Boston, 31 October, 1863.
Your note about Sumner's speech was duly received and has
been used so that it will do good. Being marked private, I could not show it to
Sumner, but I read it to him without giving your name. I have also sent a copy
of its substance to one of our campaign orators who was disposed to pitch into
your government and people too!
Sumner was much disturbed at it, and at other similar
letters; but insists that he was right in telling the truth, and that he thus
best served the interests of Peace. He does not shine in the perceptive
faculties; has eloquence, scholarship, high principle, and many other good
qualities, but he has not the faculty of putting himself in the position of an
opposing party, and conceiving of how things look from a different standpoint
than his own.
Nobody can appreciate the extreme sensitiveness of the
English mind to anything which can, however remotely, be construed into a
threat, unless he has been in the little island within the past year. When to
this honest sensitiveness you add the many causes for taking offense in the
selfishness of certain parties and the prejudice of others who wish to see our
experiment fail, there is an array of dangers against speaking out which will
deter most men from doing so. Sumner claims to be, par excellence, the
friend of Peace and of England, and therefore thinks he can best sound the
alarm when he sees war threatening.
He says that all the arguments you and I use against plain
speaking were used with even more force against speaking the truth against
slavery. It would irritate the South, would hurt our friends, would strengthen
the hands of our enemies, etc., etc., and if he had listened then we should now
be the supporters of a mighty slave empire. There is something in this, but
analogies are not conclusive, and I shall continue to do my best to keep
people's tongues quiet! The more I think and know of the whole subject,
however, the more sure I am that the only safeguard against a war, if not now,
certainly the first time you get into war when we are at peace, is your
prescription, — a radical change of your and our law. I am sure, although I
cannot prove it, that if Mr. Adams's whole correspondence were published you
would see that we accepted the proposal to modify our laws (and yours) although
we had found ours sufficient to protect you up to this time.
But the experience of the doings of the Alabama, etc., has
shown that steam changes the practical effect of the law, and that the right to
sell ships of war, even if sent out honestly for sale, is incompatible with
friendly neutral relations. Moreover, the irritation caused by your privateers
will surely change the practical mode of executing our law.
You will then go to war with us for doing precisely what
your government have done, — unless you abstain from the same motives we do, expediency.
No maritime nation will hereafter see its commerce destroyed and its people
irritated by steamers doing such widespread mischief as any steamer can,
without going to war about it. Hence the need of new treaties modifying the
present construction of the law of nations permitting outfit of vessels adapted
to war purposes, whether bona fide for sale or the property of
belligerents.
You and I know very well how easy it is to pass over a bill
of sale the moment a vessel is three miles from the shore; and that when the
law is once fully established that warships may legally be exported for sale,
the rebels or any other belligerents can get them delivered at convenient
points without the builders or anybody else breaking the letter of the law.
As you told me the day I landed in Liverpool, your law is,
under your practice, radically defective. Ours did well under our practice, but
you can never for a moment count upon our continuing the same practice in the face
of your precedents. You hit the nail on the head when you told me that your law
was worthless for our protection. Accept my assurance that ours will be
worthless for your protection in your next war. Our mutual safety is to change
it, and that promptly, while you are strong and can do it with a good grace,
and while we are still in danger from its defects. It is absurd to say that
your navy would have been much more efficient than ours in catching the
Alabama, etc. All naval ships are loaded down with guns and stores and trash.
Our mercantile warships are better for speed than either your or our warships.
I was only yesterday talking with one of our old clipper
captains whom I got appointed two years ago volunteer lieutenant, and who has a
merchant steamer bought and armed by government. He has been very successful in
catching blockade runners and assures me that the Clyde and other trials of
speed are perfectly illusory. He has taken several vessels that were going
sixteen knots, his ship beating them at ten knots.
It is not the Alabama's or Honda's speed; but the ocean is a
big place, and we shall always have numerous light-built, fast steamers that
can repeat the Alabama feats even with the whole British navy divided between
blockading ports and chasing privateers!
Depend upon it, we can export for sale to any belligerent as
many Alabamas as he can pay for. It is for merchants and statesmen to look
ahead and avert the mutual danger.
With best regards to your father and all your circle.
SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and
Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 2, p. 59-63
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