The Contest in America — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Contest in America
John Stuart Mill · en
neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as
sincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as
great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been
an additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have
been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling
on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the
influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and
interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it
in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised
by one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to the
thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which
for the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals,
but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical
abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in England
who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christian
professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God.
Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the
civilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which
had weighed on it ever since the _Trent_ outrage, and when we are no
longer feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards
those with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life or
death; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
whether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishing
what ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which the
Northern States are engaged with the South.