Nevertheless, (what pre-eminently condemns English policy,) the idea of England aiding the North in this war was never even mooted as among things possible or imaginable. Contingent English interference was among all public men, assumed to mean, interference _on the side of the South_! The certainty, that we must at last help them, was urged among the Southern conspirators as a grand argument for secession; and if the English ministry had intended to lure them on, to the utmost possible bloodshed of North and South, it could not have conducted itself more skilfully.
The English campaign opened, by Earl Russell proclaiming the South “belligerent” when she had not a ship on the seas, and excluding the war-ships of the North from our harbours: at the same time the London press gave tongue with very few exceptions in favour of DISUNION as the great desideratum of America, and its inevitable destiny. The two daily papers which peculiarly have been regarded as under Lord Palmerston’s inspiration, (the Morning Post and the Times,) were not only no exception, but might seem to have been conducted by Southern agents; whose cue it was, to vilify the North by slander and disparagement cunningly tempered to English prejudices and English credulity. The tone then assumed has changed little to this day; and at a very early time gave immense encouragement to the South, with proportionate exasperation to the North, whose enemies and dangers it multiplied.
About the same time, Mr. Massey, a nominee of the Government, spoke at Salford a speech intensely hostile to the North, utterly ignoring the treason of the South and its execrable objects, and aiming to stir up the working men to desire hostilities against the North. It is not possible to blame Earl Russell primarily, but we must blame the Cabinet collectively and him as the second personage in it, for this speech. For inevitably the public, both here and across the Atlantic, understood it to be a ministerial effort to excite a war spirit against the North; and though it utterly failed with the working men, it must be counted among the causes which have made the ministerial press so pertinaciously hostile to the cause of freedom.
