31 Hertford Street,
February 9, 1861.
My Dearest Mother: . . . I wrote you a long letter of eight pages
yesterday, and then tossed it into the fire, because I found I had been talking
of nothing but American politics. Although this is a subject which, as you may
suppose, occupies my mind almost exclusively for the time being, yet you have
enough of it at home. As before this letter reaches you it will perhaps be
decided whether there is to be civil war, peaceable dissolution, or a patch-up,
it is idle for me to express any opinions on the subject. I do little else but
read American newspapers, and we wait with extreme anxiety to know whether the
pro-slavery party will be able to break up the whole compact at its own
caprice, to seize Washington and prevent by force of arms the inauguration of
Lincoln. That event must necessarily be followed by civil war, I should think.
Otherwise I suppose it may be avoided. But whatever be the result, it is now
proved beyond all possibility of dispute that we never have had a government,
and that the much eulogized Constitution of the United States never was a
constitution at all, for the triumphant secession of the Southern States shows
that we have only had a league or treaty among two or three dozen petty
sovereignties, each of them insignificant in itself, but each having the power
to break up the whole compact at its own caprice. Whether the separation takes
place now, or whether there is a patch-up, there is no escaping the conclusion
that a government proved to be incapable of protecting its own property and the
honor of its own flag is no government at all and may fall to pieces at any
moment. The pretense of a people governing itself, without the need of central force
and a powerful army, is an exploded fallacy which can never be revived. If
there is a compromise now, which seems possible enough, because the Northern
States are likely to give way, as they invariably have done, to the bluster of
the South, it will perhaps be the North which will next try the secession
dodge, when we find ourselves engaged in a war with Spain for the possession of
Cuba, or with England on account of the reopened African slave-trade, either of
which events is in the immediate future.
But I find myself
getting constantly into this maelstrom of American politics and must break off
short.
I send you by this
mail the London “Times” of the 7th of February. You will find there (in the
parliamentary reports) a very interesting speech of Lord John Russell; but it
will be the more interesting to you because it contains a very handsome
compliment to me, and one that is very gratifying. I have not sent you the
different papers in which my book has been reviewed, excepting three
consecutive “Times,” which contain a long article. I suppose that “Littell's
Living Age” reprints most of these notices. And the “Edinburgh,” “Quarterly,”
and “Westminster Reviews” (in each of whose January numbers the work has been
reviewed) are, I know, immediately reprinted. If you will let me know, however,
what notices you have seen, I will send you the others in case you care for
them.
We are going on
rather quietly. We made pleasant country visits at Sidney Herbert's, Lord
Palmerston's, Lady Stanhope's, Lord Ashburton's; but now the country season is
pretty well over, Parliament opened, and the London season begun. I am hard at
work in the State Paper Office every day, but it will be a good while before I
can get to writing again.
I am most affectionately your son,
J. L. M.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume
2, p. 110-2
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