That is the termination of the contest to which I look forward. Ithink that there will be secession, but that the terms of secession will be dictated by the North, not by the South; and among these terms I expect to see an escape from slavery for those border States to which I have alluded. In that proposition which in February last (1862) was made by the President, and which has since been sanctioned by the Senate, I think we may see the first step toward this measure. It may probably be the case that many of the slaves will be driven South; that as the owners of those slaves are driven from their holdings in Virginia they will take their slaves with them, or send them before them. The manumission, when it reaches Virginia, will not probably enfranchise the half million of slaves who, in 1860, were counted among its population. But as to that Iconfess myself to be comparatively careless; it is not the concern which I have now at heart. For myself, I shall feel satisfied if that manumission shall reach the million of whites by whom Virginia is populated; or if not that million in its integrity, then that other million by which its rich soil would soon be tenanted. There are now about four million of white men and women inhabiting the slave States which I have described, and I think it will be acknowledged that the Northern States will have done something with their armies if they succeed in rescuing those four millions from the stain and evil of slavery.
There is a third question which I have asked myself, and to which Ihave undertaken to give some answer. When this war be over between the Northern and Southern States, will there come upon us a necessity of fighting with the Americans? If there do come such necessity, arising out of our conduct to the States during the period of their civil war, it will indeed be hard upon us, as a nation, seeing the struggle that we as a nation have made to be just in our dealings toward the States generally, whether they be North or South. To be just in such a period, and under such circumstances, is very difficult. In that contest between Sardinia and Austria it was all but impossible to be just to the Italians without being unjust to the Emperor of Austria. To have been strictly just at the moment one should have begun by confessing the injustice of so much that had gone before! But in this American contest such justice, though difficult, was easier. Affairs of trade rather than of treaties chiefly interfered; and these affairs, by a total disregard of our own pecuniary interests, could be so managed that justice might be done. This I think was effected. It may be, of course, that I am prejudiced on the side of my own nation; but striving to judge of the matter as best I may without prejudice, I cannot see that we, as a nation, have in aught offended against the strictest justice in our dealings with America during this contest. But justice has not sufficed. I do not know that our bitterest foes in the Northern States have accused us of acting unjustly. It is not justice which they have looked for at our hands, and looked for in vain--not justice, but generosity! We have not, as they say, sympathized with them in their trouble. It seems to me that such a complaint is unworthy of them as a nation, as a people, or as individuals. In such a matter generosity is another name for injustice, as it too often is in all matters. A generous sympathy with the North would have been an ostensible and crushing enmity to the South. We could not have sympathized with the North without condemning the South, and telling to the world that the South were our enemies. In ordering his own household a man should not want generosity or sympathy from the outside; and if not a man, then certainly not a nation. Generosity between nations must in its very nature be wrong. One nation may be just to another, courteous to another, even considerate to another with propriety. But no nation can be generous to another without injustice either to some third nation or to itself.
But though no accusation of unfairness has, as far as I am aware, ever been made by the government of Washington against the government of England, there can be no doubt that a very strong feeling of antipathy to England has sprung up in America during this war, and that it is even yet so intense in its bitterness that, were the North to become speedily victorious in their present contest, very many Americans would be anxious to turn their arms at once against Canada. And I fear that that fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac has strengthened this wish by giving to the Americans an unwarranted confidence in their capability of defending themselves against any injury from British shipping. It may be said by them, and probably would be said by many of them, that this feeling of enmity had not been engendered by any idea of national injustice on our side; that it might reasonably exist, though no suspicion of such injustice had arisen in the minds of any. They would argue that the hatred on their part had been engendered by scorn on ours--by scorn and ill words heaped upon them in their distress.
