13 Hyde Park Gate,
Kensington, November 20,1861.
My Dear Mr. Forbes,
— I am going to republish my articles in Reviews; they will form about four
volumes. Among them is one, called “European and American State Confederacies,”
in which I consider whether the American Union be a national union, or a
confederation, whether allegiance be due to the State, or to the Union, and I
decide that it is a national union, and consequently that secession is
rebellion and treason. Pray look at the article: you will find it in the number
for January, 1846. But I admit that the question is one of difficulty, and that
there are great authorities on each side. If my opinion on this legal question
be wrong, if the Union be a mere treaty like the German Bund, every American
owes allegiance to his own State, and if that State secede, he would be guilty
of rebellion and treason if he did not secede too. Now Lord Russell did not
feel competent to decide this difficult legal question — and I think that he
could not decide it. Yet it is for not deciding it at once, and declaring the
seceders rebels, that you have been abusing him and us for three months. I
think that on consideration you will feel that the most certain means of
destroying our sympathy with the North, and turning it towards the South, were
your threats that as soon as you had settled the affair with the South you
would turn on us and punish us, by war, for our want of sympathy.
One thing has tended much to embitter us, your different
treatment of France and of us. The conduct of the two governments has been identical,
but you have been as civil to France as you have been rude to us. Now I happen
to know that the French feeling is with the South. They say that the New
Orleans people are their brethren. They are all friends of slavery, and I have
peculiar reasons for believing that Louis Napoleon proposed to our government
to join him in breaking the blockade. You know that I have access to accurate
sources of intelligence, and you may believe this. My only wish, from the time
that the enormous armies and the military success of the South showed (at least
it so seemed to me) that you might beat, but could not conquer her, has been
for the termination of the contest, and as I think that loans to either party
would tend to prolong it, I own that I hope that none will be made.
We hear little from the South, but the little which we do
hear leads us to think that you are mistaken in believing that there is a
strong Union party there. They seem to be as determined as you are.
Can you tell me anything of our Sault Ste. Marie prospects?
I suppose that the war adjourns all sales.
Ever yours,
N. W. Senior.
SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and
Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 251-2
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