The policy of England.
The conviction is daily acquiring strength that the policy of the English Government, upon the American question is far more profound and subtle looking at the surface of things, had supposed.--It is now beginning to be believed that the controlling motive of the British Government, in its long and persevering career of anti-slavery propagandism, was, through the abolition of slave labor in the South, so to cripple and destroy the cotton culture in America as to make the world dependent for its manufactures upon the cotton productions of British colonies, which, though not equal to those of the South, would be the best that could be had, after Southern cotton is out of the way. This conjecture is the only one that harmonizes with the course of England before and during the present war. That her abolition influence, more than any other cause, has produced the disruption of the old Union, no one doubts; but if she sought disunion, in order, as we have hitherto supposed, to obtain control of Southern staples, it is impossible to comprehend why she should have so long hesitated to break the blockade, and should still encounter the hazard of the whole cotton crop being destroyed. Her conduct is only to be explained by the supposition that she desires the destruction of Southern labor and Southern staples, that her own may take their places, Such a profound, subtle, and cold-blooded policy, is in entire keeping with the whole course of the same Government upon slavery and the slave trade, of which she was at one time the principal patron; but, as soon as her interests, changed, the most bitter and efficient adversary. Slavery she forced upon America, to subserve her own interests, and slavery, for the same purpose, she is now laboring to extirpate root and branches.The policy which it is now believed governs Great Britain, will prove as short-sighted as it is supremely selfish and inhuman. Even in the improbable contingency of Southern subjugation, the cotton of the South, if ever raised thereafter, would still hold its supremacy in all the markets of the world. If successful — as who can doubt?--the manufacturers of continental nations would be able, by the use of our Southern staple and by the commercial privileges which they would receive in preference to England, either to overthrow forever the manufacturing ascendancy of that nation, or compel her to acknowledge that the cotton of the South is King.
