The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎599v] (89/239)

58
HOW IT STRUCK A CONTEMPORARY.
It was not only in European affairs that the statesmen of this
period showed their ignorance of the future. The American Civil
War was raging, and that also presented an inscrutable problem to
English public men. In the year 1862 Mr. Gladstone had made
his disastrous declaration—for which afterwards he made such
ample reparation—that Jefferson Davis had made a nation. It is
unnecessary to dwell on the notorious fact that English sympathies
were mainly with the South during this struggle; what concerns
us here is that to the most expert observers the cause of the North
looked hopeless at this period, and the disruption of the United
States inevitable. In the autumn of 1862, Lord Russell circulated
a memorandum to the British Cabinet in which he came to the
emphatic conclusion that it had now become a question for the
Great Powers of Europe whether it was not their duty “ to ask
both parties to agree to a suspension of arms for the purpose
of weighing calmly the advantages of peace.” A peaceful separa
tion between North and South seemed to Cornewall Lewis the best
solution for the North, though on other grounds he objected to the
proposed intervention. 1 Lord Palmerston seems to have been torn
between two emotions, one ” a desire for severance as a diminution
of a dangerous Power,” 2 the other a desire ” not to mix ourselves
up with the acknowledgment of slavery.” 3 In those circum
stances he ” prudently held his tongue,” but he, too, appears to
have been of opinion that the cause of the North was desperate.
Some of the enthusiasm for the South was tempered by the fear
that the North, if beaten, would still be “left with a fine army,
which they might use in attempting the conquest of Canada, a
country difficult to defend.” 4 It is unnecessary to multiply quota
tions ; the simple fact that concerns us is that all the estimates of
the situation which found favour in official and unofficial quarters
were disastrously wrong. Prom de Tocqueville’s prediction that
the United States would be a land of moderate fortunes evenly dis
tributed, down to Mr, Gladstone’s assertion that Jefferson Davis
had made a nation, prophecy about America had proved a par
ticularly slippery business.
And finally we come down to quite modern times, and see the
history of the great miscalculation about Germany repeating itself
with astonishing fidelity in the Far East—in the long, skilful, and
determined diplomacy of Japan and her persistent, unobserved
preparations, and in the conviction of Russia that she had only to
march through Manchuria and dictate her own terms at Tokio.
(1) See Morley’s Life of Gladstone. Vol. II., 84.
(2) Ibid., Vol. II., 82. (Mr. Gladstone’s memorandum, written in 1896.)
(3) See TAfe of Lord Palmerston. Vol. II., 405. Letter to Mr. Edward Ellice.
(4) Malmesbury Memoirs. Vol. II., 261.