MR BEECHER ON POLITICAL MORALITY.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 27, 8 January 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR BEECHER ON POLITICAL MORALITY.

("From the Saturday Review) As the first year of the American civil war is to the third, so is Bishop M'llvaine to Mr Henry Beecher. The Northern cause in England has deteriorated. The Evangelical Bishop's missiou was, at the worst, but a silent failure ; it simply collapsed from inanity. But the blazing preacher's lectures, though equally failing to address the English mind by argument, while they surpass in vulgarity and impudence the Bishops milk-and-water apologies, perhaps more iaithfully reflect the present aspect of the contest. The war has become more ' bloody, more embittered, more wicked, and Mr Beecher is quite worthy of the latter stage of his cause. To be sure, his speech at Exeter Flail on Tuesday evening owes something of its especial "character to the associations of the place. It is only natural that a speaker on that familiar platform should reckon safely on the ignorance and prejudices of his hearers, but we should do even Mr Beecher injustice in supposing that he really believes that such a meeting can have the slightest value as a declaration of English opinion. It must have struck the orator that not a single man of name and position stood by him in London, and he cannot but have felt that, somehow or other, it could hardly be the cause of Brougham and Buxton and VVilberforce which was represented by Professor Newman and Mr Newman Hall. It was Mr Beecher's last harangue, and recapitulated in the capital what he had said in the provinces. Attempting to give a defferential character to his closing lecture — which, however, he failed to sustain — he descanted on the moral, as distinguished from the political and social Mid economical, benefits which would accrue to England from adopting the Northern cause. Well, then, to the moral virtues of the North let us go. Mr Beecher's theory of morals is curious. It seems that the North always disliked slavery and slave-hold-ing, but, for politic reasons, and merely to keep the peace, it dissembled its righteous horror. Here we must, in the first place, observe upon a fallacy — we forget whether Whately mentions j it — which consists in the misuse of the figure of impersonation. When we speak of the North doing this and the South doing that, the notion of two j individuals, moral units and responsible persons, is intended to be conveyed ; I and very likely the intellect of Exeter Hall is imposed upon by this shallow sophism. But the truth is that, in this sense, there is not and never was a North and a South. If it is meant, to say that either the leading statesmen or public opinion in the No* them States were, at the time of the Federal Union, or fifty years alter it, Or are even now. secret friends of Abolition, and could ever even have dreamed of Mr Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation, this is notoriously contrary to the fact. This alleged moral sense of the North is an equal fiction with the North itself. And, even supposing that there was this ideal North with its .^concealed hatre I of slavery, the ideal is not one belonging to the '^highest form of morality. A man conniving at what he . believes to be desperate wickedness . only for the sake of keeping the peace with sinners, and of being able to blusteF more boldly and to crow more; loudly at his neighborjs /with the aid and countenance of the said sinners, , is hardly a lofty character. A,hd yet this is what the North' did. The North would not quarrel with the South, would not tell the South of its faults, would not expostulate with the South because Slavery was a State, , and not a uatioual institution. , The North agreedto "cast its iiatibrianot in with the'Spnth, 'though' from the 1 very first it knew that the Southern States, as^ States, were .founded upon a ? wicked arid abominable domestic pblicyv If these were really the, sentiments • pervading Northern statesmen at the time of the Eederal

Union, and present to the minds of the founders of Independence and thu authors of the . Federal .Constitution, there is nothing to be said exer pt that -they present 'a "picture of po'itical wickedness without a parallel in history. But Mr Beecher'a whole account of the matter is as mucli a fiction as " Uncle Tom." The founders of the Union cared very'little about slavery ; and an Abolitionist would have been -as inconceivable to Washineton and Franklin as a -President like Mr Lincoln. As population increased and the •area of territoi'y enlarged, as manufactures grew and commercial " interests were developed, . the North and the South — as respectively representing, not faint and timid virtue on the one side, and arrogant' and ambitious vice on the other, but separate interests, and political wants and aims daily diverging — gradually came into" existence. But this rise of North and South, and of their separate interests, was a work of time, and was the natural result of commercial and social causes. There - was little morality in the matter but the morality of "enlightened selfishness." It was for political interests that the Federation was first formed ; and po'itical interest loosened, and at last shattered, a bond which was never of the strongest. The North, from climate,- natural laws, and ecouomic causes, became a manufacturing, aud the South an "agricultural country. The North found in. the South a good customer, and, beings the only dealer, charged its own prices on the purchaser whom it shut out from the other markets of the world. In short,- the North treated the South just as we treated, or are said ro have treated, our colonies in George llJ.'s reign. We dealt with them just as we pleased, and we made them take our commodities at such prices as we ch pse to dictate. For this cause the American colonies delivered themselves from, the yoke of the Mother-country, as the phrase, is ; and with equal reason the. South separated from the North' as soon as it was strong enough to do so. This is the sole morality involved on either side. Mr Beecher goes on to assert that the North — that is to say,. Mr Lincoln and his friends— -ate bound to vindicate the national majesty and imperial li : fe by exterm nating all the inhabitants of the South, just as we in England should be bound to put dovvn a rebellion of the men of Kent ; and he actually had the impudence — we cannot use a milder word — to say that Carolina or Georgia bears the same relation to the Union that an English county does to the ' English nation. He probably reckoned safely on the ignorance of his audience • but we should have thought that, even in Exeter Hall, the phrase State- rights had been heard of, and that even to Mr Newman Hall's congregation the term Confederation would convey some notion different from that of a nation or monarchy in the European sense. Mr Beecher is not, as he elegantly expresses it, " well posted " in Our affairs ; - and, as he considers the political condition of a Southern State exac ly equivalent to that of the county of Kent, he probably thinks that gravelkind means the appointment by the men of Kent of their own governor and judges. But even Mr Beecher might have remembered, before he instituted this eom- | parison between an English county and the aggregate Confederate States with their millions of inhabitants, and a territory more than equal to that of several European kingdoms, that he had, only a few minutes before, admitted that each State had "an undivided sovereignty." There is one more moral excellence which Mr Beecher claims for the North. It is that of the loftiest and truest, patriotism. The Southern territory, he says, belongs to the North ; let the Southeners go by all means, but let them leave their land behiud them. The territory is a sacred trust committed] to the guardianship of- Mr. -Lincoln andhis Cabinet, and they are bound to krep it by the hallowed ministry of famine, fire and slaughter till the last rebel is exterminated from " the territory that is ours." Strange doctrine this to be vindicated on moral grounds ; stranger still to be announced by a man who caljs himself a minister of the gospel of peace and charity; strange to be thundered into the ears of an audience meeting in a hall which write 3 " love of the brethren " over its portals. But strangest of all is it that any rational being should suppose that such an argument would avail with a people who gave .every moral support to- the Neapolitan rebels, and who' are at this very moment half disposed tVaid the Polish rebels, who established the Belgian throne on the b .sis of a successful rebellion, and who joyfully recognised those South American States which only claimed the same freedom which the Confederate rebels are fighting for.' Russia; may bluster, with Mr Beecher, and may say of Poland, l : the territory islburs/' Austria may .say: of-' Hungary :or-iVenice,'' the territory . is ours.'' Holland, iind Turkey, arid Portugal >and Spain have said "the territory is ours." But the answer of England ;wa& not and is not, to bid the oppressor Godspeed, or even to give moral sympathy to the doctrine that it is the duty of an Imperial State to coerce by the sword a ' reluctant and unwilling population. ' The nation which has just cheerfully surrendered the lonian Islands'* and which is perfectly ready and willing to give up any and every colony and dependency .of the English Crown as soon as it chooses to believe, or to fane}', that it is strong enough to walk alone, and -to go to destruction or to prosperity its ' aingait," is hardly likely.-to be influenced by this recommendation of the duties of despotism. And as Mr Beecher assumed, on this occasion at least, the part of a moral teacher, we in j our turn d.ubl deliver an ethical lesture.

I'We cannot see the morality of a war "je carried on avowedly for conquest and empire. We fail to understand ' the morality of a contest in which war con- jj tractors and . gamblers are., the- only M gainers- We seaicely appreciate >the ,| morality of a war Which drains theljest ? blood of half a continent, and fills the ) happy homes of our own kinsmen with -* mourning and weeping;, for it 13 an 1 actual fact, though -one which Mr 3 Beecher seems to forget, that the men j of Carolina are quite as much of our ] .own blood a» the men of Massachusetts, * andj perhaps more so. We are slow to ;l perceive that the cause of human free- 3 dom is much furthered by the continu- f ance of a state of things in. which military tyranny interferes with the '■ judicial tribunals, the freedom of tbe\| press, liberty of speech,and' the right' 1 of open deliberation. We cannot as f yet be got to feel that martial -law- is a- J good exchange for the Habeas Corpus I Act. On moral grounds, then, the $ Northern cause does not recommend i itself to us. Nor do the Northern men | seem to us to be exactly the models '1 of saints. Mr Seward is a braggart, >| and Mr Snmner scarcely truthful. The | Republican President may- be, in Mr g Beecher's opinion, •• a true, honest, i religious, and conscientious magistrate;" i but, just as gold may be bought too i dear, we are perverse enough to think i that an Aceldama of blood, and a flood of injustice, confiscation, murder, ; rapine, aud lust, poured over a whole j continent, even in the interests of morality, is a very hfgh price to' pay for ■- that burning and shining light, that \ epitome of truth, "honesty, religion, and Jl conscientiousness — that model -of that is pure and decent in daily speechjH and hijrn-nvnHed in action — known aaJM Mr Abrnham Lincoln. |9