AN OLD CHAPTER RE-WRITTEN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 28, 9 January 1862, Page 5 (Supplement)

AN OLD CHAPTER RE-WRITTEN.

(From the Saturday Itevieio.') If the Gods sometimes destroy men by granting a foolish prayer, they also sometimes save them by rejecting it. For several years the Kino and people o£ England struggled, -with all the power of the Empire, to subdue the revolted American colonies. They went on till they had accumulated an immense debt, till they had lost their best troops, till they had given a dangerous shock to their own political system, and brought themselves so low that they were obliged to concede legislative independence to Ireland from fear of a mob of hastily raised Volunteers. In vain did the wisest and most illustrious statesmen protest against such madness. In vain did they ask what was to he done with the colonies in case they were subdued, and whether it was intended to maintain an mmensb standing srmjr On the other side of the

Atlantic for the purpose of holding in subjection an unwilling population of the same free blood as onrsejyps ? If the remonstrants were not tarred aod feathered, or made to ride upon rails, it wiis 9bJy hQ'JaUae the full measure of liberty which encjjjos unpopular sentiments to be so promptly <lea}t With had not then been obtained by an ; old ■filHjAOipewhat retrograde community. Theirremonwere given to the winds, and the remontrants were overwhelmed with ignominy and abuse. “What should be done with the rebels wjien they had been subdued ? was a question .that might be resolved when it arose. One thing Was clear—rebellion must be put down. The honour of the Crown must be vindicated. The unity of the Empire must be restored. Till that was done, there could be no thought of peace, and those who desired it were themselves little better than rebels in their hearts.” And yet all this time the separation of the colonies, against wjiich we were struggling, was the greatest boon that Providence could bestow. Regarded in a commercial point of view alone, it was worth more to us than all pur conquests put together. The gain of India has often been rhetorically contrasted with the loss of America ; but the truth is that the incapacity of Lord North and the bungling of his wooden commanders did more for us than the genius of Warren Hastings. The golden current of trade which began to flow between the two countries when the commercial energies of America were set free, very soon repaid us even the immense sums which had been squandered in endeavouring to keep ourselves out of that rich heritage. Yet, in the wise endeavour to avert from ourselves this good fortune, we had brought ourselves to the brink of destruction- “ We and mankind in general,” says a cynicial historian, writing of a similar case of blindness, “ are a set of extremely wise creatures.” The refusal of the American colonies to submit to Imperial taxation was a signal given by nature though not understood by man, that the time had arrived when it was good for both parties that the colonies should become a nation. The present secession of the South from the North is a smilar signal given by nature, and equally misunderstood by man, that the time has arrived when there ought to be more than one nation on the Continent of North America. Unionists imagine that, the greatness of their country depends upon the retention under one Government, and under one set of institutions, of the whole of a territory equal to that of all the great nations of Europe put together. But they mistake the nature of greatness. Greatness is not independent, in the case of nations, of material size and power; but it is essentially a moral not a quality. And in order that she may be morally great, a nation must have other nations at her side to give her the wholesome lessons which, in the case of individuals, man gives to man. America has been like a great blustering boy brought up at home, instead oflearning common sense, manliness, and modesty among his equals in a public school. She has nobody to control her tyrannical arrogance, to make her feel her faults, to cure her of that intense self-conceit which is the root of all littleness and of all failure. She was fancied her power unbounded because she has had nobody to measure it against except the decripit States of South America, or British colonies still in their leading-strings ; and she has naturally contracted those wretched habits of bragging and blustering which attend the fancied possession of unbounded power. She has had before her but one set of political institutions, which she has naturally supposed to be the best imaginable ; and she has consequently been led, instead of correcting, to glory in and aggravate all their defects. She has complacently carried democracy to the height of an absolute mob rule in which respectability is a disqualification for political power, and she has seemed to herself all the time to be advancing towards a political perfection hitherto unattained. Half-a-dozen independent nations, with different institutions at her side, would have taught her better than this, besides obliging her to have other men than spouting grocers for the officers of her regiments, and to fill her dockyards with something better than rotten wood. The hour of trial has shown her what sort of an education it is to be lord of all you survey. Her big, burly, hectoring frame turns out not to be tenanted by a big soul. Her natural grandeur is astounding. Other people’s rivers are her brooks, other people’s hotels are her beershops, what other peoples do by inches she does by acres ; but her troops march homo when the cannon are sounding, her officers boast to their men that they are “ licked into a cocked hat,” and her greatest statesman in her extremity is Mr. Seward. Nature is going to cure all this by introducing into' the New World, as well as the Old, the salutary division of independent nations. And to thwart the beneficent object of nature is the aim—the hopeless aim—of this ridiculous war.

The present split between the North and the South will not be the last. The West will one day form—and it is good for the whole Continent it should form—a separate nation. But it is natural that the first split should take place between the Free States and the Slave. There must be some connexion between the social system of a State and its political institutions, and no social systems can be more widely different than slavery and freedom. It is absurd to think that the two could go on perpetually under the same political Constitution. The founders of the Republic never dreamed of anything of the kind. They looked upon slavery as a transient evil, and expected that, in course of time, of all the States would be alike free. The combination is simply demoralizing and degarding to the North, which has been made the cowardly abettor of slavery, and which is at this moment ready —let Mrs Stowe say what she will—to purchasetbe restoration of the Union by becoming the cowardly abettor of slavery in a still greater degree. The sincere Abolition party has been just strong enough to keep the Southern slave-owners in perpetual alarm, and make them treat their slaves with a cruelty engendered bv fear. The severance of the connexion is most earnestly to be desired for the sake of all parties : —North and South, Slave and Free. And when both combatants are bankrupt, they will begin, with the shrewdness characteristic of the race, to see that such is the easel " ' '