Mr. Sanford to Mr. Seward.
Sir: The King, who is restored to tolerable health, made his entry into Brussels yesterday, on the occasion of the national fetes, and was enthusiastically received by all classes of the people.
I duly received your despatch No. 62, and communicated its contents to M. Rogier yesterday—saying that I desired to keep him advised of the views of the government in the various phases of the crisis which the country was passing through. He expressed his hopes that an arrangement could be made now—he thought we would have to end by making one. I replied, I knew of no possible one on a basis of a division of the Union. He remarked upon the strength and military spirit shown by the rebels I replied that they fought well; they were our own race; that the men were fighting from a mistaken sense of loyalty, with the idea inculcated by their leaders that they were resisting invasion and threatened servile insurrection, and they were developing rapidly into a military people. It might be a source of reflection to European powers, who had encouraged these rebels at the outset, that they had contributed towards building up a military power that would, if the rebellion succeeded, be likely to cause them trouble. That the idea of the getters-up of the rebellion was to form a great military aristocracy, based upon slavery, which would make the whites all fighting men, and to extend the area of slavery over Mexico, Central America, and Cuba, on a grand filibustering scale, and, holding a vast territory and the monopoly of cotton, to pursue the same wilful, reckless career for power and conquest which had characterized their efforts, made powerless, however, by the north for years past; that the idea entertained by many of a great profitable trade with the south would be found illusive—a population composed of slaves, who would require nothing from Europe, of a poor and numerous class of whites devoted to agriculture and with few and simple wants, and a comparatively few wealthy slaveholders, would never require large amounts of transatlantic manufactures, compared with the northern States, which for years past had consumed nine-tenths of the foreign importations of the whole country. M. Rogier remarked that, whatever might occur, he thought the cotton monopoly of the south was at an end forever.
An international congress for the promotion of social science, which has been in session here for four days, has closed to-day. It was proposed, I believe by some of the English members, to make our war and the project of an address to the American people a subject of discussion at the general meeting of the congress to-day. The possibility of an amendment touching the revolt in India, or the opium war in China, or some other equally appropriate subject for discussion by the congress for the promotion of social science, perhaps, may have prevented the carrying out of the plan of the English philanthropists, who have, however, called a meeting at one of the hotels here, of such of the members as are so disposed, for the discussion of a proposed address to the American people. The address will probably be found to contain the ideas of a class of Englishmen whose interests and whose policy are for the dismemberment of the Union.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State.