The friends
--The
United States have got no friends on the face of the earth.
They have been running round the universe, has in hand, begging this and that nation to take their part against the
Southern rebels, whom they only outnumber three to one, but the responses thus far have been few and unsatisfactory.
Except the newly invented kingdom of
Italy, which being just admitted into good society, has a parvenu jealousy of all new comers, not a word significant of unfriendliness to the
South has been uttered by any European Government.
Except the riff raff of
European red republicanism and the
Dugald Dalgetty adventurers who serve under any banner for provant and pay, the
United States has no more friends among the
European people than among their Governments.
This is the testimony of their own letter writers from
Paris and
London.
They are perpetually complaining of the unfriendliness to the
North of foreign Governments, and that the foreign press, which expresses the public sentiment of
Europe, almost universally sympathizes with the
Southern rebels.--On their own showing, they have no friends outside their own limits, out instead of whining and howling over the self-evident fact, they ought to sit down, and candidly and solemnly investigate its causes and consequences.
When an individual man had no friends, it is safe, as a general rule, to assume that he has no money, and no means of getting any, and therefore no one cares to cultivate his acquaintance.
He may be as pure as the driven snow, as just as
Aristides, as honorable as
Bayard, but society, as at present constituted, does not perceive much advantage in his friendship, nor any great calamity in his displeasure.
Now the
North, in the eyes of universal Christendom, is at present a bankrupt, with this signal difference from the case of a virtuous individual; that it has become a bankrupt by its own crimes and excesses, that its wealth made it licentious, vicious, and cruel; and that its character has become so corrupt and cowardly that even its wealth could scarcely neutralize its putrefying offensiveness in the nostrils of mankind.
But with neither wealth nor character, neither gain nor godliness, an individual or a nation becomes alike unfit for the society of men or gods, for this world or the next.
The virtuous poor have at least this consolation, that, after a temporary depression in the scale of humanity, they will be admitted hereafter to some better companionship than the Fifth Avenue or the
West End; but vicious poverty has no friends and no comfort in Heaven or earth.
This is the reason the
North is so unpopular.--It produces nothing that anybody wants; it can no longer furnish
Europe with cotton, tobacco and rice; it is looked upon as an impostor and swindler, who has been pretending all along to be the possessor of those staples, when he was the mere factor, employed by the
Southern principal to sell his goods, a confidence by which he has grown rich, and which he is now repaying by trying to break into the house of his indulgent patron cut his throat, excite insurrection among his servants, and give over his dwelling to the flames.
If the
North does not see the turpitude of such conduct, it is the only part of the world which is blind to the glaring iniquity.
The consequences are equally palpable with the causes of the universal odium in which the
North is held.
When a nation excites the detestation of mankind by its vices, and is so weak and devoid of spirit that it can be insulted with impunity, it will not be long before the civilized world chastises it for its offences.
However much a rich sinner may be permitted to outrage the moral sentiment of a community, the virtuous indignation of mankind never pardons such offences in those who are both vicious and poor.
