ABOLITIONIST HUMANITY,

Otago Witness, Issue 620, 16 October 1863, Page 7

ABOLITIONIST HUMANITY,

(From the Saturday Review.) The prominence which Anti-sliwery decla111 ition has taken in tho ponding ileb.)te may be acccp'eJ as an indication that the Federal fi'.lvociitts are near to the cud of their resource 1 !. They haro not hitherto paraded it much in {he Ilcuse of Commons. It has been reserved for tho more congenial atmosphere of platforms an-1 Dissenting pulpits. But as the arguments which relied upon'the certainty of a fapcedy Federal \ictory are beginning to Use their value, even in the eyea of the most invettrate partisans, it has become necessary to fall back upon the more sentimental positions which no news th.it the telegraph can biing will affect, and which would be just as available were Washington captured m they are now. Accordingly, seme very old friends of c ur youth are unking thoir appearance ag.iin. All the stock anti-s\ivery arguments which did such good service half a century ago, and ail" the well-idected anecdote* which procured so much arsiociatio society for j\!i\s P.eecher •SljMvc, are being furbished up for u^e at this cris.s. It must be admitted that, if the i-'iideral-, uf America were Inlf as energetic as tuc l-c-denib of England, mutters would not he 3') 1) <d as they are now on tho banks <,f the Poto-nic. It ia but little service that the English T-inkee cv\ do to the cause which hii brethren over the water have marred by incompetence and corruption 5 but uhat little is in his power h e does with rdl hi ; mi<rht. ITi.>hk-c )lored pictures of the cruelties or slavery m.iy help to defer for a short peii'd tho inevitable" rccogn;t ; on ; and therefore the ctlnrs are laid on with a reckless haiiK Logically, the wicke Iness of slavery is of no more u-s for t':e purpose of proving that the S.mth has made itself an indepondent nation, tlnn the fict that a baby "squints v/onld prove that it had not been born. But as thi--; style of reasoning appears to commend itself to Mr Foster and Mr Bright, it may be worth while to eximine it a little further. In a case of this kind, comparisons, though oclious, aie miterial. When we arc asked to decide against one of two combatants 0:1 the ground of hia peculiar wick^dne-s, it is not out of place to take a brief survey of the moral de<ert3 of the other. If it is open to England to use her discretion in ths matter of recognition as au instrument for favoring one side or the oilier, she is bound to ask which can really show the best title to be considered the champion of humanity. The horrors of which skvery is capable are not to be disguised. Where there is absolute power, there will sometimes be cruelty, and there will often be lawless lust. Such things as we are told of may happen, for the mere pecuniary self-interest of a master is no secure counterpoise to human passion. We wiil not consider the qualifications that may be pleaded. We will not ask how far the anecdotes of the Beecher Stowe type are exceptional ; nor will we open the question whether the Southern slave, on the average, does not pass a happier span of life than the English peasant, or, still more, than his own cousins in Ashantee. We prefer to assume the slavery of the Southern Stites to be as hid as the most reckless worshippers of tho New England democracy have painted it. But the point that the Abolitionists have invited us to consider is whether, making that assumption to the full, the friend of humanity should pray for the success of the Southern or of Northern arms. We all know the extent of the evil that will be the consequence of a Southern triumph. It may be summed up in one word— slavery. • The Confederates desire to impose no despotism upon others of their own race. Except for the purpose of sulf-defence, they seek to destroy no human life, no atom of property, nor to constrain a single white man's will. But their victory undoubtedly involves the perpetuation of slavey from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, until the growth of opinion or the increas3 of population shall have brought it to its natural end. But what would a Northern triumph bring? We have seen, during the last two years ] what a Northerner's idga of waging war fbt- ' empire is. He is not satisfied, as hf modern times invaders have generally been, with conquering armies iv the fitlfl, and exacting contributions from the provinces he overruns His hewc model hag more in it of the Genghis Klein than of the Wellington. He makes war, not to conquer, but to ravage, llie libidinous excesses of Turchiu, the greedy cruelty of Butler, the cool-blooded ferocity o*f AlvNeil, may perhaps ha regarded as the ec-cantriciti-js of very particular villa'ns, though their crimes have called down upon them no chabiFemcut from the philanthropic crusaders qf Washington. But ravage, far beyond the harsh usages of war, has been the in«trum<VAt of warfare practiced by every Federal force, except under General M'Lellau in every port of their va-t field of operations. It is not the vagary of any solitary comma.nc]er. It is part of the system on which they all act They mike a practice of burning down uncletended cities, of destroying for years the fertility of the districts within the r reach, and of destroying all the costliest implements of productive industry. One man burns Jackson in Mississippi. Another hums Jacksonville in Fiorid-i. a third burns Darien in Georgia. A fourth lays a country as large as Scotland under water. A fifth makes a special raid to destroy cotton gins. A sixth— General Blenker—enriches the language with a new word formed out oat of his own name, to express the extreme of barbarous and wanton plunder. The attempt to. block up Charleston Harbor, which has only escaped eternalinfamy by its signal failure, was an effort of ihe same character, and indicated the same spirit. If, therefore, the war only abides by the principles upon which it lias proceeded hitherto, its aim will be to sap the prosperity and impoverish the inhabitants of the Southern States for generations to come. But recent events have lent to it a new color. Repeated defeats have convinced the North that conquest by military succe?3 has become desperate. They have conceived a new hope. Contrasted with that of the South, their supply of men, assuming that the men will fight, is boundkss. They calculate that, comparing their population and their immigration with that which is at the disposal of the South, they can afford to lose such battles as those of Chickahominy, and Cedar Mountain, and Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, year after year, and that their loss can be supplied, while the loss of tha South will be irreparable. In other words, they couut upon the South being in time "exhausted." Gallantly as the men fight, their number is limited, aud they must be killed off at last. At this game of exchanging pieces if the North loses three men to every one loat by the South, the North wins in the long ruu. Such are tho calculations in which with the candour of perfect shamelessness, Yankees on both sides of the Atlantic flre indulging. They hope to conquer the South, not by defeat, but by depopulation. Across the desolation of an exterminating war, across the slaughter of the greater part of the arm-bearing population ol the South, and across the utter ruin which their destruction brings with ifc to wives and children, and all who. a,re dependent on them, the Yankees think they see their way to a restoration of the empire of which they have dreamed. These are the champions of humanity, It is nothing to the purpose that this devilish dream of slaughter is not likely to be fulfilled. The plan of wearing out the South by sending out army after array for $etn to mow down,, is very satisfactory 'to.' $c' Umstian enthusi^s.ts \vlio bid them go. and be lulled, and the. contractors who supply them with the material tada it comfortably; but it less attractive, those whQ are to be mowed

down. The yeomen of Indiana and Ohio, ani Pennsylvania do not sympathise with this new plan of campaigning, and are expressing their discontent in the most effective manner. But the crime of the couception is not the less deep because its execution is impracticable. The bloodthirsty Christians who would butcher two white men that one ne<?ro maybe free will be spared the remorse of seeing their fanatical aspirations gratified ; but they will not thereby shake off the guilt of having conceived a scheme of slaughter unexampled in modern times or of having blasphemously invoked in its behalf the sympathies of humanity and the sanction of a God of peace.