Grantley Berkeley and the Times.
The following outspoken letter we find in the London Morning Herald, of the 11th October. Although there are portions of it which do not bear very favorably upon Americans at large, the general scope of it, as referring to the relative positions of the North and South, at the present crisis, will be found sufficiently interesting, we think, to excuse the large quantity of space it occupies in our columns:
Sir
--It is curious to read the endeavored to be-nicely balanced articles put forth by the Times on the war now blustering — for no soul can call enraging — in the dis-United States, and to glean from those articles an evident desire, in the steerage of their overgrown ship, the starboard or port, the helm according to the leading breeze; or, in other words, to lurch the vessel on whichever side the tide of victory may run. At first the Times and its special correspondent, the veracious Mr. Russell, designated the Southerners — striking for a portion of that liberty so boasted of by Messrs Cobden and Bright which, if there was any liberty at all, was justly their due.--as rebels, and dated their war to be of but a twelve month duration.
The North, as one man, was to rise, and to go forth, to see and to conquer; in stead of doing so, however, they have risen but have gone forth to sit down again, or run away.
‘ "Bull's Run,"’ or, more properly speaking, ‘"Bullies' Run,"’ will forevermore be the bite noir that will haunt North American reputation.
In my travels in America, and in my lectures to her people, I ridiculed the sell constituted Generals, Colonels and Majors, and alluded to the lamentable weakness of the standing army, that army a foreign one, an Irish one, officered, as I saw it officered, by high spirited, and gentlemanly, and soldier-like Americans, who felt that their country neither paid nor promoted them sufficiently, nor even recognised their value to the community. To keep down the standing army, and even to abolish it if they could, peace — according to Mr. Cobden, to crumple up, brown paper fashion, all of England's foes — was a favorite maxim with those two leaders of the people, and their maxim is now under course of illustration in their pattern republic — that republic out of which old England was to draw an useful lesson. England has that lesson before her eyes, but not the lesson the demagogues desired. The example proves that universal suffrage and vote by ballot, and the rule of an ungovernable mob, combined with the absence from the political offices of the country, of the educated, well born, and wealth- possessing men, are rain to any State or State; and from a combination of the evils advocated by Messrs. Cobden and Bright, their boasted pattern has fallen to pieces, the reiving hands none other than those of Columbia's training.
The Times, in is leading article of the 7th October, on ‘"The events of the American war,"’ contrasts the American volunteers system with ours; it does so with a view to cover Northern imperfections. It is a mystery to me that a paper like the Times should be so foolish as to class the volunteers of the old and new country for one instant together.--The Times says ‘"that the President asks for a dozen more regiments of volunteers, and in a few weeks they are at Washington.’ True, there are the men; but to say that they are animated by any such spirit as that which stirs our men at ‘"England's high call,"’ is to launch for the as impudent a fallacy as even a Munchausen could imagine. The Northern volunteers in America are ‘"time men."’ It is the national falling to love boast and a bottomless display. To prove this ‘"Major Sturgeon"’ propensity we have only to read Mr. Russell's remarks on the entire regiments who ran off from Bull's Run to the tune of the enemy's untasted fire, and refused to fight, unlike their boxer Heenan, because their time was called.
There has been a desire expressed by the Northern Americans to know what we thought of this in England, and I have seen in the Times that England's opinion has been intolerably mystified in regard to the want of spirit manifested, which I am, however, willing, in some degree, to attribute to the injustice and badness of their cause, and the timeservers have not had meted to them the disgust which clings to their bloodless retreat. For any other nation, suddenly involved in the horrors of civil war, every Englishman would be, I am sure, fired with pity and regret. We may pity the state of America now, but regret is hard to find when we see that the men who have so often and so vaingloriously boasted of ‘"a power to whip the world,"’ cannot even whip themselves, and that, though the Northern men talked of putting down the secession movement in a year, they are just now as far off the completion of their boast as they were at the commencement.--Their spirit lies in demonstration, and their hearts elsewhere. The time for aggressive war is come and is passing — the Indian summer is over. The South, her war being a defensive one, leans on her blood stained and ready arms, while the North, like an old turkey on his dunghill, spreads a huge tail, and gobbling loudly in vainglorious boasts, wishes for winter as a welcome curtain to screen a policy as timid as in the end it will be unavailing.
In what respect, then, has the volunteer system worked well in America? The volunteers of the North have marched or run away on the first approach to a general action that has been fought. The ‘"desperate battles"’ and ‘"terrific combats of five hours."’ with a result of one man killed and half a dozen scratched, or the Astiev's farce of the ‘ "Spirited Bombardment of Fort Sumter."’ with no one injured, even by a splinter, will not go down as real war with the other nations of the earth, and the opinion of all military men is that no nation ever came out in so miserable a light as to the gifts of war as has done the dis-United States of America. This blame attaches not to the South; she has done all she said she would do; she secedes, and stands on the defensive and on her just right to sever from the Union when she feels that her interests are neglected or actively assailed To say she has no right to do so and that she is a rebel for doing so is nonsense, and it is, in fact, to fly in the very face of that entire system of freedom on which it was the democratic custom in England to say that America was based.
In America there are no veterans or unattached officers of the regular army to lead the volunteers; in England we have them to any extent. The art of war was never studied by American amateurs; the American system ran entirely on trade. Volunteer generals and colonels kept hotels and edited depraved newspapers, and though the liberty of the press was once a transatlantic boast, it was found to be as empty a beast as taking Canada or whipping the world, putting an end to secession in a twelvemonth, &c., for it is on their mischievous and licentious press, that the President has made his most active war, and there only has the North come up to a given point of useful determination.
To conclude this hasty reply to the vacillating and trimming humor of the Times, I can but remind my readers that even now, with the enormous mileage covered by the States in revolt, and the Northern army whipped, in the late reply to the benign letter of the Autocrat of Russia, the Federal Government tries to blink the fact, by jocosily stating, even now, that ‘"the Union"’ is only ‘"in danger"’ The Union is gone, and, as I have ever prognosticated, it will never be restored unless the North consents to swallow a dessert or dirt, and leaves the property of the South unmolested. The war is waged on and based on an attack on property in general. The slaves form only a portion of their property. The Times at one time tried.
to give it the character of a war simply for emancipation, but the attempts of that would-be leader of public opinion failed. I hold fast by the prognostications of my bock — prognostications which have as yet, in every instance, been quite correct. --The South will beat the North. The hearts of the Northern men are not warm in the conflict; her gentry, her bankers, and her moneyed men are tired of being unrepresented, and the supplies will fail Her standing army hates the volunteers, who has usurped a rank he is unfit for, and lowered the standard value of its name. There is everything, except the usages of red tape and the exercise of an imaginary government which really was no government at all in favor of the gallant South. And though I lament the curse that universal suffrage and vote by ballot have brought on that splendid country, my wish is that secession may maintain itself, for there can be no sound union, no benefit in freedom, if there is coercion, and freedom exists but in name.
Grantley F. Berkeley.
