THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA—MONARCHAL LONGINGS OF THE SECESSIONISTS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1620, 24 September 1861, Page 4

THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA—MONARCHAL LONGINGS OF THE SECESSIONISTS.

[From a Letter in the Times, by its Special Correspond errifW. H. Russell.]

Nothing I could say can be worth one fact which has forced itself upon my mind in reference to the sentiments which prevail among the gentlemen of this State. I have been among them for several days. I have visited their plantations, I have conversed with them freely and fully, and I have enjoyed that frank, courteous, aud graceful intercourse which constitutes an irresistible charm of their society. From all quarters has come to my ears the echoes of the same voice ; it may be feigned, but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength and monotony all over the country. Shades of George 111, of North of Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through the state of Marion, Sutnter, and Pickney, and not clap your ghostly bonds in triumph ? That voice says, "If we could only get one of the Royal race of England to rule over us, we should be oontent." Let there be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire cannot bo gratified. But the admiration (for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a lauded, aristocracy' aud gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride o\ having aohievfld their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians' hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are they who " would go back to-morrow if we could." An intense affection for the British oounexion, a love of British habits and customs, a respect for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and literature, preeminently distinguish the inhabitants of this State, who glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three islands whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they maintain not unfrequently familiar relations, regard with an aversion of which it is impossible to give an idea to one who has not seen its manifestations the people of New England and the populations of the Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of Puritanism. Whatever may be the cause, this is the fact and the effect. " The State of South Carolina was," I am told " founded by gentlemen." It vrai not established by witch buring Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the north the standard of Torquemada, aud breathed into the nostrils of their newly born colonies all of the ferocity, bloodthirstiness, and rabid intolerance of the Inquisition. It is absolutely astound ing to a strauger who aims at the preservation of a deoent neutrality to mark the violence of these opinions. "If that confounded ship had sunk with those — Pilgrim Fathers on board," says one, " we never should have beeu driven to these extremities!"' "We could have got on with the fanatics if they had been either Christians or gentlemen," says another; " for in the first. case they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would have fought when they insulted us; but there are neithei Christians nor gentlemen amoug them I" " Anything on the earth !" exclaims a third, " any form of Government, any tyranny or despotism you will ; but" — and here is an appeal rao're terrible than the adjuration of all the Gods—" nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit to any imiou with the brutal, bigotted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend nor regard the feelings of gentlemen ! Man, woman, and

child, we'll die first.' 1 Imagine these I and an infinite variety of similar sentiments uttered by courtly, well-educated men, who sot great store on a nice observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme bitterness and anger wheji they speak of the North, and you will fail tp conoeive the intensity of the dislike of the South Caroliniaus for the Free States, 0 /There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic which are tolerably strong -and have beeu unfortunately pertinaoiousand longlived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Creek for the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy the Prince of jDar^.ness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among allied Powers and the atoms of composite empires ; but they are all mere indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to.the animosity evinced by " gentry " of Siouth Carolina for the " rabble of the North."

.The contests of Cavalier, and Round-, head, of Vendean and Republican, even of Orangeman and Croppy, have been elegant joustings, regulated by the finest rules of chivalry, compared with those which North, and South will carry on if their deeds support their words. " Immortal hate, the study of revenge " will actuate every blow, and never in the history of the world, perhaps, will go forth such a dreadful vat victis as that which may be heard before the fight has begun. There is nothing in all the dark caves of huraau passion so cruel aud deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been swelling for years till it is the very life blood of the State. I^ ( .has set South Carolina to work steadily to> organise her resources for the struggle which she intended to provoke if it did not come in the course of time. " Incompatibility of temper" would have been sufficient ground for the divorce, and I am satisfied that there has been a deep-rooted design, oonceived 'in some men's minds thirty years ago, and extended gradually year after year to others', to break away from the Union at the very first opportunity. The North is to South Carolian a corrupt and evil thing, to which for long years she has been bound by burning chains, while monopolists and manufacturers fed on her tender limbs. She has been bound in a Maxentian union to the object she loathes. New England is to her the incarnation of moral and political wickedness and social corruption. It is the souroe of everything which South Carolina hates, and of the torrents of free thought and taxed manufactures, of Abolitionism and of Filibustering, which have flooded the land; Believe a Southern man as he believes himself, and you must regard New England and the kindred States as the birthplace of impurity of mind among men and of unchastity in women — the home of Free Love, of Fourierism, of infidelity, of Abolitionism, of false teachings in political economy and in social life ; a land saturated "with the drippings of rotten philosophy, with the poisonous infectious of a fanatio press; without honor or modesty; whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valour and manhood have been swallowed up in a oorrupt, howling demagogy, and in the marts of a dishonest commerce. It is the merchants of New York who fit out ships for the slave trade, and carry it on in Yankee ships. It is the capital of the North which supports, and it is Northern men who concoct and execute, the Filibustering expeditions which have brought discredit on the slave-holding States. In the large cities people are corrupted by itinerant and ignorant lecturers — in the towns and in the country by an unprincipled Press. The populations, indeed, ' know how to read and write, but they don't know how to think, and they are the victims of the wretched impostor on all the 'ologies and 'isms who swarm over the regions, and subsist by lecturing on subjects whioh the innate vices of mankind induce them to accept with eager- j ness, while they assume the garb of philo sophical abstractions to cover their nastiness in deference to a contemptible aud universal hypocrisy.

"Who fills the butchers' shop 9 withlarge blue flies?'' Assuredly the New England demon who has been persecuting the South till its intolerable cruelty and insolence forced her in a spasm of agony, to rend her qhains asuuder. The New Englander must have something to persecuto, and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, and persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented Aboli tionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of his favourite passion. Next to this motive principle is his desire to make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, shabbily. He has acted, on it in all his relations in the South, and has cheated and plundered her in all his dealings by villainous tariffs. If any objects that the South must have been a party to this, because her boast is that her statesmen have ruled the 1 Government of the country, you are told that the South yielded out of pure good nature. Now, however, she will have free trade, and will open the coasting trade to foreign nations, and shut out from it the hated Yankees, who so long monopolised and made their fortunes by it. Under all the varied burdens and miseries to which she was subjeoted, the South held fast to her sheet anchor. South Carolina was the mooring ground in which it found the surest hold. The doctrine of Stale Right was her salvation, and the fieroer the storm raged against her — the more stoutly demagogy, immigrant preponderance, and the blasts of universal suffrage, borne down on her, threatening to B^iep 4way

the $eitedinjtere v ß'sJ of the[ South-fin. lfer rigtit to govern the ' States—the greaterand/the more resolutely she held on her cable. The North . . attFacted " hordes of ignorant German's and Irish," and the sctfm of Europe, whiles the Solith repelled.thera/ T^'e- industry, - ' the capital , of the $North .increased with ••; enormous rapidity, under tfo.e influence of cheap labour and. niSinlufacturinjg^jngflnuity and enterprise, in the vilJages.wbjch , ; swelled into towns, and the towns which became cities, uuder the unenvidus eye of. the South, She, on the contrary, toiled on slowly, clearing forests and-drain-ing swamps to find new cotton-grounds and rice-fields, for the employment of her ' only industry and for the development of her only,, capital— "involuntary labour. 1 ' The tide of immigration waxed stronger, - and by degrees she saw the districts into which she claimed the right to, introduoe^ that capital closed against her, and qco'u4f pied by free labo^. The doctrine; of squatter " sovereignly," and the force of ;**• hostile tariffs, which plaoed a heavy duty on, the very articles which the South most required, completed the measures of iniquities to which she was subjected, and the spirit of discontent found vent in fiery, debate, in personal insults, and in ac'r^Y monious- speaking and writing, which in-? creased in intensity in proportion as ths ; Abolition niovement, and the contest be- ? tweeu the Federal principle and Slater Rights, became more vehement. . I am desirous of shewing in a' few words, Jor., the information of English readers, how . it is that the, Confederacy which Europe knew simply as a political entity has succeeded in dividingitself. The Slave States held the doctrine, or say they did, thateach^ state was as independent as France or as England, but that for certain purposes they chose a common agent to deal with foreign nations, and to impose taxes for the purpose of paying the expenses of the agency. We, it appears, talked of American citizens when there was no such beings at all. There were, indeed citizens, of the sovereign State of South .Carolina, or of Georgia, or Florida, who permitted themselves to pass, under that designation, but it was merely as a. mat-* ter of personal convenience. , It will be difficult for Europeans to understand this doctrine, as nothing like it has been heard before, and no such Confederation of so- . vereign States has ever existed here, and olaim for the Federal Government powers not oompatiable with such assumptions. They have lived for the Union, they served it, they laboured for and made money by it. A man as a New York man was nothing— as an American citizen he was a great deal, A South Carolinian objeoted to lose his identity in any description which included him and a ' Yankee clockmaker/in the same category. The Union was against him j , he remembered that he came from a race of English gentlemen who had been persecuted by the representatives — for be will not call them the ancestors — of the Puritans of New England, and he thought that they were animated by the same hostility to himself. He was proud of old names, and he felt pleasure iv tracing his counexion with old families in the old country. His plantations were held by old charters, or had been in the hands of his fathers for several generation's; arid he delighted to remember that, when the Stuarts were banished from their throne and their country, the burgesses ot South Carolina had solemnly elected the wandering Charles King of their State, and had offered him an asylum and a kingdom. The philosophical historian may exercise his ingenuity in conjeoturing what would have been the result if the fugitive had carried his fortunes to Charleston. South Carolina oohtains 34,000 bquare miles, and a population of 720,000 inhabitants, of whom 385,000 are black slaves. In the old rebellion it was dis- . traded between revolutionary principles and the loyalist predilections, and at least one half of the planters were faithful to George 111., nor did they yield till Washington sent an army to support their antagonists and drove themfrom the colony, i The planters are well-bred, oourtepus, ' and hospitable. A genuiue aristocraoy, they have time to cultivate their minds, to apply themselves to politics and the guidance af public affairs. They travel and read, love field sports, racing,. shooting, hunting, and fishing, are bold horsemen, and good shots, But, after all, their,. State is a modern Sparta— an aristocracy , resting on a helotry, and with nothing else to rest upon. Although they profess {and I believe, indeed, sinoerely) to hold opinions in opposition to the opening of the slave trade, it is, nevertheless, true that the clause in the constitution of the Confederate States which prohibited tha . importation of negroes was especially and energetically resisted by them, beoause, as they say, it seemed to be an admission that slavery was in itself an evil and a wrong. Their whole system rests on ala» very, and as such they defend it. They entertain very exaggerated ideas of the military strength of their little community, although one may do full justioe' to its military spirit. Out of their whole population they cannot reckon more. than 60,000 adult men by any arithmetic, and as there are nearly 30,060 plantations which must be, according to law, super* : intended by white, men, a considerable num.ber of these adults eanuot be ; spared from the State for service ia the °i> e B/ / .'.• field. The -^planters boast that tn^-Wari raise their orops without any inconsf-, nienoe by the labour of their negroes, and they §e'em confident that the negrb^Mili ■ ■. work' without superintendence.", 'BulfXtbe Hj? experiment is, rather daugerous^atiaVit "''■ will only be tried iv the last extremity,, i «

tance. The Airedale started from Otago about half an hour before the Lady Bird, and arrived at Lyttelton at 8 a.m., on the 19bh, 8 hours after that vessel. The Lady Bird sailed from Lyttelton heads on the 20th, at 1 p.m., and made the. passage to Wellington in 21 hours. The news from the Tiupeka diggings is still of a satisfactory character. The | Escort had not arrived on the 18th, at Dunedin but was on its way, and it was reported that it had between 9,000 and 10,000 ounces of gold. A large number of vessels had arrived at Port Chalmers from Melbourne, among which were the s.s. Aldinga, the s.s. City of Hobart, the White Star Liner, Ocean Chief, Arabia, Anna Kimball, Bella Vesta, Aurifera, Versailles, and a number of others. There were 25 vessels laid on in . Melbourne altogether, amongst which were the Black Ball Liner Lighting, with 800 passengers, and the Giant's- Causeway with 600. The s.s. Oscar had made one trip, and was laid on again ; the Omeo had brought 250 passengers, and was to return with all despatch. The Pirate was hourly expected from Melbourne with a lot of passengers. The small steamers Prince Albert, Pride of the Yarra, Victoria, and Storm Bird were actively engaged in conveying passengers and cargo from Port Chalmers to Dunedin. The Lady Bird has made one trip to Lyttelton, and conveyed 65 passengers, and a numof drays and horses, which were transhipped into the Storm Bird and taken to Dunedin.

The register tonnage of the Lady Bird is 219 tons. She has passenger accommodation for 35 cabin and 58 steerage, or 142 steerage only. She is fitted with direct acting condensing engines, of 72 nominal horse power, and they work very efficiently. She is considered a fast boat, and has, while running between Adelaide and King George's Island, a distance of about 1100 miles, kept up an average speed of between 10 and 11 knots ?n Kour under steara only. Under steam and sail she has run 14 knots an hour. She is an excellent Sea Boat, and her accommodation for passengers are very superior.