Russell's Protest Against American Rudeness. The Rise in the Price of Grain. On the Situation in Italy

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This article, except for the passage relating to Garibaldi (p. 232), was first published in English in: Karl Marx, On America and the Civil War, New York, 1972, pp. 213-14. p. 230

London, August 20

Lord John Russell is known as a “letter writer” among the English. In his last missive to Mr. Stuart he complains ol the insults to “Old England” in the North American papers. Et tu, Brute! It is impossible to speak privately with a respectable Englishman who will not throw up his hands in astonishment at this tour de force. It is well known that from 1789 to 1815 English journalism broke all records in its scurrilous hate attacks on the French nation. And yet it has broken its own record this past year by its “malignant brutality” against the United States! A few recent examples may suffice.

“We owe all our moral support,” says The Times, “to our kin” (the Southern slaveholders), “who are fighting so bravely and staunchly for their freedom, against a mixed race of robbers and oppressors.”

To this the New York Evening Post (the Abolitionist organ) remarks:

“Are these English lampoon-writers, these descendants of Britons, Danes, Saxons, Celts, Normans and Dutchmen, of such pure blood that all other peoples are mixed races as compared with them?”

Shortly after the foregoing passage was published, The Times, in bold Garamond type, called President Lincoln “a respectable buffoon”, his cabinet ministers “a gang of rogues and riffraff”, and the army of the United States “an army whose officers are Yankee swindlers and whose privates are German thieves”. And Lord John Russell, not content with the laurels of his epistles to the Bishop of Durham and Sir James Hudson in Turin, dares to speak, in his letter to Stuart, of the “insults of the North American press” to England.

Yet there is a limit to everything. In spite of malignant impertinence and nasty rancour, official England will keep the peace with the “Yankee swindlers” and confine its deep sympathies with the high-minded vendors of human blood in the South to blotting-paper phrases, and isolated smuggling ventures, for a rise in the price of grain is no joke, and any conflict with the Yankees would now add a food famine to the cotton famine.

England has long since ceased to live off its own grain production. In 1857, 1858 and 1859 it imported grain and flour to the amount of 66 million pounds sterling, and in I860, 1861 and 1862 for 118 million pounds sterling. As for the quantity of grain and flour imported, it was 10,278,774 quarters in 1859, 14,484,976 quarters in 1860 and 16,094,914 quarters in 1861. In the last five years alone, therefore, grain imports have risen by 50 per cent.

England is now in fact already satisfying half of its grain requirements with imports. And there is every probability that next year will add at least 30 per cent to this importation, we mean 30 per cent to the cost price, since the very large harvest in the United States will prevent any excessive rise in grain prices.

The extensive reports from all the farming districts that the Mark Lane Express and The Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette have just published virtually prove that the grain harvest of this year will be from 1/4 to 1/5, below the average harvest. Just as after the peace treaty of 1815 Lord Brougham said that England, by its national debt of a thousand million, gave Europe a pledge of “good behaviour”, so this year’s grain deficit gives the United States the best security that England “will not break the Queen’s peace “.

I have been shown a letter from one of Garibaldi’s best friends in Genoa, from which I give some excerpts.

Among other things, it says:

“The last letters of Garibaldi and various officers in his camp arrived here yesterday (August 16). They are dated August 12. All of them breathe the unshakable determination of the general to keep to his programme: ‘Rome or death!’ and contain peremptory orders to this effect to his friends. On the other side, positive orders went out yesterday from Turin to General Cugia to proceed to the ultimate acts of violence, i.e. to attack the volunteers with guns and bayonets and to capture Garibaldi and his friends, if he should refuse to lay down his arms in twenty-four hours. If the troops obey orders, a grave catastrophe is imminent. The decision to resort to extreme measures was taken as the result of a telegram from Paris, whose tenor is: ‘The Emperor will not condescend to negotiation with the Italian Government until Garibaldi is disarmed.’ If Rattazzi had loved his country more than his office, he would have resigned and let Ricasoli or some other less unpopular minister take his place. He would have considered the fact that taking Louis Bonaparte’s side against Italy, instead of Italy’s side against Bonaparte, means endangering the monarchy he professes to serve. If Italian blood is shed at Italian hands in Sicily, that is not Garibaldi’s fault, for his slogan is: ‘Long live the Italian army!’, and the enthusiastic manner in which this army is received everywhere proves what obedience there is to Garibaldi. But, if the army should shed the blood of the volunteers, who would dare to count on quiet tolerance on the part of the people?”