Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch of March 13, (No. 131,) has been submitted to the President.
I have the pleasure of approving the manner in which you have presented the case of the British steamer Miramon to the notice of her Majesty’s government.
[Page 60]I am glad, also, to learn that you anticipated my instructions in asking of Earl Russell explanations of the license allowed to underwriters in Liverpool and London to insure British vessels engaged in violating the blockade. Your remarks in alluding to that subject are sagacious and just. It will, indeed, be well to have, in the end, a record of the unfriendly demonstrations and proceedings of the British government and people towards the United States during their present social disturbance.
I confess, however, that, for my own part, I have not even thought of connecting these unkindnesses into a series for ultimate review. Impertinence, injustice, dictation, and violence abroad are naturally provoked by divisions which produce imbecility at home, and they are a part of the discipline by which generous, but erring nations, are brought back to unity, harmony, independence, and self-respect.
Besides, I have not failed to see that every wrong this country has been called to endure at the hands of any foreign power has been a natural, if not a logical, consequence of the first grave error which that power committed in conceding to an insurrection, which would otherwise have been ephemeral, the rights of a public belligerent. It has seemed, therefore, to be wise, as well as more dignified, to urge the retrogression upon that false step, rather than to elaborate complaints of the injuries which have followed it.
I shall not, in any case, be willing to assume as true the public interpretation of the proceedings of the government which imputes their origin to a sentiment of hostility on the part of the British people. Such a sentiment would be so unworthy of a great nation, and so fatal to all hopes of concert between that nation and our own in advancing the interests of freedom, civilization, and humanity, that I prefer to find the cause of any injustice of which we have to complain in a failure of the British government itself to understand the true character and condition of the unhappy civil strife in which we are engaged.
Earl Russell, in the House of Lords, in the debate to which you have alluded, expressed the belief that this country is large enough for two independent nations, and the hope that this government will assent to a peaceful separation from the insurrectionary States. A very brief sojourn among us, with an observation of our mountains, rivers, and coasts, and some study of our social condition and habits, would be sufficient to satisfy him, on the contrary, that the country is not too large for one such people as this, and that it is and must always be too small for two distinct nations until the people shall have become so demoralized by faction that they are ready to enter the course which leads through continued subdivision to ultimate anarchy. All the British speculations assume that the political elements which have been brought into antagonism here are equal in vigor and endurance. Nothing, however, is more certain than that freedom and slavery are very unequal in these qualities, and that when these diverse elements are eliminated, the former from the cause of sedition, and the latter from the cause of the government, then the government must prevail, sustained as it is by the co-operating sentiments of loyalty, of national pride, interest, ambition, and the permanent love of peace.
These opinions were early communicated to the British government, so far as it was proper to express them in correspondence with a foreign state. That government seems to have acted upon different convictions. The time has probably come for the practical determination of the great issue which has thus been joined. Although the past seventy years of the life of the United States were years of prosperity, yet an unhappy alienation prevailed during all that time between them and Great Britain. I see the United States now resuming their accustomed career by a renewal of the principles [Page 61] on which their existence depends. I doubt not that their future progress will be even more prosperous than the past. Let it be our endeavor to extirpate the seeds of animosity and cultivate relations of friendship with a nation that, however perversely it may seem to act for a time, can really have no interest or ambition permanently conflicting with our own.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.