Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.
Sir: During the last year a very elaborate effort has been made to organize and concentrate public opinion in this country in favor of some form of intervention in the struggle in America. The shape which it finally took was the circulation by a self-constituted association of petitions to Parliament in favor of a movement to bring about a cessation of bloodshed.
The motion proposed by Mr. Lindsay in the House of Commons, of which I have made mention heretofore, was the object on which the results of these combined operations upon the people were to be brought to bear.
I now transmit to you a copy of the Observer of Sunday, the 17th instant, containing a report of the interview between a deputation of this society and the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, which took place on the day before. I also send a copy of the London Times of Monday, the 18th instant, which contains a leader on the subject, evidently prompted.
The sum of the matter is, that the whole movement has come to nothing. Circumstances had not been so favorable as had been hoped. I am not sure that the advance of the rebels, of which we are just getting the intelligence, was not partly designed to support it. If so, it has come a little too late. The [Page 223] whole drift of the great debate which secured the continuance of the ministry in their places was to confirm their action in the only part of their foreign policy which has not been attacked.
Thus ends the fourth session of Parliament since the commencement of hostilities in America. Considering the notorious and now undisguised desire of the great majority to see effected the disruption, of the United States, sustained and encouraged as it has been by the partial success, in resistance, of the rebels, I cannot but feel that this issue is one upon which we may congratulate ourselves. In all essential particulars the rebel position in Europe has gained no strength from time. Its audacious attempts to organize a navy in this kingdom, which, at one moment, received the flattering applause of Mr. Gladstone as an accomplished fact, have utterly failed. Its intrigues ramified all over the continent of Europe through agents and presses suborned to circulate the most unscrupulous misrepresentations of the truth, have availed them little. Even the jealousy and fear of the growth of the United States, which is the true foundation of all the sympathy with them that is to be found among the influential classes of Europe, have been effective only in blunting to a partial extent the moral sensibilities, that would otherwise have been deeply shocked at the announcement of an attempt, in the nineteenth century, by a portion of one race, to found a new government upon the absolute permanent subjection, so far as human power may avail, of another portion of their fellow-men.
Such being the actual condition of things on this side of the water, the field seems to remain open in America for the completion of the work we have in hand. The original scheme of a slaveholding oligarchy over the entire region in which slavery was recognized by law in America has proved visionary. In its present impaired and mutilated condition, it can now be entertained only in connexion with the comparatively limited region within four or five States remaining under military subjection. It is most earnestly to be wished that the ensuing year, in putting an end to all further hopes of its practicability, even in that remnant, will at the same time close all further motive for continuing the deplorable struggle.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.