Our cause in England.
--We have now before us a London periodical of position, which is a standard of authority in the department to which it is devoted. We mean ‘"Mitchell's Maritime Register." ’ Its tone indicates how appetizing the great shipping interest of England has found the free port feature of our tradal policy. Our free ports, and our tendency to free trade, added to the cotton influence, are sufficient, we entirely believe, to conciliate the friendliness of Great Britain and France to any degree desirable--even to the extent of defensive and offensive alliance — should we consent to it with the object of bringing the war to an earlier conclusion. But we must quote the ‘"Maritime Register, "’ which we do from an article under the caption, ‘"The Fall of Fort Sumter:"’‘"We were among the first to assert our conviction that a great commercial question was really the issue between the North and South, and that slavery was only the pretence under which that question was advanced. The progress of events has strengthened this conviction. Amongst the very first acts of the Southern Convention were the revision of the tariff, and the opening of the navigation of the Mississippi. These beneficial measures have been followed by the expressed determination to open the Southern ports to the flags of all nations. We may be quite sure that, come what may, there will be no reversal of this salutary policy. The diversion of even a portion of the magnificent trade which has hitherto been monopolized by Boston and New York to the ports of the South, will give to the Confederate States a commercial importance which they will never resign, except upon a compulsion which will never be brought to bear upon them. The problem, then, of the opening of the American coasting trade is admitedly solved along the vast intercept between the Northern limits of North Carolina and the Western limits of Texas. The South, conscious of the necessities of its trade, has suddenly taken a course which has astonished the world and baffied the anticipations of the most profound statesmen and politicians of the West. Happily for the South, and, we may add; for Europe, that course has been in the direction of the liberation of her maritime commerce. By this stroke of policy the Southern States have at once conciliated the good will of the powerful nations with whom they have had tradal relations, and laid the foundation of a commercial importance to which they have hitherto been strangers."’--Mobile Register.
