11 lion. No Christian, no liberal thinker, can ever interest himself in men who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, openly and audaciously proclaim their wish to perpetuate and extend slavery. The planters themselves, may indeed listen to theories which have intoxicated and ruined them ; but no such sophistries can ever cross the ocean. The advocates of the South have rendered her a fatal service. They have made her believe that Europe, enlightened or misled, would take sides with her and would finally throw into the scales something more than sterile wishes. This delusion has encouraged and still encourges the resistance of the South. It prolongs the war and our sufferings. If, from the first, as the North bad a right to expect, the friends of liberty had boldly declared themselves against the policy of slavery—if the partisans of maritime peace—if the defenders of the rights of neutrals, had spoken in favor of the Union—had discouraged a separation which could only benefit England, .it is probable that the South would have entered with less temerity upon a road without an outlet. If, in spite of the courage and devotion of her soldiers, if, after all the skill of her generals, the South fails in an enterprise, which, in my opinion, cannot be too often denounced, let her fay the fault at the door of those who had so pool’ an esteem for Europe, as to imagine that they could suborn its public opinion to serve a political scheme, against which patriotism protests, and which the gospel and humanity alike condemn. “Granted,” say they, “that the South is wdiolly. in the wrong; but, after all, she is determined to separate. She can no longer live with the North. The war itself, whatever may be its origin, is a new cause of disunion. By what right can twenty millions of men oblige ten millions * of their compatriots to continue a detested alliance, to respect a contract which they are resolved to break at any cost ? Is it possible to imagine that two or three years of strife and misery ■will make the conquered and the conquerors live peaceably together? Can a country, two or three times as large as France, be subju * And of these ten millions there are four millions of slaves, whose wishes are not consulted.
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