An Address delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, on the 11th of October 1870

This Address is printed precisely as it was spoken, at the request of friends who had read extracts in our newspapers. I am quite aware how superficial it must seem to English readers, and would only remind them that I had no Parliamentary debates, or other documents, to which to refer. I am thankful myself to find that, while there are startling gaps in it, there are no gross blunders as to facts or dates. The kindliness with which it was listened to by the audience, and discussed in the American press, allows me to hope that the time has come when any effort to put an end to the unhappy differences between the two countries will be looked upon favourably in the United States. The true men and women on both sides of the Atlantic feel, with Mr. Forster, that a war between America and England would be a civil war, and believe with him that we have seen the last of civil war between English-speaking men. Both nations are, I hope and believe, for a hearty reconciliation, and it only remains for the Governments to do their part.

Thomas Hughes.

It is with a heavy sense of responsibility, my friends, and no little anxiety, that I am here to-night to address you on this subject. I have been in this country now some two months, and from the day I crossed your frontier I have received, from one end of the land to the other, from men and women whom I had never seen in my life, and on whom I had no shadow of a claim that I could discover, nothing but the most generous, graceful, and unobtrusive hospitality. I am not referring to this city and its neighbourhood, in which all Englishmen are supposed to feel very like home, and in which most of us have some old and dear friend or two. I speak of your States from New York to Iowa and Missouri, from the Canadian border to Washington. Everywhere I have been carried about to places of interest in the neighbourhood, lodged, boarded, and cared for as if I had been a dear relative returning from long absence. However demoralised an Englishman may become in his own country, there is always one plank in his social morals which he clings to with the utmost tenacity, and that is paying his own postage stamps. My hold even on this last straw is sadly relaxed. I am obliged to keep vigilant watch on my letters to hinder their being stamped and posted for me by invisible hands. I never before have so fully realised the truth of those remarks of your learned and pious fellow-citizen, Rev. Homer Wilbur, whose lucubrations have been a source of much delight to me for many years, when he says somewhere, “I think I could go near to be a perfect Christian if I were always a visitor at the house of some hospitable friend. I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best of everything is urged upon me with friendly importunity. It is not so very hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss.” I should be simply a brute if I were not equally touched and abashed by the kindness I have received while amongst you. I can never hope to repay it, but the memory of it will always be amongst my most precious possessions, and I can, at least, publicly acknowledge it, as I do here this evening.

But, my friends, I must turn to the other side of the picture. There is nothing—at any rate, no kind of pleasure, I suppose—which is unmixed. From the deepest and purest fountains some bitter thing is sure to rise, and I have not been able, even in the New World, to escape the common lot of mankind in the Old. Everywhere I have found, when I have sounded the reason for all this kindness, that it was offered to me personally, because, to use the words of some whom I hope I may now look on as dear friends, “We feel that you are one of us.” The moment the name of my country was mentioned a shade came over the kindest faces. I cannot conceal from myself that the feeling towards England in this country is one which must be deeply painful to every Englishman.

It was for this reason that I chose the subject of this lecture. I cannot bear to remain amongst you under any false pretences, or to leave you with any false impressions. I am not “one of you,” in the sense of preferring your institutions to those of my own country. I am before all things an Englishman—a John Bull, if you will—loving old England and feeling proud of her. I am jealous of her fair fame, and pained more than I can say to find what I honestly believe to be a very serious misunderstanding here, as to the events which more than anything else have caused this alienation. You, who have proved your readiness as a people to pour out ease, wealth, life itself, as water, that no shame or harm should come to your country’s flag or name, should be the last to wish the citizen of any other country to be false to his own. My respect and love for your nation and your institutions should be worth nothing to you, if I were not true to those of my own country, and did not love them better. For this reason, then, and in the hope of proving to you that you have misjudged the England of to-day—that she is no longer, at any rate, if she ever was, the haughty, imperious power her enemies have loved to paint her, interfering in every quarrel, subsidising and hectoring over friends, and holding down foes with a brutal and heavy hand, careless of all law except that of her own making, and bent above all things on heaping up wealth—I have consented to appear here tonight. I had hoped to be allowed to be amongst you simply as a listener and a learner. Since my destiny and your kindness have ordered it otherwise, I can only speak to you of that which is uppermost in my thoughts, of which my heart is full. If I say things which are hard for you to hear, I am sure you will pardon me as you would a spoilt child. You are responsible for having taught me to open my heart and to speak my mind to you, and will take it in good part if you do not find that heart and mind just what you had assumed them to be.

I propose then, to-night, to state the case of my country so far as regards her conduct while your great rebellion was raging. In a fight for life, and for principles dearer than life, no men can be fair to those who are outside. The time comes when they can weigh both sides of the case impartially. I trust that that time has now arrived, and that I can safely appeal to the calm judgment of a great people.

It is absolutely necessary, in order to appreciate what took place in England during your great struggle, to bear in mind, in the first place, that it agitated our social and political life almost as deeply as it did yours. I am scarcely old enough to remember the fierce collisions of party during the first Reform agitation, but I have taken a deep interest, and during the last twenty years an active part, in every great struggle since that time; and I say without hesitation, that not even in the crisis of the Free-trade movement were English people more deeply stirred than by that grapple between freedom and law on the one hand, and slavery and privilege on the other, which was so sternly battled through, and brought to so glorious and triumphant a decision, in your great rebellion. There can be, I repeat, no greater mistake than to suppose that there was anything like indifference on our side of the water, and no one can understand the question who makes it. There was plenty of ignorance, plenty of fierce partisanship, plenty of bewildered hesitation and vacillation amongst great masses of honest, well-meaning people, who could find no steady ground on the shifting sand of statement and counter-statement with which they were deluged by those who did know their own minds, and felt by instinct from the first that here was a battle for life or death; but there was, I repeat again, no indifference. Our political struggles do not, as a rule, affect our social life, but during your war the antagonism between your friends and the friends of the rebel States often grew into personal hostility. I know old friendships which were sorely tried by it, to put it no higher. I heard, over and over again, men refuse to meet those who were conspicuous on the other side. Any of you who had time to glance at our papers will not need to be told how fiercely the battle was fought in our press.

It is a mistake, also, to suppose that any section of our people were on one side or the other. Let me say a few words in explanation of this part of the subject. And first, of our aristocracy. I do not mean for a moment to deny that a great majority of them took sides with the Confederates, and desired to see them successful, and the great Republic broken up into two jealous and hostile nations. What else could you expect? Could you fairly look for sympathy in that quarter? Your whole history has been a determined protest against privilege, and in favour of equal rights for all men; and you have never been careful, in speech or conduct, to conciliate your adversaries. For years your papers and the speeches of your public men had rung with denunciations (many of them very unfair) of them and their caste. They are not much in the habit of allowing their sentiments to find public expression, but they know what is going on in the world, and have long memories. It would be well if many of us Liberals at home, as well as you on this side, would remember that in this matter they cannot help themselves. A man in England may be born a Howard, or a Cavendish, or a Cecil, without any fault of his own, and is apt to “rear up,” as you say, when this accident is spoken of as though it were an act of voluntary malignity on his part, and to resent the doctrine that his class is a nuisance that should be summarily abated. So, as a rule, they sided with the rebellion; but that rule has notable exceptions.

There were no warmer or wiser friends of the Union than the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carlisle, and others; and it should be remembered that although the class made no secret of their leanings, and many of them, I believe, subscribed largely to the Confederate loan, no motion hostile to the Union was ever even discussed in the House of Lords. They have lost their money and seen the defeat of the cause which they favoured—a defeat so thorough, I trust, that that cause will never again be able to raise its head on this continent. I believe they have learnt much from the lesson, and that partly from the teaching of your war, partly from other causes to which I have no time to refer, they are far more in sympathy at this time with the nation than they have ever yet been.

Of course, those who hang round and depend upon the aristocracy went with them—far too large a class, I am sorry to say, in our country, and one whose voice is too apt to be heard in clubs and society. But Pall Mall and Mayfair, and the journals and periodicals which echo the voices of Pall Mall, do not mean much in England, though they are apt to talk as though they did, and are sometimes taken at their word.

The great mercantile world comes next in order, and here, too, there was a decided preponderance against you. The natural hatred of disturbances, which dominates those whose main object in life is making money, probably swayed the better men amongst them, who forgot altogether that for that disturbance you were not responsible. The worse were carried away by the hopes of gain, to be made out of the sore need of the States in rebellion, and in defiance of the laws of their own country. But amongst the most eminent, as well as in the rank and file of this class, you had many warm friends, such as T. Baring and Kirkman Hodgson; and the Union and Emancipation Societies, of which I shall speak presently, found a number of their staunch supporters in their ranks. The manufacturers of England were far more generous in their sympathies, as my friend Mr. Mundella, who is present here to-night and was himself a staunch friend, can witness. Cobden, Bright, and Forster were their representatives, as well as the representatives of the great bulk of our nation. I have no need to speak of them, for their names are honoured here as they are at home.

Now, before I speak of your friends, let me first remind you that it is precisely with that portion of the English nation of which I have been speaking that your people come in contact when they are in our country. An American generally has introductions which bring him into relations more or less intimate with some sections of that society to which our aristocracy gives its tone; or he is amongst us for business purposes, and comes chiefly across our mercantile classes. I cannot but believe that this fact goes far to explain the (to me) extraordinary prevalence of the belief here, that the English nation was on the side of the rebellion. That belief has, I hope and believe, changed considerably since the waves of your mighty storm have begun to calm down, and I am not without hopes that I may be able to change it yet somewhat more, with some at least of those who have the patience and kindness to listen to me this evening.

And now let me turn to those who were the staunch friends of the North from the very outset. They were gathered from all ranks and all parts of the kingdom. They were brought in by all sorts of motives. Some few had studied your history, and knew that these Southern men had been the only real enemies of their country on American soil since the War of Independence. Many followed their old anti-slavery traditions faithfully, and cast their lot at once against the slave-owners, careless of the reiterated assertions, both on your side of the Atlantic and ours, that the Union and not abolition was the issue. Many came because they had learned to look upon your land as the great home for the poor of all nations, and to love her institutions and rejoice in her greatness as though they in some sort belonged to themselves. All felt the tremendous significance of the struggle, and that the future of their own country was almost as deeply involved as the future of America. To all of them the noble words of one of your greatest poets and staunchest patriots, which rang out in the darkest moments of the first year of the war, struck a chord very deep in their hearts, and expressed in undying words that which they were trying to utter:—

O strange New World, thet yit wast never young,

Whose youth from thee by gripin’ need was wrung,

Brown foundlin’ o’ the woods, whose baby-bed

Was prowled roun’ by the Injun’s cracklin’ tread,

An’ who grew’st strong thru shifts an’ wants an’ pains,

Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains,

Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain

With each hard hand a vassal ocean’s mane,

Thou, skilled by Freedom an’ by gret events

To pitch new States ez Old-World men pitch tents,

Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah’s plan

Thet man’s devices can’t unmake a man,

An’ whose free latch-string never was drawed in

Against the poorest child of Adam’s kin,—

The grave’s not dug where traitor hands shall lay

In fearful haste thy murdered corse away!

It was in this faith that we took our stand, with a firm resolution that no effort of ours should be spared to help your people shake themselves clear of the dead weight of slavery, and to preserve that vast inheritance of which God has made you the guardians and trustees for all the nations of the earth, unbroken, and free from the standing armies, disputed boundaries, and wretched heart-burnings and dissensions of the Old World. It was little enough that we could do in any case, but that little was done with all our hearts, and on looking back I cannot but think was well done.

There was no need at first for any organisation. Until after the battle of Manassas Junction in 1861, there was scarcely any public expression of sympathy with the rebellion. The Times and that portion of the press which follows its lead, and is always ready to go in for the side they think will win, were lecturing on the wickedness of the war and the absurdity of the rebel States in supposing that they could resist for a month the strength of the North. The news of that first defeat arrived, and this portion of our press swung round, and the strong feeling in favour of the rebellion which leavened society and the commercial world began to manifest itself. The unlucky Trent business, and your continued want of success in the field, made matters worse. We were silenced for the moment; for though, putting ourselves in your places, we could feel how bitter the surrender of the two archrebels must have been, we could not but admit that our Government was bound to insist upon it, and that the demand had not been made in an arrogant or offensive manner. If you will re-read the official documents now, I think that you too will acknowledge that this was so. Then came Mr. Mason’s residence in London, where his house became the familiar resort of all the leading sympathisers with the rebellion. The newspaper which he started, The Index, was full, week after week, of false and malignant attacks on your Government. The most bitter of them to us was the constant insistance, backed by quotations from Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, that the war had nothing to do with slavery, that emancipation was far more likely to come from the rebels than from you.

“The lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,” and we felt the truth of that wonderful saying. This had been our great difficulty from the first. Our generation had been reared on anti-slavery principles. We remembered as children how the great battle was won in England, how even in our nurseries we gave up sugar lest we might be tasting the accursed thing, and subscribed our pennies that the chains might be struck from all human limbs. Emancipation had been the crowning glory of England in our eyes. But we found that this great force was not with us, was even slipping away and drifting to the other side. It was not only Mr. Mason’s paper, and the backing he got in our press, which was undermining it. The vehement protests of those who had been for years looked on by us as the foremost soldiers in the great cause on your side told in the same direction. I well remember the consternation and almost despair with which I read in Mr. Phillips’ speech in this hall on 20th June 1861, “The Republicans, led by Seward, offer to surrender anything to save the Union. Their gospel is the constitution, and the slave clause their sermon on the mount. They think that at the judgment day the blacker the sins they have committed to save the Union the clearer will be their title to heaven.”

Something must be done to counteract this, to put the case clearly before our people. Mr. Mason and his friends were already establishing a Confederate States Aid Association; it must be met by something similar on the right side. So in 1862 the Emancipation and the Union and Emancipation Societies were started in London and in Manchester, and in good time came Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation to strengthen our hands. The original manifesto of the Emancipation Society said—“To make it clear by the force of indisputable testimony that the South is fighting for slavery, while the North is fully committed to the destruction of slavery, is the principal object for which this society is organised. Its promoters do not believe that English anti-slavery sentiment is dead or enfeebled. They are confident that when the demands and designs of the South are made clear, there will be no danger of England being enticed into complicity with them.” We pledged ourselves to test the opinion of the country everywhere by public meetings, and challenged the Confederate States Aid Association to accept that test. They did so; but I never could hear of any even quasi public meeting but one which they held in England. That meeting was at Mr. Mason’s house, and was, I believe, attended by some fifty persons.

The first step of our societies was to hold meetings for passing an address of congratulation to your President on the publication of the Emancipation proclamation. It was New Year’s Eve 1862. Our address said: “We have watched with the warmest interest the steady advance of your policy along the path of emancipation; and on this eve of the day on which your proclamation takes effect we pray God to strengthen your hands, to confirm your noble purpose, and to hasten the restoration of that lawful authority which engages, in peace or war, by compensation or by force of arms, to realise the glorious principle on which your constitution is founded—the brotherhood, freedom, and equality of all men.” The address was enthusiastically adopted by a large meeting, chiefly composed of working men. It was clear at once that there was a grand force behind us, for we became objects of furious attack. The Times called us impostors, and said we got our funds for the agitation from American sources—the fact being that we always refused contributions from this side. The Saturday Review declared, in one of its bitterest articles, that if anything could be calculated upon as likely to defer indefinitely the gradual extinction of slavery, it would be Mr. Lincoln’s fictitious abolition of it. We were meddlesome fanatics, insignificant nobodies, mischievous agitators. This was satisfactory and encouraging. We felt sure that we had taken the right course, and not a moment too soon. Then came the test of public meetings, which you at least are surely bound to accept as a fair gauge of what a people thinks and wills.

Our first was held on the 29th of January 1863. We took Exeter Hall, the largest and most central hall in London. We did nothing but simply advertise widely that such a meeting would be held, inviting all who cared to come, foes as well as friends. Prudent and timid people shook their heads and looked grave. The cotton famine was at its worst, and tens of thousands of our workpeople were “clemming” as they call it, starving as you might say. Your prospects looked as black as they had ever done; it was almost the darkest moment of the whole war. Even friends warned us that we should fail in our object, and only do harm by showing our weakness; that the Confederate States Aid Association would spare no pains or money to break up the meeting, and a hundred roughs sent there by them might turn it into a triumph for the rebellion. However, on we went,—we knew our own people too well to fear the result. The night came, and familiar as I am with this kind of thing, I have never seen in my time anything approaching this scene. Remember, there was nothing to attract people; no well-known orators, for we always thought it best to keep our Parliament men to their own ground; no great success to rejoice in, for you were just reeling under the recoil of your gallant army from the blood-stained heights of Fredericksburg; no attack on our own Government; no appeal to political or social hates or prejudices; only doors thrown wide open, with the invitation, “Now let Englishmen come forward and show on which side their sympathies really are in this war.” Notwithstanding all these disadvantages the great hall was densely crowded, so that there was no standing room, and the Strand and the neighbouring streets blocked with a crowd of thousands who could find no place, long before the doors were open. We were obliged to organise a number of meetings on the spur of the moment in the lower halls, and even in the open streets. In the great hall—where two clergymen, the Hon. Baptist Noel and Mr. Newman Hall, and I myself, were the chief speakers—as well as in every one of the other meetings, we carried, not only without opposition, but, so far as I remember, without a single hand being held up on the other side, resolutions in favour of your Government, of the Union, and of emancipation. The success was so complete that in London our work was done.

Then followed similar meetings at Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, in all the great centres of population, with precisely the same result. I don’t remember that the enemy ever even attempted to divide a meeting. The country was carried by acclamation. Our friends in Liverpool wrote with some anxiety as to the state of feeling there, and asked me to go down and deliver an address. I went, and the meeting carried the same resolutions by a very large majority; and those who, it was supposed, came to disturb the proceedings, thought better of it when they saw the temper of the audience, and were quiet. Without troubling you with any further details of our work, I may just add, as a proof of how those who profess to be the most astute worshippers of public opinion changed their minds in consequence of the answer of the country to our appeals, that in August 1863 the Times supported our demand on the Government for the stoppage of the steam-rams.

In addition to this political movement, we instituted also a number of freedmen’s aid associations, in order that those abolitionists in England who were still unable to put faith in your Government might have an opportunity of helping in their own way. These associations entered into correspondence with those on your side, and sent over a good many thousand pounds’ worth of clothing and other supplies, besides money. I forget the exact amount. It was a mere drop in the ocean of your magnificent war charities, but it came from thousands who had little enough to spare in those hard times, and I trust has had the effect of a peace-offering with those of your people who are conversant with the facts, and are ready to judge by their actual doings even those against whom they think they have fair cause of complaint.

So much for what I may call the unofficial, or extraparliamentary, struggle in England during your war. And now let me turn to the action of our Government and of Parliament. I might fairly have rested my case entirely upon this ground. In the case of nations blessed as America and England are with perfect freedom of speech and action within the limits of law—where men may say the thing they will freely, and without any check but the civil courts—no one in my judgment has a right to make the nation responsible for anything except what its Government says and does. But I know how deeply the conduct and speech of English society has outraged your people, and still rankles in their minds, and I wished by some rough analysis, and by the statement of facts within my own knowledge, and of doings in which I personally took an active part, to show you that you have done us very scant justice. The dress suit, and the stomach and digestive apparatus, of England were hostile to you, and you have taken them for the nation: the brain and heart and muscle of England were on your side, and these you have ignored and forgotten.

Now, for our Government and Parliament. I will admit at once, if you please, that Lord Palmerston and the principal members of his Cabinet were not friendly to you, and would have been glad to have seen your Republic broken up. I am by no means sure that it was so; but let that pass. I was not in their counsels, and have no more means of judging of them than are open to all of you. Your first accusation against us is, that the Queen’s proclamation of neutrality, which was signed and published on the 13th of May 1861, was premature, and an act of discourtesy to your Government, inasmuch as your new Minister, Mr. Adams, only arrived in England on that very day. Well, looking back from this distance of time, I quite admit that it would have been far better to have delayed the publication of the proclamation till after he had arrived in London. But at the time the case was very different. You must remember that news of the President’s proclamation of the blockade reached London on 3rd May. Of course, from that moment the danger of collision between our vessels and yours, and of the fitting out of privateers in our harbours, arose at once. In fact, your first capture of a British vessel, the General Parkhill of Liverpool, was made on 12th May. But if the publication of the proclamation of neutrality was a mistake, it was made by our Government at the earnest solicitation of Mr. Forster and other warm friends of yours, who pressed it forward entirely, as they supposed, in your interest. They wanted to stop letters of marque and to legitimise the captures made by your blockading squadron. The Government acted at their instance; so, whether a blunder or not, the proclamation was not an unfriendly act. Besides, remember what it amounted to. Simply and solely to a recognition of the fact that you had a serious war on hand. Mr. Seward had already admitted this in an official paper of the 4th of May, and your Supreme Court decided, in the case of the Amy Warwick, that the proclamation of blockade was in itself conclusive evidence that a state of war existed at the time. If we had ever gone a step further—if we had recognised the independence of the rebel States, as our Government was strongly urged to do by their envoys, by members of our Parliament, and lastly by the Emperor of the French—you would have had good ground of offence. But this was precisely what we never would do; and when they found this out, the Confederate Government cut off all intercourse with England, and expelled our consuls from their towns. So one side blamed us for doing too much, and the other for doing too little—the frequent fate of neutrals, as you yourselves are finding at this moment in the case of the war between Prussia and France.

Then came the first public effort of the sympathisers with the rebellion. After several preliminary skirmishes, which were defeated by Mr. Forster (who had what we lawyers should call the watching brief, with Cobden and Bright behind him as leading counsel, and who used to go round the lobbies in those anxious days with his pockets bulging out with documents to prove how effective the blockade was, and how many ships of our merchants you were capturing every day), Mr. Gregory put a motion on the paper. He was well chosen for the purpose, as a member of great experience and ability, sitting on our side of the House, so that weak-kneed Liberals would have an excuse for following him, and though not himself in office, supposed to be on intimate terms with the Premier and other members of the Cabinet. His motion was simply “to call the attention of the House to the expediency of prompt recognition of the Southern Confederacy.”

It was set down for 7th June 1861, and I tell you we were all pretty nervous about the result. The Spectator, Daily News, Star, and other staunch papers opened fire, and we all did what we could in the way of canvassing; but until the Government had declared itself no Union man could feel safe. Well, Lord John Russell, as the Foreign Minister, got up, snubbed the motion altogether, said that the Government had no intention whatever of agreeing to it, and recommended its withdrawal. So Mr. Gregory and his friends took their motion off the paper without a debate, and did not venture to try any other during the session of 1861. In the late autumn came the unlucky Trent affair, to which I have already sufficiently alluded. Belying on the feeling which had been roused by it, and cheered on by the Mason club in Piccadilly and the Index newspaper fulminations, and by the severe checks of the Union armies, they took the field again in 1862. This time their tactics were bolder. They no longer confined themselves to asking the opinion of the House deferentially. Mr. Lindsay, the great shipowner, who it was said had a small fleet of blockade-runners, was chosen as the spokesman. He gave notice of motion, “That in the opinion of this House, the States which have seceded from the Union have so long maintained themselves, and given such proofs of determination and ability to support independence, that the propriety of offering mediation with a view to terminating hostilities is worthy of the serious and immediate attention of Her Majesty’s Government.” Again we trembled for the result, and again the Government came out with a square refusal on the 18th of July, and this motion shared the fate of its predecessor, and was withdrawn by its own promoters.

Then came the escape of the Alabama. Upon this I have no word to say. My private opinion has been expressed over and over again in Parliament (where in my first year, 1866, I think I was the first man to urge open arbitration on our Government) as well as on the platform and in the press. But I stand here to-night as an Englishman, and say that at this moment I have no cause to be ashamed of the attitude of my country. Two Governments in succession, Tory and Liberal, through Lords Stanley and Clarendon, have admitted (as Mr. Fish states himself in his last despatch on the subject) the principle of comprehensive arbitration on all questions between Governments. This is all that a nation can do. England is ready to have the case in all its bearings referred to impartial arbitration, and to pay whatever damages may be assessed against her without a murmur. She has also agreed (and again I use the language of Mr. Fish) “to discuss the important changes in the rules of public law, the desirableness of which has been demonstrated by the incidents of the last few years, and which, in view of the maritime prominence of Great Britain and the United States, it would befit them to mature and propose to the other states of Christendom.” She has, in fact, surrendered her old position as untenable, and agreed to the terms proposed by your own Government. What more can you ask of a nation of your own blood, as proud and sensitive as yourselves on all points where national honour is in question?

But here I must remind you of one fact which you seem never to have realised. The Alabama was the only one of the rebel cruisers of whose character our Government had any notice, which escaped from our harbours. The Shenandoah was a merchant vessel, employed in the Indian trade as the Sea King. Her conversion into a rebel cruiser was never heard of till long after she had left England. The Georgia was actually reported by the surveyor of the Board of Trade as a merchant ship, and to be “rather crank.” She was fitted out on the French coast, and left the port of Cherbourg for her first cruise. The Florida was fitted out in Mobile. She was actually detained at Nassau on suspicion, and only discharged by the Admiralty Court there on failure of evidence. On the other hand, our Government stopped the Rappahannock, the Alexandra, and the Pampero, and seized Mr. Laird’s celebrated rams at Liverpool, and Captain Osborne’s Chinese flotilla, for which last exercise of vigilance the nation had to pay £100,000.

Such is our case as to the cruisers which did you so much damage. I believe it to be true. If we are mistaken, however, you will get such damages for each and all of these vessels as the arbitrator may award. We reserve nothing. I as an Englishman am deeply grieved that any of my countrymen, for base love of gain or any other motive, should have dared to defy the proclamation of my Sovereign, speaking in the nation’s name. I earnestly long for the time when by wise consultation between our nations, and the modification of the public law bearing on such cases, not only such acts as these, but all war at sea, shall be rendered impossible. The United States and England have only to agree in this matter, and there is an end of naval war through the whole world.

In 1863 the horizon was still dark. Splendid as your efforts had been, and magnificent as was the attitude of your nation, tried in the fire as few nations have been in all history, those efforts had not yet been crowned with any marked success. With us it was the darkest in the whole long agony, for in it came the crisis of that attempt of the Emperor of the French to inveigle us in a joint recognition of the Confederacy, on the success of which his Mexican adventure was supposed to hang. The details of those negotiations have never been made public. All we know is, that Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Roebuck went to Paris and had long conferences with Napoleon, the result of which was the effort of Mr. Roebuck (now in turn the representative of the rebels in our Parliament) to force or persuade our Government into this alliance. Then came the final crisis. On the 30th of June 1863, a day memorable in our history as in yours, at the very time that your army of the Potomac was hurrying through the streets of Gettysburg to meet the swoop of those terrible Southern legions, John Bright stood on the floor of our House of Commons, on fire with that righteous wrath which has so often lifted him above the heads of other English orators.

He dragged the whole plot to light, quoted the former attacks of Mr. Roebuck on his Imperial host, and then turning to the Speaker, went on, “And now, sir, the honourable and learned gentleman has been to Paris, introduced there by the honourable member for Sunderland, and he has sought to become, as it were, a co-conspirator with the French Emperor, to drag this country into a policy which I maintain is as hostile to its interests as it would be degrading to its honour.” From that moment the cause of the rebellion was lost in England; for by the next mails came the news of the three days’ fight, and the melting away of Longstreet’s corps in the final and desperate efforts to break the Federal line on the slopes of little Round Top. A few weeks more and we heard of the surrender of Vicksburg, and no more was heard in our Parliament of recognition or mediation.

I have now, my friends, stated the case between our countries from an Englishman’s point of view, of course, but I hope fairly and temperately. At any rate, I have only spoken of matters within my own personal knowledge, and have only quoted from public records which are as open to every one of you as they are to me. Search them, I beseech you, and see whether I am right or not. If wrong, it is from no insular prejudices or national conceit, and you will at any rate think kindly and bear with the errors of one who has always loved your nation well, through good report and evil report, and is now bound to it by a hundred new and precious ties. If right, all I beg of you is, to use your influences that old hatreds and prejudices may disappear, and America and England may march together, as nations redeemed by a common Saviour, toward the goal which is set for them in a brighter future.

Shall it be love, or hate, John?

It’s you thet’s to decide;

Ain’t your bonds held by Fate, John,

Like all the world’s beside?

So runs the end of the solemn appeal in “Jonathan to John,” the poem which suggested the title of this lecture. It comes from one who never deals in wild words. I am proud to be able to call him a very dear and old friend. He is the American writer who did more than any other to teach such of us in the old country as ever learned them at all, the rights and wrongs of this great struggle of yours. Questions asked by such men can never be safely left on one side. Well, then, I say we have answered them. We know—no nation, I believe, knows better, or confesses daily with more of awe—that our bonds are held by fate; that a strict account of all the mighty talents which have been committed to us will be required of us English, though we do live in a sea fortress, in which the gleam of steel drawn in anger has not been seen for more than a century. We know that we are very far from being what we ought to be; we know that we have great social problems to work out, and, believe me, we have set manfully to work to solve them,—problems which go right down amongst the roots of things, and the wrong solution of which may shake the very foundations of society. We have to face them manfully, after the manner of our race, within the four corners of an island not bigger than one of your large States; while you have the vast elbow-room of this wonderful continent, with all its million outlets and opportunities for every human being who is ready to work. Yes, our bonds are indeed held by fate, but we are taking strict account of the number and amount of them, and mean, by God’s help, to dishonour none of them when the time comes for taking them up. We reckon, too, some of us, that as years roll on, and you get to understand us better, we may yet hear the words “Well done, brother,” from this side of the Atlantic; and if the strong old islander, who, after all, is your father, should happen some day to want a name on the back of one of his bills, I, for one, should not wonder to hear that at the time of presentation the name Jonathan is found scrawled across there in very decided characters. For we have answered that second question, too, so far as it lies in our power.

It will be love and not hate between the two freest of the great nations of the earth, if our decision can so settle it. There will never be anything but love again, if England has the casting vote. For remember that the force of the decision of your great struggle has not been spent on this continent. Your victory has strengthened the hands and hearts of those who are striving in the cause of government, for the people by the people, in every corner of the Old World. In England the dam that had for so many years held back the free waters burst in the same year that you sheathed your sword, and now your friends there are triumphant and honoured; and if those who were your foes ever return to power you will find that the lesson of your war has not been lost on them. In another six years you will have finished the first century of your national life. By that time you will have grown to fifty millions, and will have subdued and settled those vast western regions, which now in the richness of their solitudes, broken only by the panting of the engine as it passes once a day over some new prairie line, startles the traveller from the Old World. I am only echoing the thoughts and prayers of my nation in wishing you God-speed in your great mission. When that centenary comes round, I hope, if I live, to see the great family of English-speaking nations girdling the earth with a circle of free and happy communities, in which the angels’ message of peace on earth and good-will amongst men may not be still a mockery and delusion. It rests with you to determine whether this shall be so or not. May the God of all the nations of the earth, who has so marvellously prospered you hitherto, and brought you through so great trials, guide you in your decision!

THE END