Lord Palmerston on the war.
In the House of Commons, on the 25th July, in reply no a question by Mr. Lindsay, Lord Palmerston is reported as saying:‘ "I can assure my honorable friend that her Majesty's Government deeply lament the great sacrifice of life and property in America and the distress that war has produced in this country. But we have not thought that, in the present state of things, there was any advantage to be gained by entering into concert with any other Power for the purpose of proposing or offering mediation, or of negotiating with the Government of the United States, or of the Confederate States, to bring about a termination of this unhappy war."
’ The first sentence of this paragraph is a falsehood — hypocritical falsehood — a most shameless and a most transparent falsehood, "Her Majesty's Government," that is to say, Lord Palmerston himself, and his colleague, Lord Russell, do not lament the "great sacrifice of life and property in America."--On the contrary, it is to them the most pleasing event that could possibly occur. They see in it the consummation of a policy conceived by the Government of Great Britain within one year after the treaty of 1783, by which the independence of the Thirteen Colonies was recognized, and pursued with remorseless pertinacity throughout the whole intervening space of time until its consummation in 1860. The statement of Great Britain could not but foresee, even at that early period, that if the Union of the States continued uninterrupted for a century, Great Britain must lose, never to be regained, her prestige as mistress of the seas. They foresaw that the United States must be the ruling power upon that favorite element — that element from whose besom had sprung so much of that wealth, and that greatness, which were at that time the envy and the admiration of the world. They foresaw that her manufactures would be driven out of all the markets of the world; that her commerce would decline as her manufactures gave way, and that her colonies would lie at the mercy of the gigantic power which they saw rising in the Western hemisphere. It was with them, as it has been with their successors from that time to this, an object of the greatest importance to effect the disintegration of this mighty empire, which, if allowed to expand to its legitimate proportions, must end by overshadowing the world. From the moment of our separation the intrigues of British agents in Canada were incessant; and during the war of 1812 they very nearly succeeded in detaching the New England States from the Union. Indeed, all Yankeedom, with a very few honorable exceptions, was at that time a nest of traitors. The war bore hard on their interests, which were largely involved in the trade with Great Britain and her colonies, and no Yankees were ever known to hesitate between treason to their country and treason to their interests. We escaped that trial; but there was another in reserve for us, which Great Britain knew well how to aggravate, and which she did aggravate until it became altogether intolerable. We allude, of course, to the slavery question, which her emissaries have been the most forward to agitate, and which they prompted the Yankee Abolitionists to agitate until they succeeded.
Yet, the mere dissolution of the Union was but half the battle. A peaceful separation would have left two great peoples on this continent; the one of them the rival of Great Britain in manufactures and commerce, and the other her superior in all the productions of the soil that constitute the raw material. If the separation should be peaceful, the danger to Great Britain was still the same. The Yankees would still drive her manufactures out of the market, and the Confederates would still surpass India and all the colonies in the production of the raw material. England's object was four-fold. She desired to continue to be the first manufacturing power in the world; she desired to monopolise the carrying trade of both hemispheres; she desired to be, as she had been, mistress of the seas; and she desired to become independent of other nations for her supply of cotton. None of these objects could be effected by a peaceful separation. A war — a long and bloody war — a war as destructive of property as possible — a war so exhaustive of both parties, that at the end of it neither of them could give any disturbance to her in any project of ambition or interest which she might thereafter entertain — was what she most earnestly desired. She has her wish now; but should the war terminate at its present point, her object would be but half accomplished. We are both (we and the Yankees) powerful at this time — either of us able to beat Great Britain on land, and, therefore, to defeat any schemes she may entertain against any portion of this continent. Blood has flowed like water; but enough of it has not yet been shed to satisfy her sanguinary appetite. She has already four-fifths of the carrying trade, but she wants it all. Her merchants, ship-owners and manufacturers are all making colossal fortunes, and would deplore the termination of the war as the greatest of all possible calamities. The cotton operatives are starving, but they are used to it, and nobody listens to them. "Let the war go on. It is making us all rich," is the cry of all classes in England, except the operatives before mentioned. "Let the war go on until this accursed negro slavery he overthrown and abolished forever." Such is the cry of Lord Russell in the House of Lords. And when Lord Palmerston tells us that he deeply laments a war which is securing the naval ascendancy of Great Britain, giving her the carrying trade of the world, and literally drowning her in a golden deluge, we simply do not believe one word he says. Nor does any one else, even in the House of Commons, believe it. He could easily have prevented it in 1861 if he had wished. His humanity is all affectation. He could hear to-morrow that the whole population of both the belligerent sections had been utterly exterminated without one feeling of regret or one pang of remorse. Why should the British Government deplore what they have been trying to effect for the last eighty years!
