HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1862.
THE FRENCH PROPOSAL TO
MEDIATE.
MONSIEUR DROUYN DE L'HUYS, the new French Minister of State, appears to have inaugurated his accession to power by a proposal addressed to the British and Russian Governments, to the effect that they should mediate in our war. We are not yet in possession of the precise terms of the proposal. But we gather from
Earl Russell's reply that the French Government, anxious to avert further effusion of blood, and further sufferings by the working-classes in Europe, proposed to the British and Russian Governments that they should jointly tender their good offices as mediators to the Government at
Washington, and simultaneously to the insurgents at Richmond, with a view to ascertain whether some adjustment of the pending strife could not be discovered. It does not appear that the French offer went beyond this, for Earl Russell in his reply observes that "a refusal from Washington at the present time would prevent any speedy renewal of the offer of the Government:" from which it may fairly be inferred that it was not proposed to follow up unsuccessful attempts to mediate by armed intervention.
This proposal Great Britain declined to entertain, as appears by a dispatch from Earl Russell dated November 13; for the reason that "there is no ground at the present moment to hope that the Federal Government would accept the proposal suggested." Russia would appear to have simultaneously declined to act upon the French suggestions, though the Czar seems to have promised to support any endeavors which may be made by England and France.
Upon these replies the Moniteur, the official organ of the French Government, remarks that they settle the question of mediation for the present.
We have thus, in any event, a further breathing spell, during which, if we are alive to the emergency, and true to ourselves, we may do enough toward the suppression of the rebellion to secure another and a final adjournment of the mediation scheme.
For our part we have never regarded the foreign intervention bugbear with much concern, nor do we now. Diplomatic offers to mediate will possess no more practical importance than the speeches of Mr. John Van Buren to our "wayward sisters." The only thing we have ever had to fear is actual armed intervention with armies and fleets; and that, at the present time, would be at least as perilous to the nations intervening as to ourselves. Our navy is rapidly assuming proportions, both in regard to the class and the number of the vessels composing it, which will enable us to cope with the combined navies of Europe. Before any combined European military and naval expedition could be got ready and sent across the Atlantic, there is reason to believe that we shall be in possession of every port where they could effect a landing with a view to ulterior operations. We are in a very different position now from what we were when the
Trent affairoccurred. And though European intervention would of course protract the war, and render our task more severe than it is, it would do at least as much injury to the powers which intervened as to us. If they bombarded Portland, we might bombard Liverpool. If they captured our ships, we should capture theirs. They might try to send the Warrior to "lie broadside to the streets of New York and Hoboken," and she might get there, or not, as the affair turned out. But we know that Farragut could do in the Thames what he did in the Mississippi, and steam up to London Bridge with a fleet of impregnable iron-clads. So of the French. They might do us a vast deal of mischief, no doubt. But if the war began, we fancy that a good many French ports would be demolished before it ended; the tubs baptized
La Gloire and La Normandie would have gone to their last reckoning under the 15-inch shot of our Monitors; and the brave little French army in Mexico would never see la belle France again. Would the game be worth the candle in either case? We think not, and therefore we have never believed in foreign armed intervention. Both England and France know too well what war costs to rush into it without a well-defined and substantial object.
It has been a great misfortune for this country that the Emperor of the French, who is a fair man and naturally well disposed toward the United States, should have been represented here ever since the war began by Monsieur Mercier—a man heartily hostile to us and to our institutions, and cordially friendly to the rebels and their institutions. So little discretion has this Frenchman possessed that he has never made the least secret of his sympathy with the rebels. He has poured into every ear to which he had access his confident predictions of the success of the rebellion, and his joy at the prospect. He has been the foremost of the rebel sympathizers at Washington in deriding our troops, vilifying our Government, sneering at our generals, and eulogizing our enemies. Not even the knaves who abuse us at so much a column in the London Times have been more malevolent and more basely unjust than this French embassador. Equally forgetful of the traditions of his own country and of the respect he owed to ours, as a foreign minister resident here, he has made himself prominent for two years as an apologist for slavery, a foe to freedom, and an ally of the worst enemies the French ever had. We have reason to know—what can be readily believed—that this man's dispatches to his Government have uniformly accorded with his conversation in society. If the Emperor has relied upon him for information about this country, he may honestly believe that all hopes of the restoration of the Union are ended; that the North is on the eve of exhaustion; that our armies will not fight; that our generals do not know how to lead them; that the South is stronger than ever; that theirs is the cause of justice and right, and ours the cause of wrong and oppression. Some of these representations may have been corrected by Mr. Dayton. But there must still have remained a sufficient number uncorrected to create a bias in the Emperor's mind. We do not believe that the Emperor will ever pursue any policy which may have the effect of introducing into the family of nations a state "based on the corner-stone of human slavery." But we might have enjoyed more active sympathy from our old ally, France, had she not been represented here, at this critical time, by a man equally devoid of political wisdom and moral convictions, and possessing neither the decency to refrain from making his embassy a head-quarters for rebel sympathizers, nor the self-respect to withdraw from a court where he is universally and intensely hated and despised.
For us, this mediation scheme should teach us one lesson, and one only—to hasten the work of putting down the rebellion. There is not an hour to be lost. Every day wasted by
Burnside,
Rosecrans,
Grant,
McClernand, Banks,
Porter,
Farragut, and
Dupont increases the danger of foreign troubles. If the winter passes without very substantial gains by the Union arms, the suffering poor of Europe, the hostile aristocrats of England, and the rebel sympathizers in France will revive the mediation scheme in the spring, perhaps in a more menacing shape than it has yet assumed. The present is ours: let us use it. The future is in the hands of Fate.
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