France
did not recognize the United States of America till some, I think, six
years, five certainly, after the beginning of the War of Independence,
and even then it was received as a declaration of war by the English
Government. I want to know who they are who speak eagerly in favour of
England becoming the ally and friend of this great conspiracy against
human nature.
Now I should have no kind of objection to recognize a country because it
was a country that held slaves--to recognize the United States, or to be
in amity with it. The question of slavery there, and in Cuba and in
Brazil, is, as far as respects the present generation, an accident, and
it would be unreasonable that we should object to trade with and have
political relations with a country, merely because it happened to have
within its borders the institution of slavery, hateful as that
institution is. But in this case it is a new State intending to set
itself up on the sole basis of slavery. Slavery is blasphemously
declared to be its chief corner-stone.
I have heard that there are, in this country, ministers of state who are
in favour of the South; that there are members of the aristocracy who
are terrified at the shadow of the Great Republic; that there are rich
men on our commercial exchanges, depraved, it may be, by their riches,
and thriving unwholesomely within the atmosphere of a privileged class;
that there are conductors of the public press who would barter the
rights of millions of their fellow-creatures that they might bask in the
smiles of the great.
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