Channel, and entering the port of Southampton, the prisoners were liberated and their necessities supplied by the United States Consul. The arrival of the Nashville under such circumstances afforded a striking test of the British Neutrality Proclamation. "Pirate or privateer, Confederate or corsair," said the London Star of November 22d, in an article on the blemish upon our nineteenth century civilization. A wild beast, or a bird of prey is an object of dread, but not of abhorrence. The Nashville is both a floating den of brutalized human beings, making destruction the immediate business of their lives-the destruction of unarmed and unoffending ships, carrying on a peaceful traffic upon the common highway of nations. If Captain Pegram holds a commission or a letter of marque, the law of nations to our shame be it said-will have nothing to say to him ; but the moral sense of mankind will still pronounce his achievement an outrage on humanity." Great Britain, in fact, by the Neutrality Proclamation, had committed herself to the toleration, and, in a certain degree, to the support of such outrages against a nation with which she was at peace. The Nashville was allowed the same protection in her harbor, and looked upon in the same light as the United States steamer James Adger which preceded her, and the Tuscarora which speedily followed her. The last named vessel, one of the new screw corvettes of the American navy, mounting nine guns, commanded by Captain T. A. Craven arrived at Southampton on the 8th of January, and anchored in the harbor a mile from the dock where the Nashville remained ready for sailing, having received supplies of coal, water and provisions. The Tuscarora kept her fires up, her officers watching the slightest movements of the Confederate vessel, ready to pursue her to sea, and, if possible, to effect her capture or destruction. The official authorities took every precaution to prevent any infringement of the neutrality of the port. Captains Craven and Pegram were reminded of the international law requiring an interval between belligerent ships leaving the harbor; and the frigates Dauntless and Shannon, at the Isle of Wight, were kept on the alert to hinder any attack in British waters. Various manœuvres were practiced by the Tuscarora to secure a meeting with her antagonist at sea. To set a limit to the embarrassments arising from the protection given to the combatants, an order was issued by Earl Russell from the Foreign Office on the 31st of January, prohibiting "during the continuance of the present hostilities between the Government of the United States of North America and the States calling themselves the Confederate States of America, all ships of war and privateers of either belligerent, from making use of any port or roadstead in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or in the channels, islands, or in any of her Majesty's colonies, or foreign possessions or independencies, or of any waters subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the British crown, as a station or place of resort for any warlike purposes, or for the purpose of obtaining any facilities of warlike equipment." In agreement with the course taken by France and Spain, any armed vessel of either party entering a British harbor was to be allowed to remain there not longer than twenty-four hours, except under stress of weather or absolute need of repairs, when supplies were to be permitted to be taken in only for immediate use. In case vessels of both the belligerents were in the harbor at the same time, an interval of twentyfour hours was required between their departures. At length, after nearly three months passed in the Southampton docks, the Nashville took her departure on the 3d of February. The Tuscarora which had been sailing in the channel, returned that morning to the Isle of Wight, when her officers were notified by the British authorities that the Nashville having given notice of her immediate departure, Captain Craven would be required to remain behind the prescribed twenty-four hours. The Nashville accordingly was enabled to get to sea under favorable circumstances, which precluded any attempt at her capture. The Tuscarora remained two days at Southampton, when she sailed to Gibraltar to maintain the blockade of the Sumter. CHAPTER XLV I I. OPINIONS OF LEADING ENGLISHMEN ON THE REBELLION. IN connection with the exhibition of British feeling in the affair of the Trent, noticed in the last chapter, it may not be amiss to present some of the more marked declarations of English statesmen which up to this time had, with more or less of authority, influenced public opinion on the motives and probable termination of the struggle in America. The public opinion, indeed, of England in regard to the rebellion, as an index of the political fortunes of two great nations, will present hereafter one of the most instructive subjects for study of the times. We have in a previous chapter glanced at some of its main conditions and alluded to the apparent incongruity where a people, pledged in so many ways to the support of constituted authority and to sympathy with the cause of human frecdom, was ranged on the side of a wanton rebellion devoted to the maintenance and extension of slavery. The secret of this inconsistency was, from one motive or other, a paramount distrust of the growing power of the United States, * Chap. xxviii., vol. 1. ENGLISH OPINIONS OF THE WAR. 153 and a belief that somehow the interest ture under one President, and carried of Great Britain, or at least of the their merchandise under a single flag. classes holding the unfavorable opinions, And so far from thinking that these sepwould be promoted by the separation of arations will be injurious to the future the North and South. Divide and gov-destinies of America, or inflict a blow ern, is an old maxim of political craft, which it was evident was not overlooked on this occasion. The wish in this matter was, doubtless, father to the thought. At any rate, it is curious to note at how early a period and how firmly the conclusion was established in the minds of numerous leading Englishmen, that the continuance of the States of America under one government was neither practicable nor desirable. Looking over the record of these opinions, we find them from different points of view, with some memorable exceptions, terminating in the same result. Their unhesitating declarations of the apparently inextricable embarrassment of the situation, afford a very appreciable measure of the resolution and strength of the American Government in asserting its rights and dignity. on that grand principle of self-government in which the substance of liberty consists, I believe that such separations will be attended with happy results to the safety of Europe and the develop-. ment of American civilization. If it could have been possible that, as population and wealth increased, all the vast continent of America, with her mighty seaboard and the fleets which her increasing ambition as well as her extending commerce would have formed and armed, could have remained under one form of government, in which the Exec utive has little or no control over a populace exceedingly adventurous and excitable, why then America would have hung over Europe like a gathering and destructive thunder cloud. No single kingdom in Europe could have been strong enough to maintain itself against Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, whose a nation that had once consolidated the claims to attention rested on his position gigantic resources of a quarter of the as a large landholder and representative globe. And this unwieldy extent of of the English aristocratic social system, empire would have been as fatal to the as well as on that success in literature permanent safety and development of by which he had held the ear of the America herself as the experience of all reading public throughout the world for history tells us an empire too vast to a whole generation, on the 25th of Sep- maintain the healthy circulation of its tember, 1861, in an annual address be- own life-blood ever has been, since the fore the Herts' Agricultural Society at world began, to the races over which it Hitchin, took occasion to present his spread. By their own weight the old views of the conflict in America, which colossal empires of the East fell to ruin. he affected to regard as a philosophical It was by her own vast extent of dostudent of history. "That separation," minion that Rome first lost her liberties, said he, "between North and South under the very armies which that extent. America, which is now being brought of dominion compelled her to maintain, about by civil war, I have long foreseen and finally rendered up her dominion itand foretold to be inevitable; and I ven- self to the revenge of the barbarians she ture to predict that the younger men had invaded. The immense monarchy here present will live to see not two, but founded by the genius of Charlemagne at least four, and probably more than fell to pieces soon after his death, and four, separate and sovereign common- those pieces are now the kingdoms of wealths arising out of those populations Europe. But neither the Empires of which a year ago united their Legisla- the East, nor the Commonwealth of |