The stone blockade.
The Boston Courtier, one of the most respectable as well as able journals in New England, and a paper which never has joined the hue and cry of the Northern demons against the South, has the following very sharp article on the stone blockade:"The criticism to which the plan of choking up the harbor of Charleston is subjected by the London Examiner, with which we perceive other foreign journals coincide, deserves much more than transient consideration. We may find the carrying out of this delenda est Carthago policy a much more serious cause of hostility, and even hatred towards us among all civilized nations, than any deviation from a doubtful principle of international law. We had supposed when we had glanced at the accounts of preparations for this expedient, and until quite recently, that it was only intended for a more effectual but still temporary blockade than could well be put in force by other means; but we did not imagine that the object was to change the very geography of nature in a point so essential. We only put on record against it an unavailing remonstrance. The scheme is more than heathen. When old Cato repeated at the end of every speech his perpetual formula, even in a Roman Senate, there was a Scipio always ready to retort.‘"And my opinion is that Carthage should stand."’
"We hold with Scipio, not with Cato. But even the purpose of the cruel old Roman was nothing to this. A hostile or rebellious city, destroyed by ordinary means, may be rebuilt, and be to other generations, if not now, these at of comfort, prosperity, and happiness. But this 'choking up forever nature's channels of life, intercourse, and plenty,' is a measure dictated by neither wisdom nor any feeling with which Christian principle could have any sympathy. It will make us expressly execrated as is becomes known by all the civilized world. Nor is it to be overlooked that other nations may allege, with a reason which we shall find it difficult to answer; You can blockade your ports and exclude us for a time, for your advantage or from your necessities, from commercial benefits ordinarily free to all mankind. But you have no right to change the ordinance of nature, so as to deprive us and all mankind forever of those benefits. If you do, we can no longer regard you as of the family of nations; but rather, like some savage beast retiring to his den, whom those who are able have a right to assail and destroy — after your own example.
‘"As for the article quoted from the New York Times, there is a depth of unearthly malignity about it which we do not remember ever to have read in any composition. Even were the deed necessary in itself, to perpetrate it with such feelings and motives would be to surpass the barbarity of the most remorseless savage."’
