London, September 14, 1861
Your last letter containing principally suggestions on the cotton matter, reached me this week. Also a bundle of newspapers. At present I am busy in another direction, so that I can’t yet take up the subject you recommend, but when my immediate bubbles have burst, or have expanded brilliantly, I mean to see what I can do here. Yet I confess I do not promise myself much from the effort. The main principles which you aim at demonstrating, that the American monopoly of cotton is in fact a curse both to America and to Great Britain, and its destruction might be made the cause of infinite blessings to the whole range of countries under the torrid zone, this principle is and has always been an axiom here. It needs no proof, for the cotton-merchants themselves are the most earnest in asserting it. The real difficulty with regard to cotton does not lie there. It is never the hope of a future good, however great, that actuates people, when they have immediate evils such as this want of cotton will produce right before their eyes. Nor should I answer any real question by proving that in two years the world will be infinitely benefitted by our war, when what they alone ask is whether meanwhile England will not be ruined. My own belief is that she will be ruined. This next winter will, I fear, be a dreadful one in this country in any case, nor will it be bettered if they make war on us. It is not as if the cotton manufacture alone suffered, but the tariff and the war have between them cut off the whole American trade, export and import, and the consequence has been a very bad season, with a prospect of frightful pressure in the winter. Whole counties will have to be supported by subscription.
This is my idea of the real cotton problem in this country. I have no doubt that the suffering interests will make a violent push to solve it by urging the Government to attack our blockade. But that is merely the last struggle of a drowning man. The Government will not do it, I think, and most Englishmen speak of the idea as preposterous. If they did, it would only complicate matters still more and I doubt whether even then they got their cotton. The winter over, the new era will dawn on us; that cursed monopoly will be broken and with it the whole power of the South; the slave-trade will then be ended and slavery with it, for the negro will be of no use; and we may expect sunnier days and renewed prosperity. This is the only view that I could advocate, and this, a generally acknowledged truth, is at best but small comfort to a starving people.
Meanwhile we are getting on in these parts. Lord Russell has just answered the Chief’s Note, by refusing to dismiss Bunch; acknowledging that he acted under instructions; justifying the step as one which implied nothing and in which even pirates might be admitted to join (i.e. the neutral flag matter); accepting the responsibility for its acts and the consequences; but at the same time declaring that the Ministry has no present intention of recognizing the Southerners, or of leaving their old position.
Of course Seward will revoke Bunch’s exequatur, but that need make no trouble. But it is by no means so clear what also may result from this. By a pure accident it was discovered that the British Government were secretly entering into connections with the insurgents, and they are now compelled to acknowledge that they have really been acting behind our backs. This is no pleasant acknowledgment to make, for evidently secrecy was their object, and the implication is direct against their good faith. They feel that they have been found out, and this for an Englishman is anything but pleasant. The affair will hardly end here.
I have been lately hunting up the newspapers. The other day I called on the editors of the Spectator and had a long talk with them. I mean to call on or write to Hughes, the Tom Brown man, who has vigorously taken our side. The Star too we are in with. Miss Martineau writes for the News and she is an invalid, not to be seen. I may very likely myself turn up some of these days in the lists. . . .