ת gunboats on the James river, is assumed as altering altogether the face of things; and the future of the war is now looked upon as a sort of dissolving view. The glass is reversed, and the end, they say, seems more remote than at the beginning. In this condition of things the rumors of recent conferences thicken, and it is said that a strenuous effort is now being made to induce England and France to intervene, in some form, in our affairs. Those who are hostile to the interests of the United States care little in what form this intervention comes. They believe that, should England and France tender mediation or otherwise, and the same be rejected by our government, (as they well know it would be,) these governments could not then stop; that the cotton interests, backed by the national pride of both countries, would urge them first into a recognition of southern independence, and then into an active intervention, if need be, to stop the war. It is seen, too, by those who are unfriendly to the Union of our States, that should success attend our arms in one or two more battles, it would be too late to tender aid to the south; that their condition would not even afford a fair pretext for interference. They do not mean the opportunity shall pass if they can prevent it. What success will attend their efforts I do not know. * I should not attach much importance to these rumors, however well ac credited they seem to be, were it not for the exceeding pressure which exists for want of cotten, and the growing fear that the opening of ports merely will not supply that want. Any hostile interference on the part of France would be much in conflict with the tone of feeling in which she has heretofore and at all times expressed herself. In addition, I do not see how she can suppose that her interference would tend to facilitate the procurement of cotton, which she so much needs. I can scarcely believe that anything effective will be attempted until the consequences of the opening of our ports have been realized; as yet no time has been given. I get communications from our consuls in different quarters to know what is excluded from our opened ports under the head of "contraband of war." Mr. Chase's circular, as printed in certain New York papers, excludes "all liquors." This would embrace ordinary French and other wines, the sole exports of Bordeaux and other towns. Can this have been the intention of the government? I am, sir, your very obedient servant, His Excellency WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, &c., &c., &c. WM. L. DAYTON. Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward. No. 161.] The cause of the Archduke Maximilian has literally no support among the French, and but for national pride the expedition itself would be almost universally condemned. Instead of the Emperor availing himself of the services of General Almonte in Mexico, it is getting to be believed that Almonte has availed himself of the services of the Emperor. He has persuaded his Majesty to believe that his presence and influence there would at once revolutionize the country. The whole expedition now resolves itself, as the Mexican consul here believes, into a question whether Almonte can or cannot, with the aid of French influence, be placed, by election, at the head of the government. On this subject, I beg to communicate a fact which may or may not be new to you, but which will, at all events, much 'complicate the above question. General Santa Anna, who, notwithstanding his character, I am told, more support and followers in Mexico than Almonte, has gonor is about to go, from St. Thomas to Vera Cruz with a view to present himself as a candidate for the presidency, or dictatorship, against Almonte. The latter, aided by French influence, may succeed in the election which is to be gotten up, but it is very evident that Santa Anna's presence will give trouble to Almonte, and may much embarrass the plans of all parties. The above information comes from one General Wall, who himself is upon the point of leaving (if he has not already left) for Mexico, to take part in current events, on which side I know not. He was himself an old aide-de-camp of Santa Anna's, and Santa Anna wrote to him that his purpose was as above stated. As yet, I have learned nothing as to the action of the Count Señor Don Felipe Neré del Barrie, the minister of Guatemala accredited to Spain. He did not go directly to Madrid, but left Paris for Rome, where he now is or lately was. I am, sir, your very obedient servant, SIR: An absence of eight days from the capital has worked an interruption of our correspondence. Your despatch of May 26 (No. 151) has been received. It directs my attention to an article in the Constitutionnel, in which the writer declares that the doubts of the restoration of the Union which he entertained before the capture of New Orleans have not been removed or modified by that striking event. The journal is understood to have a semi-official character, and the opinion which it thus announces is, you think, the same which is entertained by many of the statesmen of France, including the Emperor himself. The publication thus referred to has not passed unobserved in this country. I can hardly believe that the Emperor, whose influence is so great, whose principles have been understood to be so liberal, and whose sagacity is so generally acknowledged, is sceptical concerning the prospects and destiny of our country. If he is so, I am satisfied that he must have other reasons for his distrust than those which the writer in the Constitutionnel assigns, which are simply an imagined similarity between the present disturbance. and the American revolution. This is a struggle of factious leaders in the south to build up a political empire on the foundation of human slavery, in opposition to the sentiments and sympathies of all mankind, without any foreign aid but such toleration as they can wring from foreign states by destroying the materials for their manufactures. The American revolution of 1776 was an organization upon principles of liberty and humanity, long cultivated in the schools of Europe, as well as in the hearts of the people of America, and was the inauguration of a new and beneficent system of civil government, ultimately sanctioned by alliances of the revolutionists with Spain and France, and expected to be acceptable to and to be adopted by all mankind However the fact may be, we here have no difficulty in finding an explana of the incredulity of European statesmen. When our domestic tro arose those politicians formed their opinions of the probable conclusion judging us by European, not American, standards, and under the influence of European, not American, interests and sentiments. Republicanism and federalism are, to European statesmen, if not unintel ligible, at least impracticable, principles; and durable power on the American continent is, in their esteem, a mere chimera. To them monarchy seems, if not the most beneficent system of government which could be devised, at least the only one which could assure the preservation of national sovereignty, and guarantee public tranquillity and peace. The experience of mankind has not controverted these opinions, so unfavorable to our new system of federal self-government. True, the success of the system itself for seventy years has vindicated it, but the experiment has all the while seemed to require a longer trial in a much wider field. The civil war seemed to Europeans to come seasonably to prove that trial itself a failure, while in the Spanish American republics the working of a similar system has inspired no hopes of its ultimate success. Nor is it to be forgotten that Europeans have not habitually contemplated America as a theatre for the development of society under new and specially adapted constitutions of government. On the other hand, material interests, where they are fixed and strong, affect, if they do not determine, the lights in which nations regard each other. For the last thirty years European nations have regarded America as a continent chiefly appointed to produce supplies of materials and provisions for their manufacturers and to consume their productions, and habit has reconciled us to that apparently merely commercial relation. The insurrection disturbed and threatened to subvert it. It is not strange that European statesmen thought that the United States ought to fall into dissolution, and, indeed, assumed that they had fallen into that condition, on the first organized outbreak of faction. For a time we seemed, at least, to be about to acquiesce in that calamity. We hesitated and examined and disputed, and it certainly was not until after due consideration that the American people, as a mass, announced the conviction that the Union could be maintained, and the determination to maintain it at whatever of cost and sacrifices the occasion should require. Our refusal for a whole year to accept the fate which European statesmen considered not only inevitable but beneficent to us, as well as benevolent to their own countries, has been regarded as simply contumacious. They reluctantly consented to await a trial on our part of an attempt to suppress the insurrection, which attempt they felt so well assured would fail. But, encouraged by our seeming delay, they have hardly concealed their assumption of a right, and even a duty, to arbitrate between the government and its domestic enemies, and so they have measured the period they could allow us for the important trial, and even prescribed the amount of force which the government might exercise in selfdefence. It is not strange that the limits thus prescribed were adopted with reference not to our needs or our rights under the law of nations, but to the supposed interests and wants of Europe. Deference to these limits was expected under the fear, if not under menaces, of intervention, to decide a dispute already pronounced unreasonable on our part, and intolerably inconvenient to foreign nations. It is freely confessed that these assumptions have caused us much embarrassment. They have encouraged the enemies, and tended to divide and dispirit the friends, of the Union. It was obvious from the first that this government wanted what every government in such cases, and especially a federal republican government, without experience of war and with all its political and social forces energetically at work in the occupation of peace, must need, namely, timetime to reflect, to survey, to prepare, to organize and direct, a defensive civil war. Happily, that time was gained, and the work of restoration was begun; and it has been prosecuted to the point which assures a complete triumph. The crisis of the country has thus been passed. We have thought it our policy and our duty to inform foreign states at every stage of the affair fully, frankly, and candidly, so that they have understood or might have understood the nature and causes of the contest, the purposes of the government, and its manner of executing them, and might be as well prepared as ourselves for the conclusion which is at hand. It is by no fault of ours, nor is it more our misfortune than it is theirs, if they do not understand that the United States are no unorganized or blind popular mass, surged by the voice of demagogues, nor yet a confederacy of discordant States, bound by a flaxen bond which any one of them can sever at its caprice; but that they constitute a homogeneous, enlightened nation, virtuous and brave, inspired by lofty sentiments to achieve a destiny for itself that shall, by its influence and example, be beneficent to mankind. This nation is conscious that it possesses a government the most indestructible that has ever been reared among men, because its foundations are laid in common political, commercial, and social necessities, as broad as its domain, while the machinery of that government is kept in vigorous and constant activity, because the power which moves it is perenially derived from the suffrages of a free, happy, and grateful people. It is not our fault, nor do we alone suffer in the misfortune, if foreign states are unable to see, at this moment, that through the pains and perils of a civil strife which we long strove to avert, and which we have not suf fered to degenerate into a social, much less a servile, war, we are successfully readjusting a single disturbing element so as to bring it back again into subordination and harmony with the normal and effective political forces of the republic. It is the fault of foreign states more than it is our own if they do not now see that we have already so far suppressed the revolution that it can no longer interfere with their rights or even their interests, and so can give no stranger any cause, or even any pretext, for interfering, much less any excuse for lending moral aid or sympathy to an insurrection every day of whose continuance is a prolongation of misfortunes which are felt not only here but throughout the world. Time is needful for the eradication of prejudice, and experiments, however successful, must be continued until truth is not only firmly established, but is accepted by the general judgment of mankind. Our responsibilities having ended, we are therefore content that foreign states shall take time to weigh and accept the results of the military, social, and political events which occur here, with all the deliberation which their remoteness from the scene and their long-cherished prejudices shall render necessary. In three-fourths of the territory over which our Constitution has been extended the federal authority has never been disturbed, and has been peacefully maintained. Throughout the half of the other fourth it is maintained successfully by military power, while at the same time the opposing political authority which has been attempted to be set up there is daily losing ground, vigor, and vitality. The American people must, and they will, have some system of self-gov ernment. The popular passions which faction, in an unhappy moment, succeeded in raising and directing against the government of the Union, are subsiding, and within a year from this time the attempt thus made to overthrow the most beneficent system of government which the world has seen, and the only one which is adapted to this continent, while it holds out hopes of progress to all other nations, will be remembered only as a calamity to be deplored, and a crime never again to be repeated. I am, sir, your obedient servant, SIR: Your despatch of June 2 (No. 154) has been received. While the President regrets that, in your opinion, there is no immediate prospect of success in inducing the government of France to rescind the declaration of neutrality which it adopted last year, he does not at all doubt the fidelity and earnestness with which you have presented the subject; and he has intended to leave, as he still leaves, the prosecution of that object to your own discretion, in which he reposes the utmost confidence. A change of position by the maritime powers is, in his judgment, essential to an early and complete restoration of commerce between this country and Europe. But the interest of those powers in that restoration is now fully as great as our own. Having submitted our convictions with frankness, and enforced them with arguments derived from a full knowledge of the condition of things in this country, we can now cheerfully leave the subject to the consideration of parties so deeply interested. It is proper, however, that you should understand that the British and French governments do not at all hesitate to suggest to us continual modifications of a blockade, unquestionably lawful in all respects, with a view to facilitate their acquisition of cotton, while the concessions already made seem to the President to entitle us to the exercise of some reciprocal liberality on their part. I am, sir, your obedient servant, Hon. WILLIAM L. DAYTON, &c., &c., &c. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. No. 170.] Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, June 21, 1862. SIR: Your despatch of June 5 (No. 156) was received. Since it was written the events in Mexico have taken a new direction. It is not the President's purpose to charge you at present with any communication to the French government concerning them. But it is only prudent to keep you advised of the condition of our affairs there, and of our views of current transactions. France has a right to make war against Mexico, and to determine for |