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HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1863.
ANGLOPHOBIA.
"If the vanity of Englishmen
requires a corrective, they have only to ascertain the feelings with which they
are regarded by neighboring and rival nations." This is the opening sentence of
a labored article in the Saturday Review, the cleverest, though far from the
wisest, of the English periodicals. It is conducted by a clique of young men
whose leading aim is to show how brilliantly they can write. But children have
acute perceptions as to who likes them and who does not, and have an
inconvenient habit of telling the truth. The young men of the Saturday Review
have told some unpleasant truths.
In Federal America, according to
the Review, "hatred to England is unfortunately the dominant feeling." The
writer is quite unable to account for this strange fact. But he goes on to show
that the feeling throughout Europe is hardly more amicable. "The dislike which
is felt for the English name and character in France is perhaps less outrageous,
but it is unfortunately equally genuine." The "Russians consider it natural that
France should protect the Poles, but they are bitterly offended by the
diplomatic interference of England. In the same manner they attributed to
England their misfortunes in the Crimean war, while they hastened, as soon as
peace was restored, to cement a fresh alliance with France."—"The Poles, while
they are soliciting the aid of England, are unable to suppress the hatred which
they have been taught by their French patrons to feel for the country which is
falsely accused of complicity with the infamous partitions of the last century.
In one of the most plausible of their recent pamphlets the writer repeatedly
declares that England is the worst enemy of his cause."—"There is too much
reason to fear that in Germany, and especially in Prussia, English policy is
regarded with suspicion and dislike the English Government is
held responsible in Berlin and Hanover for half the revolutionary designs which
originate in Europe."—In Austria the former "official antipathy has perhaps
recently relaxed, but the antagonism of policy and sentiment may at any moment
revive." The only civilized states in which the writer can discover any thing
like good-feeling toward England are Italy, "where, except among the
ecclesiastical and democratic factions, the hearty good-will of England to the
national cause may have produced a favorable impression;" in Greece, "which has
recently shown an unexpected appreciation of the English character;" and among
the Turks, who "can scarcely be wanting in a certain respect for their only
friend and protector. With these exceptions the opinion of Europe is mortifying
to a patriotic Englishman."
In the face of such an
acknowledged public sentiment, we half suspect that the Reviewer meant as
ironical his attempt to "inquire why a community which seems to itself peaceable
and inoffensive has become, even more conspicuously than in ordinary times, the
victim of calumny and vituperation."
But the Reviewer was unable to
see, or dared not to tell, half the extent of the bitter feeling against England
which is the dominant sentiment of the world. As far as we are concerned, it is
too openly expressed to need special mention. In France, though it is less
publicly avowed, it is none the less deep. The Emperor is aware of this, and
perceives in it the winning card by playing which he can retrieve the most
desperate game. He knows that if France were ripe for revolution to-day, he
could bring it back to him to-morrow by declaring war against England. There
would be no need of conscription to fill the ranks of his army. Every Frenchman
would rush to arms to "avenge Waterloo;" and there is not a peasant woman in the
empire who would not sell her last chemise to raise a franc for carrying on the
war. A thousand royal marriages will never make Denmark forget the bombardment
of her capital and the destruction of her fleet, without even a declaration of
war. Spain must be an enemy of England so long as the British flag flaunting
over Gibraltar is a perpetual insult as well as injury. Every one of the foreign
possessions which England has seized all over the world is a menace or an insult
to some nation.
The truth is, that for the last
one hundred and sixty years, since upon the accession of the House of Hanover
the British Government passed into the hands of a great aristocracy, and its
foreign policy assumed its present shape, England has been the common enemy of
nations. If a nation was feeble she bullied it, if strong she set herself to
weaken it. She has fomented every great war of Christendom, and taken part, now
on one side, now on the other, in most of them. Safe from invasion behind her
ocean bulwarks, she has fought by her armies or her subsidies on every
battle-field of Europe. She has mingled in every intrigue, and made herself felt
in every transaction; and the intensity of the hatred with which she is regarded
is in exact ratio to the closeness and intimacy of her relations
with other people. The Irish, for
example, have had more to do with the English than any others, and their hatred
is the deepest. It is a hatred which no distance of space or time can
extinguish. All over the world men of Irish birth or descent pursue every
occupation and fill every position in life. They are laborers and senators,
merchants and soldiers, artisans and clergymen. Many of them have apparently
lost their peculiar national characteristics, so that except for the names which
they bear no one would suppose that they belonged to the Celtic race; but so
long as there is a drop of Irish blood in their veins it boils when English rule
is named.
The Saturday Reviewer makes no
mention of the feelings with which England is regarded among those whom we call
uncivilized nations. Very likely he thought the hatred of half a thousand
millions of Hindoos, Chinese, and Japanese of no account. But the late Indian
rebellion should have taught him that it was worth considering. Let no man dream
that the curtain has fallen upon the long tragedy of "The
British in India." Campbell's lines have something of unfulfilled
prophecy in them:
"Foes of mankind, her guardian
spirits say,
Revolving ages bring the bitter
day,
When Heaven's unerring arm shall
fall on you,
And blood for blood these Indian
plains bedew.
...The Tenth Avatar comes—"
The next uprising will find the
people of India better prepared, and if it be wisely timed furnished with
powerful allies.
Half a century ago England was
invulnerable to any hostile attack. The narrow seas that formed her boundaries
were inviolable to any foe. Napoleon, who scorned the passes of the Alps, the
snowy wastes of Russia, and the towering fortresses of Germany, shrunk from
attempting the passage of the British Straits. All that is changed now. The
British seas are the best highways for an invading army.
While thus open to assault at
home, England is still more open to attack abroad. Fifty years ago, when all
Europe was in arms against her, her flag floated triumphantly on every sea. The
commerce, from which she drew the wealth which was to enable her in effect to
fight the battles of Europe, was as unobstructed as though she had not an enemy
upon earth. All that is past. If she were to-day involved in war a half score of
cruisers, like those with which she has furnished the Confederates, could
practically sweep her commerce from the ocean. A few Alabamas and Floridas would
drive China merchantmen, Indian traders, and Australian treasure-ships from the
Indian seas. The power of England rests upon her commerce and her manufactures.
Cut her off from access to supplies and from a market for her products, and she
will soon be reduced to the position to which her population and territory
entitle her—that of a second-rate power.
With a folly, to which the
history of nations affords no parallel, she seems to have deliberately set
herself to teach the world just how this may be done without violating
international law. Her doctrine of neutrality, stripped of all technicality, is
just this: "We can not obstruct the building in our ports of vessels evidently
constructed for warlike purposes, and notoriously destined for war upon a nation
with whom we are at peace. The building of ships is a legitimate occupation. We
can not prevent the sailing of these vessels unless they have guns and munitions
of war on board. We can not hinder the exportation of guns and munitions, as
freight, in peaceful vessels. The production and sale of these articles is a
portion of British industry."
The result of these decisions is
that a ship of war sails out of an English port unobstructed—only she has no
guns on board. She is followed by a steamer loaded to the water's edge with guns
and munitions. This vessel goes also unquestioned. The two meet at some
designated point. The guns are transferred to the war-steamer, which at once
sets out on her voyage of destruction; while the other, without ever having
entered a port, returns several feet higher out of water. The result is that the
merchant vessels of a neutral power are burned by the score in mid-ocean.
Well, England has played this
game with us, and her ship-builders and gun-makers are richer by a few hundred
thousands, and we are poorer by a few millions. But she has established a
precedent in the interpretation of the law of neutrality which no one of her
enemies—who, according to the Saturday Review, are nearly all of the civilized
world—will scarcely see occasion to dispute in her favor. Let a war, as now
seems probable, break out between England and Japan, and there is nothing to
prevent any French or American ship-builder from selling a "290" or two to the
Tycoon or the Mikado; and the Japanese waters lie remarkably convenient to the
tracks of India merchantmen and Australian treasure-ships. Or supposing the war
is between Great Britain and Russia. It would require no great amount of
dexterity and good luck to send a few swift cruisers to some of the Russian
ports in the Amoor region, where they could find guns, supplies, and men
awaiting them, and ports for disposing of their captures, without their being
obliged to resort to the barbarity of destroying their prizes.
England has been for a century
and a half busily engaged in teaching "Anglophobia" to the rest of the world.
The lesson has, according to the Saturday Review, been pretty thoroughly learned
by this time. She will have no just reason for complaint if it is put into
practice according to the precedents which she has labored to establish.
THE
MEXICAN EMPIRE.
THE Archduke Maximilian, of
Austria, has formally accepted the throne of Mexico, which was tendered him, a
few weeks since, by an informal, self constituted assembly of Mexicans, sitting
in the city of Mexico, under the protection of French bayonets. It is scarcely
possible to conceive a more slender title to a throne. Joseph Bonaparte's title
to the throne of Spain, and Murat's title to that of Naples, were respectable in
comparison. Still the Archduke accepts, the Emperor is ready to seat him, and
maintain him by force, and, for all practical purposes of the moment, Maximilian
will become as actual a monarch as if he had succeeded to a long line of
ancestry in due hereditary course.
It is not too much to say that
the Mexican policy of the Emperor of the French has aroused in this country the
greatest astonishment and the most profound indignation. Astonishment, because
whatever view was taken of the Emperor's moral qualities, he had always had
credit here for astuteness and sagacity; and every child knows that an attempt
to force upon the Mexicans a form of Government which they abhor, with a German
foreigner at its head, in equal contempt of their feelings and our well-settled
policy, must inevitably end in most disastrous failure. And indignation at the
fraud in which the war was commenced, and the barefaced knavery through which
this Frenchman is attempting to destroy the liberties of four millions of
people. If any thing were wanting to fill the measure of our disgust at the
transaction, it would be supplied by the accumulating evidences of a purpose on
the part of the French to espouse the side of that Church party in Mexico which
has been the curse of the country, and to whose existence the past forty years
of Mexican anarchy are mainly due.
It is, however, idle to indulge
in angry words or regrets at present. The Emperor can not be ignorant of the
view which the American people will take of his proceedings. For a whole
generation every European statesman has been familiar with the Monroe doctrine,
and dispassionate men in many foreign countries have admitted its wisdom.
Napoleon's attempt to establish an empire in Mexico is no blind enterprise
undertaken inadvertently; it is a deliberate endeavor to nullify a cardinal
doctrine of our national policy, and to reassert the European equilibrium on
American soil. To such an undertaking the only fitting answer we can make is an
armed defense of our policy; and this being out of the question at present,
owing to the circumstances in which the republic is placed, we have nothing left
but to submit in silence, and await our opportunity.
There is one point of view in
which the French subjugation of Mexico may be regarded with satisfaction. That
country will, under the dominion of French bayonets, enjoy more internal peace
and order than any of its recent governments seemed capable of securing.
Commerce will naturally improve, and the product of the mines will increase. It
is doubtful whether brigandage—the plague-spot of Mexico—will be materially
diminished; as now the ranks of the banditti will be swelled by a large number
of individuals impelled by patriotic impulses and by hatred of the foreign
invader. But we may take for granted that the main highways—as, for instance,
the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico—will be somewhat safer than it was, as the
French will absolutely require to keep open that line of communication with the
sea. And the prospect is that, though the Church party appear at present to be
the chief gainers by the French conquest, the piper who will ultimately pay for
this new fandango will be Mother Church. A time will come, sooner or later, when
increasing deficits in the budget at home, on one side, and, on the other, the
spectacle of enormous wealth squandered by the most profligate hierarchy in the
world, will tell upon the not over-tender consciences of the French army of
occupation, and the priests who are now welcoming the foreigner to their soil
may find that Frenchmen can rob as thoroughly as Liberals.
Providence generally works out
its ends by indirection. The great problem of slavery in this country appeared
insoluble until the slave-holders took up arms to destroy the Government which
was their only bulwark against the increasing civilization of the age; and so in
Mexico the contest between Church and people, feudal privilege and democratic
liberty, right and wrong, dragged on its weary length for generation after
generation; and good men, contemplating the wretched scene, despaired of any end
being reached until the prelates, in their madness, called for an Emperor from
Europe. If the French conquest is to end in the destruction of the Mexican
Church, the historian will not regard it as an unmixed evil.
" SOCIAL
CONDITION OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE."
THE Harpers have just published a
very remarkable book with this title. It is not only remarkable but its
appearance is most timely. For at a time when our whole system is undergoing the
most fiery trial, and when, consequently, many a man is inclined to look
elsewhere, and especially to England, as to a sure and steadfast form of
society, whoever shows that England has reached her present condition, which
seems to him so enviable, through the stern manipulation of civil war, helps the
doubtful and timid to a juster judgment. But whoever shows that the present
condition of England, which seems superficially so enviable, is but a veneer of
prosperity over the most radical ignorance, vice, and discontent, teaches the
hesitating mind that, with all its faults, our own system is rooted in the only
philosophy from which enduring national peace can spring.
The gentleman who, after large
personal observation in England, and much cogent reflection, has edited this
English book, has therefore performed a great public service. His preface, which
is brief and pointed, informs us that he abandoned his project of an original
work upon the practical working of the British internal policy for the last
twenty years, because the present embittered feeling between the two countries
would inevitably expose such a work to the charge and suspicion of prejudice. He
has, therefore, selected an English work, published in the year 1850, by Joseph
Kay, who was commissioned by the British University of Cambridge to investigate
the comparative social condition of the poorer classes in the countries of
Western Europe, and from this work he has caused to be reprinted the chapters
that describe the social condition of England. He says: "No stone has been left
unturned by the ruling classes of England, during the past two years, to degrade
the people of America in the estimation of European populations, and to secure
the failure of our form of representative Government .....I have an object in
re-printing Mr. Kay's chapters. I believe he describes the results of a form of
government directly opposed to the principles of our own. I hope these results
will induce my countrymen to value our institutions, and persuade all men among
us to perform their part in sustaining them in their integrity, until the
favorable moment arrives for such changes as it may be desirable to make."
The astounding facts follow. Mr.
Kay, from personal research and from all the authentic official statements, lays
bare the hideous and appalling truth of English society. In that England which
seems to so many thoughtless and impatient Americans so enviable and splendid,
one person out of every eight was a pauper in 1848; and, as the American editor
informs us, in 1861, before the cotton famine began, and with no war on their
hands, England's and Ireland's paupers had increased about five per cent. yearly
since 1851; with three millions more population, less land was under cultivation
than in 1851, and one-third of her people were fed from foreign sources. The
details of the facts are tragical. The problem they offer seems almost hopeless.
But they explain the universal British jealousy of our success, and its haughty
delight in the prospect of our ruin. For if once our system should be proved to
be as flexible and strong as it is humane and alluring, and it will be so proved
by our success in defeating the rebellion, the condition of England will be as
desperate as it is already tragical. No wonder John Bull looses pirates against
our commerce, and sends iron ships to threaten our coasts. No wonder that his
rage and fear rend his mask of neutrality. No wonder his chief journal darkens
the air with falsehood at home, and sends a tool to sharpen slanders from this
country. He must man every battery foul and fair. His trial hour has come like a
thief in the night. His fate hangs upon a tribunal in which he can not bribe the
judges. The American Government fights the battle of liberty and equal rights
for every people. It is knowledge of that fact which inspires hope in the
laboring class, and hate in the governing class of England. This remarkable book
shows exactly why England may readily choose open war with us rather than
consent to our triumph. It is because, in the last words of Mr. Kay's book, and
the climax of his terrible summary: "The poor of England are more depressed,
more pauperized, more numerous, in comparison to the other classes, more
irreligious, and very much worse educated than the poor of any other European
nation, solely excepting Russia, Turkey, South Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Such
a state of things can not long continue."
WHICH SHALL IT BE?
THE National
Democratic Committee and the "Conservatives"
having begun to prepare for the next general election, the question is fairly
asked, upon what platform do those gentlemen propose to stand and solicit votes?
There will be, perhaps, some opinions of difference among them, but all who are
opposed to a radical policy in the war will at last unite and vote for the same
candidate. In Massachusetts, where the question is perfectly understood, the
stale joke of a third party is played out, and Mr. George Lunt, editor of the
Boston Courier, an old Whig, and now an utter Copper-head, and Mr. George S.
Hillard (quantum mutatus ab illo!), a Webster Whig, a Fillmore leader, and a
"Conservative" of 1860, seat themselves meekly in the "Democratic" Convention
check by jowl with those who are left of the old party leaders of that ilk,
among whom General Butler, the late Democratic Ajax, is no longer to be found.
This kind of gentlemen will end in all the other States precisely where they
begin Massachusetts. There will be but two parties, for there is but one
question. The platform of one of them will be the present policy of the war; in
other words, it will require some adequate result for all the life and money
spent, and some security of future peace. (Next
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