He enjoys a long and independent experience in the
public service; and he thus acquires a power to serve his party, his
country or his section, which is disproportionate even to his
experience. A good deal of the consideration which the South enjoys
abroad, and especially in England, is due to the fact that in the South
a governing class is recognized, which corresponds to the governing
classes wherever an aristocracy or monarchism exists. By a community of
ideas the South commands the sympathy, and enjoys the confidence and
secret support of the enemies of democracy the world over. Through the
political and pecuniary support which the public men of that section
have derived from slavery, they have been able to take and maintain
social positions at Washington, which, by circumstances, were denied to
much the larger number of northern representatives, and thus they have
influenced the politics of this country and the opinions of other
nations. Consider by how many sympathies and interests England is bound
to encourage the policy and promote the fortunes of the South. There is
the sympathy of the governing class in England for the governing class
in the South, even though they are slaveholders; there is the hostility
of the ignorant operatives in their manufacturing towns, who, through
exterior influences, have been led to believe that whatever hardships
they are brought to endure are caused by the desire of the North to
subjugate the South; there is the purpose of English merchants and
manufacturers to cripple, or if possible to destroy the manufactures and
commerce of the North; and, finally, there is the hope of all classes
that by the alienation or separation of the two sections England would
derive additional commercial advantages, and that the scheme of here
establishing a continental republic would be abandoned, never to be
again revived.
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