T. Perronet Thompson to Frederick Douglass, July 31, 1862
CAUSE AND EFFECT.
—
SIR,—It is notorious, that in punning style of our ancestors, "effects defective come by cause." The difference between the man who so far as his own conduct is concerned makes the best of this world, and the multitude who do the contrary, lies chiefly in the knowledge, that as you sow for the most part you must reap. Sometimes the good seed perishes and tares come up but very rarely indeed it is, that men gather figs of thistles.
History is God's horn-book, for teaching wisdom to the simple. It would be curious to see how the history of the world will look, in the eyes of men of the twentieth or twenty first century. When all that was to be made by dishonest wars is eaten, and the dead are buried out of sight, will be the time when things will be reduced to their true value, and a calm judgment be passed upon the thing that was and what it might have been.
When for instance it is found recorded that a deed of shame and folly like the attack in most damnable company on Mexico, could not produce a House of forty members in the Commons, strange will be the meditations of the then tenants of the then tenants of the earth. Their rough conclusion will be, that we were all rogues together; and we shall none of us be there, to put in a plea for ourselves
A word of claptrap from a minister and perhaps a jest will have
It was one of the little [illegible] to deny a minister, as it would be to stint him in his lumps of sugar at breakfast. A force of Englishmen was sent out without justice and come back without honor; but far be it from forty gentlemen of the present build, to wait the hearing.
Posterity on this, seeing the effect, will be apt to ask the cause. And the answer will be, it was because the men who did not think worth while to hear, were not the men to pay. They were in the main, the delegates of another set, to wit of men like themselves.—They more or less held on by the tail of the general plan for employing the military and naval force in dishonest jobs against the weak[.] They were men who laughed in their sleeves at the goodness of the joke, of sending a written order to preserve neutrality for production to parliament, and an apostille in the corner to intimate to the commander of a sloop of war to get fired upon and then proceed to action. The representatives who endured this, will point to a state of trustworthiness, paralleled only by their knowledge, when they applied to themselves to giggle at the notion that the less the nation had expended, the more it had to spend. And this will direct posterity's keen eye, to the facts, by that time perhaps amended, that the representation was to a great extent no representation, but a system of violence, like opening every man's letter at the post office; and that the taxes were levied on the poor and not on the rich by the invention of a rate increasing to an extent which will be held fabulous, in proportion to the cheapness of the class of article consumed.
Take another instance, of the connection between what is done, and what comes of it.
When the southern States of America broke into rebellion and invaded the North in precautionary defense of slavery, you might have been spared the distress and anxiety consequent on the interruption of your supplies, if a minister with a head upon his shoulders would have said to the Northern States, put your rebellion down quick. You have only to appeal to the four millions who are your friends, and the thing is done. Your officers will do it in a fortnight, only let them. Instead of this insulting transmissions by the "Great Ship," and an expedition to Mexico because it was known to be the shabbiest and most keenly felt advantage taken of American's division. Everybody flew out for slavery. Termagant women from Wellington would have sent by the dozen to beat hemp, trained in the domestic pollution which of necessity is in the aggregate inherent in slaveholding families, became the objects of chivalrous admiration. No stone was left unturned, to prevent your consummation. And so you are as you are. When anybody eats thin porridge, remember it was because nobody would go the way that could, and nobody could that would.
One word more, to be received or not, as you see reason. Do not think too lightly of military officers. They have their faults and many. But they are educated to call a post a post, and not run against it with their eyes open. And they put their lives upon the cast; which has considerable effect in sharpening a man's wits. The American generals would have walked out of their distress and yours, in the quickest time practised in the army. But it might not be. There was provision as in the Corporal celebrated in Irish military song who "married a wife to make him unasy."—Nobody doubts the general propriety of the military authority being directed by the civil. But this does not excuse the civil for sacrificing the country to the aspirations of foreign ers to divide. Here too cause will produce effect. Which they who live will see. May it be favorable to you and to our friends.
—
Be of good hope; Fremont and Hunter will save you yet.
Yours sincerely,
T. PERRONET THOMPSON.
Eliot Vale, Blackheath, July 31, 1862.