The writer represents the estrangement between the North and Great Britain as occasioned exclusively by Northern faults and shortcomings. The people of this country were, he tells us, originally favorable to the North, and desired its success, but they have been alienated by the unreasonable violence and scurrility of the Northern press. I confess I think this account of the matter at once unfair and superficial; unfair, because it leaves wholly out of sight the provocation given on our side; and superficial, because it does not touch the more fundamental causes of the prevailing feeling. I will say a few words on both these points.

bleness and desirableness of a separation; and this being so, it was not unnatural that the Northern people should see in the declaration of neutrality (however reasonable that measure was in itself)—a foregone conclusion unfavorable to them-a determination on the part of the Government to sustain the views expressed by the press.

To the Editor of the Anti-Slavery Advocate :— MY DEAR SIR: I have read the article in the Leicestershire Mercury, and freely acknowledge the fair and truthful spirit in The writer in the Mercury complains that which it is written; nevertheless, it appears" without waiting to ascertain the grounds to me to be open, both in its reasoning and of international law" on which the English conclusions, to grave exception. Government acted, the Northern people raised a cry of bitter anger. This was, doubtless, very unreasonable, but I think some allowance might be made for a nation in the throes of a great civil contest, by those who here in the midst of prosperity and peace criticise its conduct. Extreme sensitiveness to foreign opinion was, under such circumstances, not unnatural, more especially when it was known that this opinion was a main element in the calculation of the rebelswhen the belief of the South that King Cotton would speedily bring English and French assistance had been loudly proclaimed. England, moreover, had been known as par excellence the law-loving and slavery-hating nation; and if it was natural for the South to count upon the support of England on the score of cotton, it was not less natural— though perhaps somewhat more honorable to both parties-that the North should reckon on the good-will of England when engaged in the task of putting down a rebellion of slaveholders.

It is, perhaps, true that at a very early stage of the business the majority of people in this country, so far as they had formed any opinion on the subject (which was to a very slight extent) were favorable to the North; but, on the other hand, there was always a considerable minority which hailed with eagerness the prospect of a dissolution of the Union; and there was this difference between these two parties, that, while with the former the feeling was languid and found no distinct expression, with the latter it was energetic, and was pronounced with unmistakable emphasis.

The writers of the Times and the Saturday Review, so early as April, 1861, were anything but friendly towards the North, or favorable to a restoration of the Union. I was not then in the habit of seeing the Tory prints, but, judging from the line they have since taken, I cannot doubt that they were still more decidedly anti-Northern. Therefore it is not true, as the writer represents, that the Northern press turned upon us with no other provocation than our declaration of neutrality. Before that declaration had appeared the press of this country had very freely expressed its opinion on the inevita

It should be remembered, also, that the Anti-British feeling of which the Mercury speaks was almost confined, at least in its most violent and scurrilous form, to a few Northern papers which were well known to be pro-slavery and Southern in their politics; a fact, which the leaders of the British press, instead of recognizing and putting clearly before their readers (as the interests of truth required), deliberately and systematically kept out of sight. I would ask those who charge the whole Northern people with unprovoked hostility to Great Britain to reflect on the reception which, less than a twelvemonth before the civil war broke out, had been given to the Prince of Wales by the Northern States-a reception which drew from the Times correspondent the observation that the one sentiment in which Americans were united was that of loyalty to Queen

ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN U. S. AND GREAT BRITAIN.

Victoria. This, however, it was not now convenient to remember. It was resolved that the Union should be broken up; it was necessary for this end that the South should be encouraged and the North brought into odium; and accordingly the papers which were selected and placed before the English people as the true exponents of Northern views were the New York Herald and the Journal of Commerce. Worse than thisputting out of sight the fact that the previous Governments of the United States were composed for a long series of years of Southern men, those who favor the slave party in this country have endeavored (and they have succeeded in their endeavor) to make capital for the South out of the very repugnance and soreness which its own prolonged insolence towards this country had excited, turning against the North that feeling on which it had naturally counted as a bond of amity. For these reasons I think the comments of the Mercury essentially unfair, but I also think them superficial; for does the writer really think that the feeling which prevails in this country on the American contest is sufficiently accounted for by exasperation produced by the sarcasms of the New York Herald and a few more papers? Had I no knowledge whatever of the facts, my opinion of English sense and temper would prevent me for a moment from giving credit to such a notion. If the writer in the Mercury would only read carefully a few of the diatribes in the Times, the Morning Post, the Saturday Review, and, above all, those of the Tory press, I can hardly doubt that he will discover a far deeper chord of sympathy with Southern aims than that which a common hatred could furnish. Mere exasperation at low ribaldry never produced such unflagging energy of captious and trenchant criticism, such a sustained torrent of fierce, unsparing denunciation, as those papers have now for more than a twelvemonth poured forth.

No, the real cause lies deeper than this. It is to be found in the distaste for American institutions which has always inspired an influential portion of English society, but which Mr. Bright's unmerited abuse of the English aristocracy, and equally unmerited eulogy of the model republic, had, just before the American civil war broke out, brought to the point of positive disgust and hatred. It is to be found, again, in the seri

329

ous (though, as I believe, quite unnecessary) apprehension of the growing might of the gigantic Federation; and, lastly, it is (I fear to no inconsiderable extent) to be found in real liking for the social system of the South, or, if this be too strong a statement, at least in preference for it as an alternative to that of the Northern States; for I am by no means of the opinion of the writer in the Mercury, that the sympathy manifested in this country for the South is free from all taint of pro-slavery feeling. If the writer thinks so, let him look to the speeches and publications of Mr. Beresford Hope, to the articles in the Times (and if he wishes for an example, I would refer him to the leader of Friday last denouncing a policy of emancipation), or, still better, to the work of Mr. Spence, a work which has gone through four editions, and has been received with extraordinary approbation. He will find that Mr. Spence, while, in deference to the conventionalities of English society, he pronounces slavery to be wrong, is yet in perfect accord with the most advanced slaveholders as to the grounds on which slavery is maintained. Mr. Spence, for example, holds that white labor is unsuited to Southern climes, that negroes will not work without compulsion, and that as a race they are so essentially inferior to the whites as to be incapable of taking an equal part with them in the business of civil life.

These are the premises of slaveholders all the world over, and if Mr. Spence does not draw from them the slaveholders' conclusion, it is simply because he lives in Liverpool and not in Charleston. These are the views of Mr. Spence, and these views have been accepted, assimilated, and enforced by the leading organs of public opinion in England, with a few noble exceptions. With these facts before me, I am quite unable to concur in the Mercury's absolute acquittal of the English people of any complicity with pro-slavery feeling. The mass of the people are, I believe, still free from it, but the leaders are not, and it is the leaders which determine our policy.

Great as is the length to which my letter has run, I must say a few words more. "The great principle that slavery is per se an evil," says the Mercury, "is with the North, subordinate to the political compact of the Union;" he infers this, and very just

ly, from the conduct of Mr. Lincoln; and |nance a slave confederacy till a nation can concludes that "the last claim which the be formed which is prepared to put down North could fairly urge on the sympathies slavery on principles of pure philanthropy ? of England-its firm resolve to do justice to If so, and if this is what abolitionism the colored men and favor emancipation-it means, the Confederacy may look forward has officially removed." Yet the writer com- to a long tenure of power. The truth is, menced his article by saying that "the elec- the world has not yet reached that point at tion of Mr. Lincoln gave genuine satisfac- which devotion to a high principle is to be tion to this country," because we regarded expected from great masses of men. Engthe event as an indication that a limit was lishmen once, no doubt, paid twenty milto be placed on the further extension of lions down to be rid of slavery; that they slavery. Now, if this was a just ground of would incur a like sacrifice now for the same satisfaction (as the writer seems to hold) I object is what I desire to believe; but there think Mr. Lincoln and the North may fairly is a wide difference between twenty millions ask him what has since occurred in the con- sterling, and a war a l'outrance against the duct of the Federal Government to diminish slave power. To this result the North has the satisfaction which was then felt? Is it been led by industrial, social, and political the abolition of slavery in Columbia, or the causes, and why should we not wish it sucmeasure for its exclusion from the territories, cess? Grant that it is not inspired by phior the slave trade treaty with Great Britain ?lanthropic motives,-it is doing the work of Has anything occurred to show that the philanthropy: it is fighting the battle of civRepublican party are prepared to sanction ilization. At all events, even though it the extension of slavery, and, if not, why should England withdraw her sympathies from the party to which, on the ground assigned, she gave them? But we are told Mr. Lincoln will not declare that" slavery is per se an evil," and proceed at once to legislate on this basis. But the Republican party never made this declaration, never proposed to interfere with slavery in the existing Slave States. They proposed merely to limit slavery-to put down slavery so far as that could be done consistently with maintaining the existing Constitution; that was their position from the start; and if that was a sufficient reason for giving them our moral support at the presidential election, surely, the reasons for this are not diminished when a firm adherence to their principle has drawn upon them the terrible calamity of civil war. In short, it comes to this is the Mercury prepared to counte

should have no higher end in view than the restoration of the national integrity, will it be said that this is not a better ground for our sympathy than the attempt to establish an empire on the corner-stone of slavery?

I agree with the writer that "England as well as America is on her trial," and, as one proud of his connection with England — proud of her history, proud of her literature, proud of her generous and ennobling traditions, proud above all of that purest ray of her glory-that she has been known as the champion of the slave and the terror of the oppressor to the farthest ends of the earth, I deplore in my deepest heart the course which she is now following-a course which I cannot but think must degrade her from the high and conspicuous place among the benefactors of the human race which she has hitherto maintained. Ever yours,

J. E. CAIRNES.

ILLINOIS COTTON.—The experimental cotton | acre, so far as is known, exceeds that of the crop of Illinois is gathering. It is estimated cotton-growing districts further south. The unthat the State will produce twenty thousand bales for export this season. The variety grown is the upland, principally from seed procured in Tennessee. The quality (says a correspondent) is excellent, and the quantity per

certainty of procuring seed in the early part of the season prevented many from planting; but the result of this year's experiment is highly encouraging. Illinois could grow five hundred thousand bales profitably.

From The Spectator. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES V.* If we are disposed to question somewhat unceremoniously the claims of this book, author, translator, and publisher have themselves to blame. It might have been supposed that in a work of such pretensions as The Autobiography of the Emperor Charles V., long lost and unexpectedly recovered, ordinary care would have been taken to inform the reader of the condition, age, and handwriting of the MS. from which it had been derived. It does not profess to be the original traced by the hand of the emperor himself, or his secretary. It is not even supposed to be in the language which Charles himself would have employed, whatever that might have been. All that its discoverer, the Baron de Lettenhove, condescends to tell us, is that in the Imperial Library at Paris he stumbled upon the MS., under the Spanish division, to which it had been consigned by some careless or ignorant librarian, instead of the Portuguese (the language in which it is written), and that a note informs the reader that it was translated from the French original, still remaining at Madrid in the year 1620. At what time, then, was this copy made? Is it a clean copy or a corrected draft? Because the best Portuguese scholar translating at once from a French original-as in this case the author professes to have done-would hardly have accomplished his task without some indications of the conditions under which he was working. He would have blotted out this word or that, he would have changed a phrase here or there, and we should then have had some approximate test as to the accuracy of his assertions. To whom do we owe the title of the book? To the MS., the transcriber, Baron de Lettenhove, Mr. Simpson, the translator, or his publishers? An autobiography it is not in any fair sense of the word. Nor in the letter prefixed to it, and professing to be addressed to Philip II. by the emperor himself, is it called by that

name.

"The history," he says, "is that which I composed in French when we were travelling on the Rhine, and which I finished at Augsberg." "It is not," he adds, "such as

*The Autobiography of the Emperor Charles V., recently discovered in the Portuguese Language by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove. Translated by L. F. Simpson, M.R.S.L.

I could wish it; but God knows I did not do it out of vanity." And then he concludes by saying, "I was on the point of throwing the whole into the fire; but, as I hope, if God gives me life, to arrange this history in served therein, I send it to you, that it may such guise that he shall not find himself ill not run the risk of being lost." To whom, moreover, do we owe the second title, with its ostentatious air of antiquity and its portentous blunder, assigning the death of King Philip, the father of Charles, "whom God have in his glory," to the year 1516, instead

of 1506? This misstatement never issued from the pen of Charles himself; and we should have supposed the Baron de Lettenhove too well acquainted with history to fall into such an inaccuracy. Whether these things be the result of carelessness or design, they do not speak much for the authenticity of a work of such high pretensions, or for that scrupulous attention to minute points of evidence which, both from editor and translator, every reader has a right to expect.

Nor is the internal evidence of the book much more conclusive in its favor. Baron

de Lettenhove, in a somewhat tumid and
lumbering preface, little improved by the
graces of his translator, not only claims for
his discovery an importance which is natu-
ral in all discoverers of long-missing docu-
ments, but he seems to think that hence-

forth all histories of Charles V. are doomed
to silence, and the biographers of the em-
perors, with Robertson at their head, must
be consigned to oblivion. A new light has
dawned, before which all others, be they
stars, gas-lights or candle-lights, must go
out, as before the meridian splendor of these
new-found memoirs. "After having an-
Charles V."-though, by the by, as we
"the Commentaries of
nounced," he says,
have stated already, this is not his announce-
ment, unless Mr. Simpson has taken unwar-
rantable liberties-"there is nothing to be
added to the title. It is just that the voice
of the prince, whom the faithful Quijada
called the greatest man that ever lived or
will live,' should be heard after three centu-
ries of silence, free and unshackled by mur-
murs and contradictors." What this means
we do not very clearly see. "At a later
period history will resume her rights, but
henceforth, before appreciating the political

career of Charles V., it will be necessary to that age had better opportunities than he study his own judgment of it, at a moment for writing an autobiography which would when, the better to interrogate his con- have been profoundly interesting. Even the science, he was preparing voluntarily to re- careless overflowings of his own experience, linquish the most vast power that ever was however hasty or tumultuous, would have known." So far as we can make it out, we made a volume incomparably more enchantdemur as much to the ethics as we do to the ing than any which that or almost any other grammar of this magniloquent sentence. age could have placed before us. No prince, We do not see that history is necessarily past or present, was ever thrust by the force bound to take up the judgment of Charles of circumstances or the advantages of posiV. on his own political doings and misdo- tion into more chequered scenes, or brought ings, or that she would by such a course into contact with men of greater mark and "resume her rights," which Baron de Let- force of character than Charles V.; and that tenhove and his translator, Mr. Simpson, not in a time when the passions of men had seem to imagine have been hitherto unjus- little means of displaying themselves in their tifiably withheld. But even if the historian full vigor, but when every influence was at were so bound, he need be under no great work for good or evil, and all the civilized apprehension on that head, so far as this world, like the minds of men, was convulsed assumed autobiography is concerned. We from one end of it to the other. The last defy the most willing or deferential inquirer of that imperial line, the inheritor of those to find out what that judgment was, or to great traditions which connected him with point out a single new fact in this book, his namesake of the ninth century, and written at the moment when the great em- through him with imperial Rome, gathering peror was preparing "to interrogate his up in himself the lines of kings and queens conscience," which can arrest, reverse, or who had been famous for centuries in Chriseven modify, the judgment which history tendom, connected by blood and alliance has passed already on the political career with every monarch of his time, the chamof Charles V. In this dreary, desolate, pion of the Church against the heretic on "drowthy," uninviting narrative of one hun- one hand and the Turk on the other, imagdred and fifty pages, unilluminated by a sin-ination cannot realize a grander position gle ray of enthusiasm, unrelieved by a passing than that in which Charles found himself, or thought of the matchless revolutions of men one which necessarily brought him into more and times to which its author had been in- immediate contact with all the moving incistrumental, with not one single trait of indi- dents of that most moving age. Historians vidual character, not one poor anecdote, not may have confounded the man with his enone reminiscence of love, friendship, hatred, | vironments, and taken his measure from his pleasure or pain-except it be an exact enu-accidents; they may have too readily thought meration of fits of the gout-what is there that he had achieved a greatness which was, in all these pages, we should be glad to know, that can add any fresh halo to the memory of Charles, which ignorance and detraction have hitherto unjustly eclipsed? History will resume her rights forsooth! Well, if it should, it will be to pronounce Charles V. one of the dullest and dreariest of mankind; not a monarch of brass or bronze, but a monarch of lead, a king of more than Boeotian capacity for imposing on the imagination of posterity.

We admit that we hope, for his credit's sake, that this autobiography is not authentic; that it is nothing more than a few hasty notes or memorials, intended by the emperor, had God given him life, to serve for a larger and juster volume. No man of

in truth, rather thrust upon him than achieved; still, if not a great actor, he was an actor, often the prime and sole actor, in great things; and his correspondence, published and unpublished, shows he was an actor in more things than even written history gives him credit for. No king had ever seen so much as he. Twice in England, frequently in Spain, Germany, France, and Italy, more than once in Rome, in Africa against the Moors, closeted with Wolsey at Bruges, conferring with Francis I. in his prison at Madrid, debating with Luther at Worms, the sole depositary of all Queen Katharine's secrets at the unhappy period of her divorce, the prime adviser of her daughter Mary in her marriage with Philip,