The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.Various
General
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in
mining.
We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens
the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel
between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from
the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the
matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a
mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial
difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides
with _one_ of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking
up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for
physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs.
Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the
affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but
non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your
neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from
Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to
act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical
intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded
upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the
world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism
and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to
Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of
whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe,
and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has
been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of
humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the
deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not
always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there
could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid
claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very
proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the
North.
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