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32X

Sf't^M

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Mxi

ENGLAND AND AMERICA:

A LECTURE,

DELIVEBED BY

GOLDWIN SMITH,

BEFORE THE BOSTON FRATERNITY, DURING HIS RECENT VISIT

TO THE UNITED STATES.

^tpxinUA fxm m *'^t\mi\t pctttMtj."

WITH

AN INTRODUCTION

ADDRESSED, BY THE AUTHOR, TO THE
PRESIDENT OF THE UNION AND EMANCIPATION SOCIETY,

MANCHESTER.

MANCHESTER :
A. IRELAND AND CO., PALL MALL COURT.

1865.

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Oxford, January IG, 1865.

My Dear Sir,

The lecture delivered before the Boston Fraternity,
and published in the Atlantic Montldy, which you propose to
reprint, and which I shall be most happy to see circulated
under your auspices, is obviously the work of one who does
not regard America as a foreign nation, alien to our political
concerns, but as the great colony of England, accidentally and
temporarily estranged from the mother country by the acts of
George III, Mr. Grenville, and Lord North— acts against which
Cha,tham protested and in which the English people had no
share. This view, and the sentiments which correspond to it,
may be erroneous, but they involve no want of loyalty or
affection to our own country.

There are two lines of policy whici- may be pursued towards
the great Anglo-Saxon community on the other side of the
Atlantic. One is to treat it as a natural enemy, and do all
in our power to break it up and destroy its greatness. The
other is to treat it as our natural friend, to show on every
proper occasion and in every way consistent with our honour

IV.

(that honour without which there can be no worthy friendship
on either side), that we are sensible of the tie of blood which
unites us to it, and to divest American greatness of danger to
us by making it our own. The present current of events seems
to show that the line of policy last mentioned, though rejected
by great diplomatists, is likely to prove the more practicable
as well as the more genial of the two. In fact, their geo-
graphical position, the great channels of commerce, such as the
Mississippi and other navigable rivers, which traverse their
territory, and mutual interests too manifest to be disregarded,
added to their common race and language, can scarcely fail to
reunite the inhabitants of Northern America, in the long run,
into one confederation, even though a temporary disruption
should take place. No State has been more loyal to the
Federal Government during this rebellion, or shown its loyalty
in a more effective way, than California ; and the separation
of the West from the East, so confidently predicted here,
seems to observers on the spot improbable in the highest
degree.

The two portions of the Anglo-Saxon race have now been
brought pretty close to the verge of a fratricidal war — for a
fratricidal war it would be, in the literal sense, not perhaps to
our aristocracy, but to that very numerous class of our people
which has kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic, Our
French rivals, I see, are beginning to reckon upon this war as

certain to ensue, and to exult in the prospect of it. And
French imperialists well may exult; for it would be the
greatest blow that the cause of human freedom could possibly
receive.

The influences which impel us towards this disaster on both
sides are too powerful : but on both sides they are alien not
only to the interests, but to the deepest feelings of the great
body of the people, and such as true patriots, actuated not
by love or hatred of any class or order, but by desire of the
general welfare, ought to struggle, and may yet successfully
struggle, to control.

On our side there is the antipathy of our aristocracy and
hierarchy, the feudal and Roman elements of our polity, to
the free institutions of New England — an antipathy so natural,
so inevitable, that it ought to move no resentment, unless it
breaks out into injurious acts, and sacrifices the public welfare
to the interests of a particular order. The slaveowning aristo-
cracy, oppressors of a helpless race, torturers of women, authors
of a slave code which sets Christian sanctity as well as justice
at defiance, would scarcely have received the sympathy of St,
Louis, Bayard, or the Black Prince, much less that of the
good bishops of the Middle Ages. The pedigrees of a great
many of them are not more historic than those of overseers or
sharp Yankee traders. Still they are an aristocracy of a certain
kind ; at all events the government which they are struggling

VI.

to overthrow is a government of the people. Besides this class
antagonism, there is the danger arising from the unpatriotic
cupidity of some of our commercial men, fitters out of priva-
teers for the South, and blockade runners, for whose gains, the
nation, though it has no share in them, may pay in tears and
blood.

Every Anglo-American has at the bottom of his heart some-
thing of a filial feeling towards Old England. But the Irish,
in America, are, with too much reason, our mortal enemies ; and
as they vote together with clanish compactness, they are able to
exercise a very disproportionate influence on the councils of the
State and the conduct of public men. The slaveowners hated
us with equal malignity, though we are now exhorted to take
them to our bosom ; and the Democratic party, of which they
were the chiefs, and the Irish the rank and file, during its long
domination, succeeded in creating a factitious A.nglophobia, in
which almost all politicians and public writers, more or less,
shared or pretended to share, and which, though its cause being-
withdrawn, it will probably soon subside, has not yet ceased to
poison the judgment of the American people.

Profligate joiu-nalists on both sides have laboured to inflame
the mutual animosity; and if the result should be a war, per-
haps the world will begin to moralize upon the irresponsible
agencies which can bring such calamities on nations. Foremost
in virulence on our side, and perhaps unparalleled in disregard

yn.

of truth, has been the wealthiest of English journals, and the
one which most affects the air of a great public instructor, above
the feelings of ordinary partizanship and the passions of the
people. The mischief done by the leading articles has been
equalled, or even exceeded, by that done by the letters of ill
chosen — or perhaps too well chosen — correspondents, who, being
men incapable of observing and recording a great revolution,
have filled their letters with slanderous gossip, collected some-
times in the most discreditable manner, to gratify the lowest
prejudices of their English readers.

The principal point of dangerous contact is Canada; the colo-
nists of which, or a large part of them, have been stimulated by
our Tory press and by the mihtary demonstrations made by the
government on their frontier, into an attitude of irritating
hostility to their neighbours : whence the gathering of Southern
refugees and emissaries in that territory, the Raids, and the
notice now given by the American government of its intention
to place an armed flotilla on the lakes. The Americans have
no wish to annex Canada, the addition of which to their vast
territories would only increase the difficulty of securing a com-
pact nationality, the grand object of their present wishes : but
they of course appreciate it as a battle-field, and they arc exas-
perated at seeing it made a den of bandits and buccaneers.
Nassau is also a great source of ill feeling; for though block-
ade running may be lawful, it is bitter to see a distant power

Vlll.

sheltering on your very coast, beneath the guns of an outlying
fortress, the vessels which sustain and prolong a civil war.
When all this is over, the reason of the English nation will
perhaps begin to reflect on the value of distant dependencies,
which cost us a good deal, yield us nothing, and entangle us in
quarrels.

The effects of war to the Americans will be the ruin of their
finances, which the inexperience of their financiers has already
l>rouglit into a most critical condition ; and which can be restored
only by the>evival of '.heir trade, the opening up of their
internal communications, and the influx of emigrants to con-
vert, by their labour, the dormant resources of the country —
agricultural and mineral — into actual and taxable wealth. As
a consequence of financial ruin, and of the prolongation of mili-
tary government, the constitution will assuredly be brought into
serious peril Canada might be partly overrun : but the
Canadians would be thereby made the deadly enemies of
tlio United States, and the ready instruments of foreign aggres-
sion for a century to come.

As to this countiy, our literary incendiaries are beginning
themselves to see the gravity of the position into which they
have brought us. Our commerce would bo swept from the sea,
!vs that of the Americans has already been. The American
navy now numbers about five hundred vessels, of which a large
proportion, built in the first instance against the blockade-

IX.

runners, are equally adapted for preying on peaceful trade.
The scene of war would be Canada, three thousand miles from
our resources, almost inaccessible during five months in the
year, and commanded by great lakes on which the Americans
can in a very short time put an overwhelming force ; while
the Canadians are destitute of any effective armament, and
would be compelled to throw themselves entirely on our hands.
It is a common notion in this country that we could bombard
the great cities on the American seaboard : but seamen say
and anyone who has seen the approaches to New York and
Boston will readily believe, that this notion is quite unfounded.
A blockade of so extensive a coast, with its ports full of vessels
of war, must be allowed to be utterly hopeless.

The Canadians have already been warned of their fate by
the withdrawal of the troops, which were totally inadequate to
guard the whole frontier, into the fortresses of the Lower
Province ; an intimation that, in the event of a war, the Upper
Province is to be abandoned to the invader.

Such would be the immediate effects to all parties of a war
between England and America. But the immediate effects
would bo as nothing compared with its ultimate effects in
marring the glorious future of the Anglo-Saxon race, and
imperilling the principles of which the members of that race
are now almost the sole depositories in the world. Against
the currents which are drawing us towards this abyss, the pen

of a private writer is as a straw against the rapids of Niagara;
but much may be done by combined action, and not a little
has been done— and it is to be hoped may still be done— by
the association of which you are the head.

I am, my dear sir,

Very faithfully yours,

GOLDWIN SMITH.

The Prcskient of the Manchester Union and
E-mxncii>ation Society, Mancliester.

Iiagara;
a little
ne — by

ENGLAND AND AMEEICA.

PH.

I (AME to America to see and hear, not to lecture. But when I
was invited by the Boston "Fraternity" to lecture in their course,
and permitted to take the relations between England and America
as my sidyect, I did not feel at liberty to decline the invitation.
England is my country. To America, though an alien by birth, I
am, as an English Liberal, no alien in heart. I deeply share the
desire of all my pt)litical friends in England and of the leaders t)f
my party to banish ill-feeling and promote good-will between the
two kindred nations. IMy heart would be cold if that desire were
not increased by the welcome which I have met with hero. More
than once, when called upon to speak (a task little suited to my
habits and powers), 1 have tiied to make it understood that the
feelings of England as a ntition towards you in yoiu" great struggle
had not been truly represented by a i)ortion of our press. Some
of my present hearers may, perhaps, have seen very imperfect
reports of those speeches. I hope to say what I have to say witii
a little more clearness now.

There was between England and America the memory of
ancient (juarrels, which your national pride did not sutler to sleep,
and which sometimes galled a haughty nation little patient of
defeat. In more recent times there had been a number of dis-
putes, the more angry because they were between l)ri'tliren. Tliero
had been disputes a1)out l)oundarics, in which England believed
hcr.self to have been overreached l)y your negotiators, or, what was
still more irritating, to have been overborne because her main
power was not here. There had been disjiutes about the right of
search, in which we had to taste tho bitterness, now not unknown

to you, of those whose sincerity in a good cause is doubted, when,
in fact, they are perfectly sincere. You had alarmed and exas-
perated us by your Ostend manifesto, and your scheme for the
annexation of Cuba. In these discussions some of your statesmen
had shown towards us the spirit which Slavery does not fail to
engender in the domestic tyrant; while, perhaps, some of our
statesmen had been too ready to presume bad intentions and anti-
cipate wrong. In our war with Russia your sympathies had been,
as we supposed, strongly on the Russian side ; and we — even those
among us who least approved the war — had been scandalized at
seeing the American Republic in the arms of a despotism which
had just cnished Hungary, and which stood avowed as the arch-
enemy of liberty in Europe. In the course of that war an English
envoy committed a fault by being privy to recruiting in your ter-
ritories. The fault was acknowledged ;* but the matter v/as pressed
by your government in a temper which we thought showed a
desire to humiliate, and a want of that readiness to accept satis-
faction, when frankly tendered, which renders the reparation of an
unintentional offence easy and painless between men of honour.
These wounds had been inflamed by the unfriendly criticism of
English writers, who visited a new countiy without the spirit of
philosophic inquiry, and who, in collecting materials for the amuse-
ment of their countrymen, sometimes showed themselves a little
wanting in regard for the laws of hospitality, as well as in pene-
tration and in largeness of view.

Yet beneath this outward estrangement there lay in the heart
of England at least a deeper feeling, an appeal to which was never

* On referring to the Blao Book I find that my memory has somewhat deceived
me here. Our government did not formally acknowledge that its envoy had com-
mitted a fault; and it is doubtful whether, legally speaking, he had committed one,
the question turning on the relations between municipal and international law.
But Lord Clarendon wrote a despatch (July 16, 1855), frankly expressing regret if
anything had been done amiss, and giving full assurance for the future, which was
transmitted by Mr. Buchanan to the American government " with much satisfac-
tion," and wiiich ought to have terminated the affair. The controversy was renewed
by Mr. Miircy (September 5, 1865) in the most offensive tone, and with an object
which it is impossible to mistake. — G. 8.

ed, when,
and exas-
e for the
statesmen
ot fail to
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and anti-
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ven those
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;he arch-
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your ter-
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ho wed a
ept satis-
ion of an
• honour,
ticism of
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e amuse-
3 a little
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he heart
as never

it deceived
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onal law.
f regret if
vhich was
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an object

unwelcome, even in quarters where the love of American institu-
tions least prevailed. I will venture to repeat some words from a
lecture addressed a short time before this war to the Universitv of
Oxford, which at that time had amongst its students an English
prince. "The loss of the American colonies," said the lecturer,
speaking of your first revolution, "was perhaps in itself a gain to
both countries. It was a gain, as it emancipated commerce and
gave free course to those reciprocal streams of wealth which a
restrictive policy had forbidden to flow. It was a gain, as it put
an end to an obsolete tutelage, which tended to prevent America
from learning betimes to walk alone, while it gave England the
puerile and somewhat dangerous pleasure of reigning over those
whom she did not and could not govern, but whom she was tempted
to harass and insult. A source of military strength colonies can
scarcely be. You prevent them from forming proper military
establishments of their own, and you drag them into your quarrels
at the price of undertaking their defence. The inauguration of
free-trade Avas in fact the renunciation of the only solid object for
which our ancestors clung to an invidious and perilous supremacy,
and exposed the heart of England by scattering her fleet and
armies over the globe. It was not the loss of the colonies, but the
({uarrel, that was one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest disaster
that ever befell the English race. Who would not give up Blenheim
and Waterloo if only the two Englands could have parted from
each other in kindness and in peace; if our statesmen could have
had the wisdom to say to the Americans, generously and at the
)ight season, 'You are Englishmen, like ourselves; be, for your own
happiness and for our honour, like ourselves, a nation?' But
English statesuvn, with all their greatness, have seldom known
how to anticipate necessity; too often the sentence of history on
their policy has been that it was wise, just, and generous, but too
late. Too often have they waited for the teaching of disaster.
Time will heal this, like other wounds. In signing away his own
empire, George III. did not sign away the empire of Euglish
liberty, of English law, of English literature, of English religion,
of English blood, or of the English tongue. But though the wound
will heal — and that it may heal ought to be the earnest desire of

the whole English name — history can never cancel the fatal pagt
which robs England of half the glory and half the happiness of
being the mother of a great nation." Such, I say, was the language
addressed to Oxford in the full confidence that it wonld be well
received.

And now all these clouds seemed to have fairly passed away
Your reception of the Prince of Wales, the heir and representative
of George III., was a perfect pledge of reconciliation. It showed
that beneath a surface of estrangement there still remained the
strong tie of blood. Englishmen who loved the New England as
Avell as the Old were for the moment happy in the belief that the
two were one again. And, believe me, joy at this complete renewal
of our amity was very deeply and widely felt in England. It
spread far even among the classes which have shown the greatest
want of sympathy for you in the present war.

England has diplomatic connections — she has sometimes diplo-
matic intrigues — with the great powers of Europe. For a real
alliance she must look here. Strong as is the element of aristocrac}-
in her government, there is that in her, nevertheless, which makes
her cordial understandings with military despotisms little better
than smothered hate. With you she may ha^'e a league of the
heart. We are united by blood. We are united by a common
allegiance to the cause of freedom. You may think that English
freedom falls far short of yours. You will allow that it goes beyond
any yet attained by the great European nations, and that to those
nations it has been and still is a light of hoi^e. I see it treated
with contempt here. It is not treated with contempt by Garibaldi.
It is not treated with contempt by the exiles from French despotism,
who are proud to learn the English tongue, and who find in our
land, as they tliink, the great asylum of the free. Let England
and America quarrel, let your weight be cast into the scale
against us, when we struggle with the great conspiracy of absolutist
powers around us, and the hope of freedom in Europe would be
almost quenched. Hampden and Washington in arms against
each other! What could the powers of evil desire more? When
Americans talk lightly of a war with England, one desires to ask
them what they believe the effects of such a war would be on

theii
to n
wish

their own country. How many more American wives do they wish
to make widows ? How many more American children do they
wish to make orphans? Do they deem it wise to put a still greater
strain on the already groaning timbers of the constitution? Do
they think that the suspension of trade and emigration, with the
price of labour rising and the harvests of Illinois excluded from
their market, would help you to cope with the financial difficulties
which fill wnth anxiety every reflecting mind ? Do they think that
four more years of war government would render easy the tremen-
dous work of re-construction? But the interests of the great com-
munity of nations are above the private interests of America or of
England. If war were to break'out between us what would become
of Italy, abandoned without help to her Austrian enemy and her
sinister protector? What would become of the last hopes of liberty
in France ? What woidd become of the world ?

English liberties, imperfect as they may be, — and as an English
Liberal of course thinks they are, — are the source from which your
liberties have flowed, though the river may be more abundant than
the spring. Being in America, I am in England, — not only because
American hospitality makes me feel that I am still in my own
country, but because our institutions are fundamentally the same.
The great foundations of constitutional government, legislative
assemblies, parliamentary representation, personal liberty, self-
taxation, the freedom of the press, allegiance to the law as a power
above individual will, — all these were established, not without
memorable efforts and memorable suffering-p, in the land from
which the fathers of your republic came. You are living under
the Great Charter, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act,
the Libel Act. Perhaps you have not even yet taken from us all
that, if a kindly feeling continues between us, you may find it
desirable to take. England by her eight centuries of constitu-
tional progress has done a great work for you, and the two nations
may yet have a great work to do together for themselves and for
the world. A student of history, knowing how the race has
struggled and stumbled onwards through the ages until now,
cannot believe in the finality and perfection of any set of institu-
tions, not even of yours. This vast electioneering apparatus, with

its strange macliineiy and discordant sounds, in the midst of which
I find myself, — it may be, and I firmly believe it is, better for its
purpose than anything that has gone before it; but is it the crown-
ing effort of mankind ? If our creed — the Liberal creed — be true,
American institutions are a great step in advance of the Old
World ; but they are not a miraculous leap into a political millen-
nium. They are a momentous portion of that continual onward
effort of humanity which it is the highest duty of history to trace ;
but they are not its final consummation. Model republic ! How
many of these models has the course of ages seen broken and flung
disdainfully aside ! You have been able to do great things for the
world because your forefathers did great things for you. The
generation will come which in its turn will inherit the fruits of
your efforts, add to them a little of its own, and in the plenitude
of its self-esteem repay you with ingratitude. The time will come
when the memory of the model republicans of the United States,
as well as that of the narrow parliamentary reformers of England,
will appeal to history, not in vain, to rescue it from the injustice
of posterity, and extend to it the charities of the past.

New-comers among the nations, you desire, like the rest, to
have a history. You seek it in Indian annals, you seek it in
Northern sagas. You fondly surround an old windmill with the
pomp of Scandinavian antiquity, in your anxiety to fill up the void
of your unpeopled past. But you have a real and glorious history,
if you will not reject it, — monuments genuine and majestic, if you
will acknowledge them as your own. Yours are the palaces of the
Plantagenets, — the cathedrals which enshrined our old religion, —
the illustrious hall in which the long line of our great judges reared,
by their decisions, the fabric of our law, — the gray colleges in which
our intellect and science found their earliest home, — ^the graves
where our heroes and sages and poets sleep. It would as ill become
you to cultivate narrow national memories in regard to the past as
it would to cultivate narrow national prejudices at present. You
have come out, as from other relics of barbarism which still oppress
Europe, so from the barbarism of jealous nationality. You are
heirs to all the wealths of the Old World, and must owe gratitude
for a part of your heritage to Germany, France, and Spain, as well

as to England. Still, it is from England that you are sprung ;
from her you brought tlie power of self-government which was the
talisman of colonization and the pledge of your empire here. She
it was, that, having advanced by centuries of effort to the front of
the Old World, became worthy to give birth to the New. From
England you are sprung ; and it is because you are Englishmen
that English freedom, not French or Spanish despotism, is the law
of this continent. From England you are sprung ; and if the choice
were given you among all the nations of the world, which would
you rather choose fur a mother ?

England bore you, and bore you not Avithout a mother's pangs.
For the real hour of your birth was the English Revolution of tlie
seventeenth century, at once the saddest and the noblest period of
English history, — the noblest, whether we look to the greatness
of the principles at stake, or to the grandeur of the actors who
fill the scene. This is not the official version of your origin. The
official version makes you the children of the revolutionary spirit
which was abroad in the eighteenth century and culminated in the
French Revolution. But this robs you of a century and a half of
anti(|uity, and of more than a century and a half of greatness.
Since 1783 you have had a marvellous growth of population and
of wealth, — things not to be spoken of, as cynics have spoken of
them, without tliankfulness, since the added myriads have been
happy, and the wealth has flowed not to a few, but to all. But
before 1783 you had founded, under the name of an English colony,
a community emancipated from feudalism ; you had abolished here
and doomed to general abolition hereditary aristocracy, and that
which is the essential basis of hereditary aristocracy^, primogeniture
in the inheritance of land. You had established, though under
the semblance of dependence on the English crown, a virtual
sovereignty of the people. You had created the system of common
schools, in which the sovereignty of the people has its only safe
foundation. You had proclaimed, after some misgivings and back-
kilidings, the doctrine of liberty of conscience, and released the
Church from her long bondage to the State. All this you had
achieved while you still Avei'e, and gloried in being, a colony of
England. You have done great things, since your quarrel with
11

lil

George III., for the world as avcU as for yourselves. But for the
world, perhaps, you had done greater things before.

lu England the Revolution of the seventeenth century failed.
It failed, at least, as an attempt to establish social equality and
liberty of conscience. The feudal past, with a feudal Europe to
support it, sat too heavy on us to be cast off. By a convulsive
effort we broke loose, for a moment, from the hereditary aristocracy
and the hierarchy. For a moment we placed a popular chief in
])ower, though ^Cromwell was obliged by circumstances, as well as
impelled by his own and)ition, to make himself a king. But when
( 'romwell died before his hour, all was over for many a day with
the party of religious freedom and o. the people. Tlje nation had
gone a little way out of the feudal and hierarchical Egypt ; but the
horrors of the uuknow]i Wilderness, and the memory of the flesh-
pots, overpowered the h<)pe of the Promised Land ; and the people
returned to the rule of Pliaraoh and his priests amidst the bonfires
of tlio Restoration. Something had been gained. Kings became
more careful how they cut the subject's purse ; bishops, how they
clipped the subject's ears. Instead of being carried over by Laud to
Rome, we remained Protestants after a sort, though without liberty
of conscience. Our parliament, such as it was, with a narrow
tVanchise and rotten boroughs, retained its rights ; and in time we
secured the independence of the judges and the integrity of an
aristocratic law. But the great attempt had miscarried. English
society had made a supreme effort to escape from feudalism and
tlie hierarchy into social justice and religious freedom, and that
effort had failed,

Failed in England, but succeeded here. The yoke which in
the mother country we had not strength to throw oft* in the colony
we escaped ; and here, beyond the reach of the Restoration, Milton'.s
vision proved true,^and a free community was founded, though in
a humble and unsuspectcvl form, whicli depended on the life of no
single chief, and lived on when Cromwell died. Milton, when the
uiglit of the Restoration closed on the brief and stormy day of his
party, bated no jot of hope. He was strong in that strength of
conviction which assures spirits like his of the future, however dark
the present may a])pear. But, could he have beheld it, the morning,

})

moving westward in the track uf the Puritan emigiants, had passed
from his hemisphere only to slihie again in this with no fitful ray,
but with a steady Ijrightness which will one day re-illumine the
feudal darkness of the Old World.

The Revolution failed in England. Yd in England the party
of Cromwell and Milton still li\'cs. It still lives ; and in this great
crisis of your fortunes, its heart turns to 3'ou. On your success
ours depends. Now, as in the seventeenth century, the thread of
our fate is twined with the thread of yours. Aii English Liberal
comes here, not only to watch the unfolding of your destiny, but to
read his own.

Even in the Revolution of 1770 Liberal England was on your
side. Chatham was your spokesman, as well as Patrick Henry.
We, too, reckon Washington among our heroes. Perhaps there
may have been an excuse even for the king. The relation of
dependence which you as well as he professed to hohl sacred, anil
which he was bound to maintain, liad long become obsolete. It
was time to break the cord Avliich held the child to its mother ; and
proba])ly there were some on your side, from the tir.st, or nearly
from the first, resolved to break it, — men instinct with the revolu-
tionary spirit, and bent on a R(^public. All parties were in a fjilse
position ; and they could find no way out of it better than civil war.
Good-will, not hatred, is the law of the world ; and seldom can
history — even the history of tlu' oonquerer — look back on the
results of war without regret. England, scarcely guilty of the
offence of her monarch, drank the' cup of shame and disaster to
the dregs. That war ruined tlie French finances, which till then
might have been retrieved, past the hope of redemption, and pre-
cipitated the Revohition which liurlcd France through anarchy into
despotism, and sent Lafayette to a foreign dungeon, and his master
to the block. You came out Aictorious ; Ijut, from the violence of
the rupture, you took a political l)ias not perhaps entirely for good ;
and the necessity of the war blended you, under equivocal condi-
tions, with other colonies of a wholly different origin and character
which then "held persons to service," and are now your half-
<lethroned tyrant, the Skue Power, 'i'his Revolution will lead to
a revision of many things — perhaps to a partial revision of your

Iii

i!,i:

\<h.

Encfland counts Washinj

among

Meantime, let me repe
r heroes.

And now as to the conduct of England towards you in this
civil war. It is of want of sympathy, if of anything, on our part,
not of want of interest, that you have a right to complain. Never,
within my memory, have the hearts of Englishmen been so deeply
moved by any foreign struggle as by tliis civil war, — not even, if I
recollect aright, by the great European earthquake of 1848, I
doubt whether they were more moved by the Indian mutiny or by
our war with Russia. It seemed that history had brought round
again the great crisis of the Thirty Years' War, when all England
throbbed with the mortal struggle waged between the powers of
Liberty and Slaver}'^ on their German battle-field ; for expectation
can scarcely have been more intense when Gustavus and Tilly were
approaching each other at Leipsic than it was when Meade and
Lee were approaching each other at Gett3^sburg. Severed from us
by the Atlantic, while other nations are at our door, you are
still nearer to us than all the world beside.

It is of want of sympathy, not of want of interest, that you
have to complain. And the sympathy which has been withheld
is not that of the whole nation, but that of certain classes, chiefly
of the class ngainst whose political interest you are fighting, and
1 o whom your victory brings eventual defeat. The real origin of
your nation is the key to the present relations between you and
the ditfercnt parties in England. This is the old battle waged
ajjain on a ncAV field. Wo will not talk too much of Puritans and
(Javaliers. The soldiers of the Union are not Puritans, neither
are the planters Cavaliers. But the present civil war is a vast
opisode in the same irrepressible conflict between Aristocracy and
Democracy ; and the heirs of the Cavalier in England sympathise
with your enemies, the heirs of the Puritan with you.

The feeling of our aristocracy, as of all aristocra,cies, is against
you. It does not follow, nor do I believe, that as a body they
would desire or urge their government to do you a wrong, whatever
spirit may be shown by a few of the less honourable or more
violent members of their order. With all their class-sentiments,
they are Englishmen, trained to walk in the paths of English

policy and justice. But that their feelings should bo against you
is not strange. You are fighting, not for the restoration of tlie
Union, not for the emancipation of the negro, but for Democracy
against Aristuci'acy ; and this fact is thoroughly understood l)y
both parties throughout the Old World. As the champions of
Democracy, you may claim, and you receive, the sympathy of the
Democratic party in England and in Europe ; that of the Aristo-
cratic party ymi cannot claim. You must bear it calmly, if the
aristocracies mourn over your victories and triumph over your
defeats. Do the friends of Democra.cy conceal their joy when a
despotism or an oligarchy bites the dust ?

The members of our aristocracy bear you no personal hatred.
An American going among them even now meets with nothing
but personal courtesy and kindness. Under ordinary circumstances
they are not indifferent to your good- will, nor unconscious of the
tie of blood. But to ask them entirely to forget their order would
])e too much. In the success of a commonwealth founded on social
and political equality all aristocracies must read their doom. Not
by arms, but by example, you arc a standing menace to the existence
of political privilege. And the thread of that existence is frail-
Feudal antiquity holds life by a precarious tenure amidst the revo-
lutionary tendencies of this modern world. It has gone hard with
the aristocracies throughout Europe of late years, though the
French Emperor, as the head of the Reaction, may create a mock
nobility round his upstart throne. The Roman aristocracy was an
aristocracy of arms and law. The feudal aristocracy of the Middle;
Ages was an aristocracy of arms and in some measure of law ; it
served the cause of political progress in its hour and after its kind ;
it confronted tyrannical kings when the people were as yet too
weak to confront them ; it conquered at Runnymede, as well as at
Hasting?. But the aristocracies of modern Eurojae are the aristo-
cracies neither of arms nor of law. They are aristocracies
of social and political privilege alone. They owe, and are half
conscious that they owe, their jiresent existence only to factitious
weaknesses of human nature, and to the antiquated terrors of
communities long kept in leading-strings and afraid to walk alone
If there were nothing but reason to dispel them, these fears might

lui'^ rcfftiii tlicir sway ovor F^liiropfjni society. But the example
of M, ^mcmI r"(»mm<inwe;ilf Ii flourisliing lierc without a privileged
cliiHH, Htul of ;i, popular sovoroin-iily combining order with progress.
I.cikIh, however remotely, (o hreak the spell. Therefore, as a class,
•he l*1ii)fHsli iiohilily ('.'miKti desire the success of your Republic.
Seme of Mie <»rder there ju'o who have hearts above tlieir coronets
an there ;ire some kings who have hearts above their crowns, and
whe in this great crisis ef liumanily forget that they are noblemen,
and reiiiendxT that they are men. But the order, as a whole, has
Iteeii a«'ainsl von, and has swavi^l in the same direction all who
were elesely cenneeled with it (^r dependent on it. It could not
fail to Ite against yon. if it was for itself Be charitable to the
inslinel oi' self-preservation. It is strong, sometimes violent, in
us all.

In truth, it is r.itlier .auiiinst the Liberals of England than
ag.iinst yon th.at the feeling of our aristocracy is directed. Liberal
leaders h.ave made your nanu> odious by pointing to your institu-
tions MS the coudiMnnatiou of our own. They diil this too in-
discriminately pi'rha]vs. while in one ro.^poct your institutions
were far bt>low our own, inasmuch as you were a slaveholding
nation "Look, "they wen^ idways saying. "at the Mo<lel Republic. —
l>elu<ld its tn\broken prosperity, the harmony of its people under
the system v>f nnivi^rsal s\itVrage. the lightne.^s of its taxation. —
behold, above all, its innnrmity from war!" All this is now turned
upon us as a taunt ; but the taunt implies rather a sense o( escap'
on the part o\' tho<e who utter it than n\aliirnitv: and the answer
tv> if is victory.

What has beeii ^aid of our territorial arist'Vracy may be said
ot our v-ommen-ial aristvH'racy, which is fa.'St blending with the
ttTritv»rial intv^ a gvneniment of wealth. This again is nothine
now. Ilistorv can |KMnt to more oases than one in which the
syinjKitlues of rich men have Kvn n^gidated by their richo-5. Tlu
Mouv'v Power has Iven cv^ld to your ctiuse throughout Eur<ip»?. —
^v«rhap^ t'vou here In all ivuutries gnat otipitali-'ts are ape to
desu\' th.it the lalvuivr should bo docile and contented, that
|H»pnlav evhuMtioti should not Iv carried dancen.nidy high, and
thiit the riv^ht relation-? Ivtw^vn ^nipital .uid "ak^ur sh..^uld U

bo :?ai«l
ith the

•^thinc
loh the

I. Th^

M)X. to

I. that
h au'l

maintained. The bold doctrines of the slaveowner as to "free lalumr
and free schools" may not be accepted in tlieir full strength ; yet
they touch a secret chord. But we have friends of the better
cause among our English capitalists as well as among our English
peers. The names of Mr. Baring and Mr. Thomas Bayley Totter
are not unknown here. The course taken by such men at thi.s
crisis is an earnest of the essential unity of interest which under-
lies all class divisions, — which, in our onward progress towards the
attainment of a real community, will survive all class distinction.^,
and terminate the conflict between capital and labour, not by
making the labourer the slave of the ca})italist, nor the capitalist
the slave of the labourer, but by establishing between them mutual
good-will, founded on intelligence and justice.

And let the upper classes of England have their due. Tlie
Lancashire operatives have been upon the otliin- side ; yet not the
less have they received ready and generous help in their iHstress
from all ranks and orders in the land.

It would be most unworthy of a student of history to preac-h
vulgar hatred of an historic aristocracy. The aristocracy of I'iUg-
land has been great in its hour, probably beneficent, perlia|)s
indispensable to the progress of our nation, and so t(j the foundation
of yours. Do you wish for your revenge upon it? The road to
that revenge is sure. Succeed in your great experiment. Show
by your example, by your moderation and self-contiol through tiiis
war and after its close, that it is possible for communities, duly
educated, to govern themselves without tlu^ control of an hereditary
order. The progress of opinion in ('England will in time do the
rest. War, forced by you upon the English nation, would only
strengthen tin; worst })art of the English aristocracy in the worst
way, by bringing our people in collision with a difmocracy, and l)y
giving the ascendancy, as all wars not carried on for a (list inct m<»ral
object do, to military passions over political aspirations. Our war
with the French r(;i»ublic thiew back our iutimal reforms, whicli till
then had ])een advancing, for a whole generation. Even the pockets
of our landowners would not sufVei', l»ut gain, by the war; for their
rents would be rai.sid by the e.xrlusion of your corn, and tiie price
of labotir wouM be loui n <1 by the stoppage of eniigrati(»n. Tin
suffering would fall, as usual, on tlie people.

The gradual effect of your example may onaLle European
society finally to emerge from feudalism, in a peaceful way, without
violent revolutions. Every one who has studied history must
regard violent revolutions with abhorrence. A European Liberal
ouffht to bo less inclined to them than evcsr, when he has seen
America, and received from the sight, ts I think he may, a com-
plete assurance of the future.

I have spol:on of our commercial aristocrncy generally. Liver-
pool demands a word l)y itself. It is the stronghold of the Southern
party in England : from it hostile acts have proceeded, while from
other quarters there have proceeded only hostile words. There
arc in Liverpool ]ucn who do honour to the name of British
merchant ; but the city as a whole is not the one among all our
commercial cities in which moral chivalry is most likely to bo
found. In Manchester, cotton-spinning thougli it be, there is much
that is great, — a love of art, displayed in pnblic exhibitions, — a
keen interest in great political and social questions, — literature, —
even religious thought, — .something of that high aspiring spirit
which made commerce noble in the old English merchant, in the
Venetian and the Florentine. In Liverpool trade reigns su})renie,
and its behests, whatever they may bo, are pretty sure to be
eagerly obeyed. And the source of this is to be found, perhaps,
partly in the fact tliat LiAerpool is an old centre of the slaverj'
interest in England, one of the cities which have been built with
the IjJood of the slave. As the great cotton port, it is clos"ly con-
nected with the planters by trade, — pc>rhaps also by many personal
ties and as.sociations. It is not so much an J'higli.sh city as an
offset and outpost of the South, and a counterpart to the offsets
and outposts of the South in some of your great commercial cities
here. No doubt, tlio shame of Liverpool Alahamas falls on
England. England must own that she has imiduced merchanti^
who disgrace their calling, contaminated by intercourse with the
slaveowner, regardless of the honour and interest of their country,
ready to phnige two kindred nations into a desolating war, if they
can only secure the profits of their own trade. Englnnd must own
th.it uh(> has produced such men ; but does this disgrace attach to
lier alone ?

Tiio clergy of tho State CUureh, like the aristocracy, have

^ I.-

probably been as a l)ody against you in tliis struggle. In their case
too, not hatred of America, but the love of their own institution, is
the cause. If you are a standing menace to aristocracies, you are
equally a standing menace to State Churches. A State Church
rests upon the assumption that religion would fall, if it were not
supported by the State. On this ground it is that the European
nations endure the startling anomalies of their State Churches,
the interference of irreligious politicians in religion, the worklHness
of ambitious ecclesiastics, the denial of liberty of conscience, the
^1 denial of truth. Therefore it is that they will see the canker or

doubt slowly eating into faith beneath the outward imiformity of
a political church, rather than risk a change whicii, as tliey are
taught to believe, would bring faith to a sudden end. But the
success of the voluntary system here is overthrowing this assump-
tion. Shall I believe that Christianity deprived of state support
nmst fall, when I see it without state support not only standing,
but advancing with the settler into the remotest West ? Will the
hiity of Europe long remain under their illusion in fiice of this
great fact? Already the State Churches of Euroi^* are placed in
imminent peril by the controversies which, since religious life has
reawakened among us, rend them from within, and by their mani-
fest inability to satisfy the craving of society for m w assurance of
its faith. I cannot much blame the High Cliurch l»i.shop who goes
to Lord Palmerston to ask for interventi(ii in company with Lord
Clanricarde and ^Ir. Spence. You express surprise that the son of
Wilberforce is not with you ; but Wilherforce was not, likt- liis son,
a bishop of the State Churcli. Never in the whole course of
history has the old order of things yielded witliout a nuirmer to
the new. You share the fate of all innovators: your innovations
are not received with favour by the powers which they thi(\iten
ultimately to sweep away.

To come from our aristocracy and landtd gentry t(» oui' middle
i'hi'^s. \\i' subdivide the middle class into upper and lower. The
upper middle class, comprising the wt althier tradesmen, forms a
sort of minor aristocracy in itself, witli a good deal of aristocratic
feeling towards those beneath it. It is not wi'll educati'd, for it
will not go to the connnon schools, and it has few good private

schools of its own ; consequently, it does not think deeply on poli-
tical questions. It is at jDresent very wealthy ; and wealth, as you
know, does not always produce high moral sentiment. It is not
above a desire to bo on the genteel side. It is not free from the
worship of aristocracy. That w^orship is rooted in the lower part
of our common nature. Its fibres extend beyond the soil of Eng-
land, beyond the soil of Europe. America has been nmch belied, if
she is entirely free from this evil — if there are not here also men
careful of class distinctions, of a place in fashionable society, of
factitious rank which parodies the aristocracy of the Old World.
There is in tlie Anglo-Saxon character a strange mixture of inde-
pendence and servility. In that long course of concessions by whicli
your politicians strove — happily for the Avorld and for ycnirselves
they strove in vain — to conciliate the slave- owning aristocracy of
the South, did not something of social servility mingle wdth political
fear ?

In tlie lower middle class religious Nonconformity prevails ;
and the free churches of our Nonconformists arc united by a strong
b(jnd of sympathy with the churches under the voluntary system
here. Tliey are perfectly staunch on the subject of Slavery, and
Ro far as this war has been a struggle against that institution, it
may, I tliink, be confidently said that the hearts of this great section
of our people have been upon your side. Our Nonconformist
ministers came forward, as you are aware, in largu numbers, to
join with the ministers of Protestant churches on the continent in
an Auti-Slavery address to your government and people.

And as to the middle classes generally, upper or lower, I see no
reason to think that they are wanting in goodwill to this country,
much loss that thoy desire that any calamity should befall it. The
journals which I take to be the chief organs of the up})er middle
class, if tliey have not been friendly, have been hostile not so much
to the American peui)le as to the war. And in justice to all classes
of Englishmen, it must be remembered that hatred of the war is
not hatred of the Amcriean jteople. No one hated the war at its
commencement mori> heartily than T did. I hated it more heartily
tiian ever after Bull Run, when, l)y tlu; accounts which reached
Kngland, the character of this nation seemed to have completely

^li

it its
•tily
liod
tely

broken down, I believed as fully as anyone, that the task which
you had undertaken was hopeless, and that you were rushing on
your ruin. I dreaded the effect on your constitution, fearing, as
others did, that civil war would bring you to anarchy, and anarchy
to military despotism. All historical precedents conspired to lead
me to this belief. I did not know — for there was no example to
teach me — the power of a really imited people, the adamantine
strength of institutions which were truly free. Watching the
course of events with an open mind, and a deep interest, such as
' '> men at a distance can seldom be brought to feel, in the fortunes

of this country, I soon revised my opinicm. Yet, many times I
desponded, and wished with all my heart that you would save the
Border States, if you could, and let the rest go. Numbers of
Englishmen — Englishmen of all classes and parties — who thought
as I did at the outset, remain rooted in this opinion. They still
sincerely believe tliat this is a hopeless war, which can lead to
nothing but wastt; of blood, subversion of your laws and liberties,
and the destruction of yoiu* own prosperity and that of the nations
whose interests are bound up with yours. This belief they main-
tain with as little of ill-feeling towards you as men can have
towards those who obstinately disregard their advice. And, after
all, though you may have found the wisest as well as the bravest
counsellors in your own hearts, he need not be your enemy who
somewhat timidly counsels you against civil war. Civil war is a
terrible thing — terrible in the passions Avhich it kindles as well as
in the blood which it sheds — terrible in its present effects, and
ten'ible in those which it leaves behind. It can be justified only
by the complete victory of the good cause. And Englishmen, at
the commencement of this civil Avar, if they were wrong in thinking
the victory of the good cause hopeless, were not wrong in thinking
it remote. They were not wrong in tliiid<ing it far more remote
than you did. Years of struggle, of fear, of agony, of desolated
homes, have passed since your statesmen declared that a few
months would bring the rebellicm to an end. In justice to our
people, put the (piestion to yourselves, — if at the outset the veil
which hid the future could have been withdrawn, and the conflict
which really awaited you, with all its vicissitudes, its disasters, its

ill;.

(langcis, its sacrifices, could have been revealed to your view, would
you liave gone into the war ?* To us, looking with anxious, but
less impassioned eyes, the veil was half withdrawn, and we shrank
back from the prospect which was revealed. It was well for the
world, perha23s, that you were blind ; but it was pardonable in us
to see.

We now come to the working men of England, the main body
of our people, whoso sympatli}^ you would not the less prize, and
whom you wouhl not the less shrink from ussaihng without a cause,
because at present tlie greater part of them are without political
power — at least of a direct kind. I will not speak of the opinions
of our peasantry, for they have none. Their thoughts are never
turned to a political question. They never read a newspaper. They
are absorbed in the struggle for daily bread, of which tliey have
barely enough for themselves and their children. Their condition,
in spite of all the benevolent effort that is abroad among us, is the
great blot of our social system. Perhaps, if the relation between
the two countries remains kindly, the door of hope may be opened
to them liere; and hands now folded helplessly in English poor-
houses may joyfully reap the harvests of Iowa and Wisconsin.
Assuredly, they bear you no ill-will. If they could comprehend
the moaning of this struggle, their hearts as well as their interests
would 1)0 upon your side. But it is not in them, it is in the
working men of our cities, that the intelligence of the class
resides. And the sympathy of the working men of our cities,
from the moment when the great issue between free labour and
slavery was fairly set before them, has been shown in no doubtful
form. They have followed your wavering fortunes with eyes almost
as keen and hearts almost as anxious as your own. They have
thronged tlie meetings held l)y the Union and Emancipation
Societies of London and jManchestor to protest before the nation
in favour of your cause. Early in the contest they tilled to over-
flowing Exeter Hall, the largest place of meeting in London. I
was present at another immense meeting of them, held by their

* Tho American audience, to whom these words were addressed, responded with
a loud and unauimoua Yesl—G. S.

1011(1

crests
tho
class
ties,
and
.tful
most
lave
ation
ation
over-
. I
lieir

with

trades unions in London, where they were addressed by Mr. Bright;
and had you witnessed the intelligence and enthusiasm with which
they followed the exposition of your case by their great orator
you would have known that you were not without sympathy in
England — not without symjiathy such as these Avho lo(jk rather to
the worth of a friend than to his rank may most dearh' prize. Again
I was present at a great meeting called in the Free Trade Hall, at
Manchester, to protest against the attacks upon your commerce,
and Raw the same enthusiasm displayed by the working men of the
North. But Mr. Ward Beecher must have brought back with him
abundant assurance of the feelings of our working men. Our
opponents have tried to rival us in these demonstrations. They
have tried with great resources of personal influence and wealth
But, in spite of their personal influence, and the distress caused by
the cotton famine, they have on the whole signally failed. Their
consolation has been to call the friends of the Federal cause
obscurities and nobodies. And true it is that the frioiids of the
Federal cause are obscurities and nolxxlios. They are the untitled
and undistinguished mass of the English people.

The leaders of our working men, the popular chiefs of the day,
the men who represent tho feelings and interests of the masses,
and whose names, are received with ringing cheers wherever the
masses are assembled, are Cobdcn and Briglit. And Cobdcii and
Bright have not left you in doubt of the fact that they and all
they represent are on your side.

1 need not say — for you have shown that you know it well —
that, as regards the working men of our cutton factories, this
sympathy was an offering to your cause as costly as it was sincere.
Your civil war paralyzed their industry, brouglit ruin into their
houses, deprived them and their families not only of bread, but, so
flu' as their vision extended, of the hope of bread. Yet they have
not wavered in their allegiance to the right. Your slave-o^^ning
aristocracy had made up their minds that chivalry was confined to
aristocracies, and that over the vulgar souls of the common people
cotton must be king. The working man of Manchester, though lie
lives not like a Southern gentleman by the sweat of another's
brow, but like a plebeian by the sweat of his own, has shov/n that

chivalry is not confined to aristocracies, and that even over vulgar
souls cotton is not always king. I heard one of your statesmen the
other day, after speaking indignantly of those who had fitted out
the Alabama, pray God to bless the working men of England.
Our nation, like yours, it not a single body animated by the same
political sentiments, but a mixed mass of contending interests and
parties. Beware how you fire into tliat mass, or your shot may
strike a friend.

When England in the mass is spoken of as your enemy on this
occasion, the London Times is taken for the voice of the country.
The Times was in former days a great popular organ. It led
vehemently and even violently the struggle for parliamentary
reform. In that way it made its fortune ; and having made its
fortune, it takes part with the rich. Its proprietor in those days
was a man with many faults, but he was a man of tli^' people.
Aristocratic society disliked and excluded him ; he livuci at war
with it to the end. Affronted by the Whigs, he became in a certain
sense a Tory ; but he united his Toryism with Chartism, and was
sent to parliament for Nottingliam by Tories and Chartists com-
bined. Tlie opposition of his journal to our new Poor-law evinced
though in a perverse way, his feeling for the people. But his heir,
the present iDroprietor, was born in the purple. He is a Avealthy
landed gentleman. He sits in parliament for a constituency of
landlords. He is thought to have been marked out for a peerage.
It is accusing him of no crime to suppose that, so far as he
controls the Times, it takes the bias of his class, and that its voice,
if it speaks his sentiments, is not that of the English people, but
of a rich Conservative squire.

The editor is distinct from the proprietor, but his connections
are perhaps still more aristocratic. A good deal has been said
among us of late about liis jwsition. Before his time our jour-
nalism was not only anonymous, but impersonal. The journalist
wore the mask not only to those whom he criticised, but to all the
world. The present editor of the Times wears the mask to the
objects of liis criticism, but drops it, as has been remarked in
parliament, in "the gilded saloons" of rank and power. Not
content to remain i.n the privacy which protected the independence

of his predecessors, ho lias come forth in his own person to receive
the homage of the great world. That homage has been paid in no
stinted measure, and, as the British public has been apprised in
rather a startling manner, with a somewhat intoxicating effect. Tho
lords of the money pow t, the thrones and dominions of usury,
have shown themselves' ts assiduous as ministers and peers ; and
these potentates hap ju, like the aristocracy, to be unfriendly to
your cause. Caressed by peers and millionaires, the editor of the
Times could hardly fail to express the feelings of peers and million-
aires towards a republic in distress. We may be permitted to
think that he has rather overacted his part. English peers, after
all, are English gentlemen ; and no English gentleman would
<leliberately sanction the torrent of calumny and insult which the
Times has poured upon this nation. Ihfro are penalties for
common offenders : there are none for those who scatter firebrands
amonaf nations. But the Times will not come off unscathed. It
must veer with victory. And its readers will 1)0 not ordy })re-
judiced, but idiotic, if it docs n<.»t in tho process leave th(> la«t
remnant of its authority behind.

Two things will suffice to mark tlie real political position of the
Times. You saw that a jiersonal controversy was going on the
other day between its editor and Mr. Cobden That controversy arose
out of a speech made by Mr. Bright, obliquely impugning the aristo-
cratic law of inheritance, which is fast accumulating the land of
England in a few hands, and disinheriting tho English jjoople of
the English soil. For this offence Mr. Bright was assailed by the
Timies with calumnies so outrageous that Mr. Cobden could not
help springing forward to vindicate his friend. Tho institution
which the limes so liercely dofondod on this occasioii against a
look which threatened it with alteration is vital and s;icred in tho
eyes cf the aristocracy, but is not vital or sacred in tlu^ eyes of
the whole English nation. Again, tho Times hates Garibaldi ; and
its liatred, generally half smothered, bi-oke out in a loud cry of
o^xultation when the hero fell, as it hoped for ever, at Aspromonte.
But tho English people idolise (}aril)aldi, and receive him with a
burst of enthusiasm unexampled in fervour. The English people
love Garibaldi, and Garibaldi's name is etpially dear to all American

Ikearts. Is not this — let mo ask in passing — a proof that there is a
bond of sympatliy, after all, between the English people and you,
and that, if as a nation we are divided from you, it is not by a
radical estrangement, but by some cloud of error which will in time
pass away ?

The wealth of the Times, the high position which it has held
since the period when it ^vas the great Liberal journal, the clever
writing and the early iutelligonco which its money and its secret
connections with public men enable it to command, give it a
circulation and an influence beyond the class whose interests it
represents. But it has been thrust from a largo part of its
dominion by the cheap London and local press. It is exceeded in
circulation more tlian twofold l)y the London Telegraph, a journal
which, though it has been against the war, has, I think, by no
means shown in its leading articles the same spirit of hostility to
the American people. The London Star, which is strongly Federal,
is also a journal of wide circulation. The Daily News is a high-
priced paper, circulating among the same class as .'^le Times ; its
circulation is comparatively small, but it is on the increase, and the
journal, I have reason to believe, is prosperous. The Manchester
Examiner and Tim^es, again — a great local paper of the North of
England — nearly equals the London Times in circulation, and is
favourable to your cause. I live under the dominion of the London
Times, and I will not deny that it is a great power of evil. It
will be a great power of evil indeed if ' i succeeds in producing a
fatal estrangement l)etween two kindred nations. But no one who
knows England — especially the northern part of England, in which
Liberalism prevails — would imagine the voice of the Times to be
that of the English people.

Of the part taken by the writers of England it would be rash
to speak in general terms. Stuart Mill and Cairns have supported
your cause as heartily as Gobden and Bright. I am not aware that
any political or economical writer of equal eminence has taken the
other side. The leading reviews and periodicals have exhibited,
ae might have been expected, very various shades of opinion ; but,
with the exception of the knowm organs of violent Toryism, they
have certainly not breathed hatred of this nation. In those which

specially represent our rising intellect, tl iniellec+ wliich will
probably govern us ten years hence, I should -ay the pi )onderjince
of the ^vriting had been on the Federal siue. In tin Tin • i 'y
of Oxford the sympathies of the High Church clergy nnd <> >ie
young Tory gentry are with the South ; but there is a good dt ' of
Northern sentiment among the young fellows of our more li lid
colleges, and generally in the more active minds. At the University
Debating Club, when the question between the North and the
South was debated, the vote, though I believe in a thin house, was
in favour of the North. Four professors are members of the Union
and Emancipation Society. And if intellect generally has been
somewhat coldly critical, I am not sure that it has departed from
its true function. I am conscious myself that I may be somewhat
under the dominion of my feelings, that I may be even something
of a fanatic in this matter. There may be evil as well as good in
the cause which, as the good preponderates, claims and receives
the allegiance of my heart. In that case, intellect, in pointing out
the evil, only does its dut}'.

One English writer has certainly raised his voice against you
with characteristic vehemence and rudeness. As an historical
painter and a humourist Carlyle has scarcely an equal : a new
intellectual region seemed to open to me when I read his " French
Revolution." But his philosophy, in its essential principle, is false.
He teaches that the mass of mankind are fools — that the hero
alone is wise — that the hero, therefore, is the destined master of
his fellow-men, and that their only salvation lies in blind submis-
sion to his rule — and this without distinction of time or circum-
stance, in the most advanced as well as in the most primitive ages
of the world. The hero-despot can do no wrong. He is a king,
with scarcely even a God above him ; and if the moral law happens
to come into collision with his actions, so much the worse for the
moral law. On this theory, a commonwealth such as yours ought
not to exist ; and you must not be surprised if, in a fit of spleen,
the great cynic grasps his club and knocks your cause on the head,
as he thinks, with a single blow. Here is the end of an unsoimd,
though brilliant theory — a theory which had always latent in it
the worship of force and fraud, and which has now displayed its

ills

tendency at once in the portentous defence of the robber-policy of
Frederick the Great and in the portentous defence of the Slave
Power. An opposite theory of human society is, in fact, finding
its confirmation in these events — that which tells us that we all
have need of each other, and that the goal towards which society
actually moves is not an heroic despotism, but a real community,
in which each member shall contribute his gifts and faculties to
the common store, and the common government shall become the
work of all. For, if the victory in this struggle has been won, it
has been won, not by a man, but by the nation ; and that it has
been won not by a man, but by the nation, is your glory and the
pledge of your salvation. We have called for a Cromwell, and he
has not come ; he has not come, partly because Cromwells are
scarce, partly, perhaps, because the personal Cromwell belonged to
a different age, and the Cromwell of this age is an intelligent,
resolute, and united peojjle.

I might mention other eccentricities of opinion quite distinct
from the general temper of the English nation, such as that of the
ultra-scientific school, which thinks it unscientific philanthropy to
ascribe the attributes of humanity to the ncgi'o — a school some of
the more rampant absurdities of which had, just before I left
England, called down the rebuke of real science in the person of
Mr. Huxley. And I might note, if the time would allow, many
fluctuations and oscillations which have taken j)lace among our
organs of opinion as the struggle went on. But I must say on the
whole, both with reference to our different classes and with reference
to our literature, that, considering the complexity of the case, the
distance from which our people viewed it, and the changes which
it has undergone since the war broke out, I do not think there is
much room for disaj)pointment as to the sympathies of our people.
Parties have been divided on this question much as they are on
great questions among ourselves, and much, as they were in the
time of Charles I., when this long strife began. The England of
Charles and Laud has been against you ; the England of Hampden,
Milton, and Cromwell has in the main been on your side.

I say there has not been much ground for disappointment ; I
do not say there has been none. England at present is not in her

her

iioLlcsL inood. She is lahouring under a reaction wliieh extends
over France and great part of Europe, and -wliicli furnishes the
)cey at tliis moment to the state of European affairs. This move-
ment, hke all great movements, reactionary or progressive, is
complex in its nature. In the political sphere it presents itself as
the lassitude and despondency which, as usual, have ensued after
great political efforts, such as were made by the continental nations
in the abortive revolutions of 1848, and by England in a less
degree in the struggle for Parliamentary Reform. In the religious
sphere it presents itself in an analogous shape ; there lassitude and
despondency have succeeded to the efforts of the religious intellect
to escape from the decaying creeds of the old State Churches and
push forward to a more enduring faith ; and the priest as well as
the despot has for a moment resumed his sway — though not his
uncontested sway — over our weariness and our fears. The moral
sentiment, after high tension, has undergone a corresponding
relaxation. All liberal measures are for the time at a discount.
The Bill for the Abolition of Church Rates, once carried in the
House of Commons by large majorities, is now lost. The nominal
leaders of the Liberal party themselves have let their principles
fall into abeyance, and almost coalesced with their Tory opponents.
The Whig nobles who carried the Reform Bill have owned once
more the bias of their order, and become determined, though
covert, enemies of Reform. The ancient altars are sought again
for the sake of peace by fainting spirits and perplexed minds ; and
again, as after our Reformation, as after our great Revolution, we
see a number of conversions to the Church of Rome. On the
other hand, strange physical superstitions, such as mesmerism and
spirit-rapping, have crept, like astrology under the Roman empire,
into the void left by religious faith. Wealth has been pouring into
England, and luxury with wealth. Our public journals proclaim,
as you may perhaps have seen, that the society of our capital is
unusually corrupt. The comic as well as the serious signs of the
reaction appear everywhere. A tone of affected cynicism pervades
a portion of our high intellect ; and a pretended passion for prize-
hghting shows that men of culture are weary of civihsation, and
wish to go back to baibarism for a while. The present head of

the government in England is not only the confederate, but the
counterpart, of the head of the French empire ; and the rule of
each denotes the temporary ascendancy of the same class of motives
in their respective nations. An English Liberal is tempted to
despond when he comjJares the public life of England in the time
of Pym and Hampden with our public life now. But there is
greatness still in the heart of the English nation.

And you, too, have you not known in the course of your history
a slack-tide of faith, a less aspiring hour ? Have not you, too^
known a temporary ascendancy of material over spiritual interests,
a lowering of the moral tone, a readiness, for the sake of ease and
peace and secure enjoyment, to compromise with evil ? Have not
you, too, felt the tyranny of wealth, putting the higher motives for
a moment under its feet ? What else has brought these calamities
upon you ? What else bowed your necks to the yoke which you
are now breaking at so great a cost ? Often and long in the life
of every nation, though the tide is still advancing, the wave recedes.
Often and long the fears of man overcome his hopes ; but in the
end the hojjes of man overcome his fears. Your regeneration,
when it is achieved, will set forward the regeneration of the Euro-
pean nations. It is the function whieh all nati(ms, which all men,
in their wavering progress towards perfection, perform in turn for
each other.

This temporary lowering of the moral tone in English society
has ext(-'nded to the question of Slavery. It has deadened our
feelings on that subject, though I hope without shaking our prin-
ciples. You ask whether England can have been sincere in her
enmity to Shivery, when she refuses sympathy to yo\» in your
struggle with the Slave Power, Talleyrand, cynic as he was, knew
that she was sincere, though he said that not a man in France thought
so but himself. She redeemed her own slaves with a great price.
She sacrificed her West Indian interest. She counts that achieve-
ment higher tlian her victories. She spends annually much money
and many lives, and risks much enmity in lier crusade against the
slave trade. When your Southern statesmen have tried to tamper
with her, they liave found her true. If they liad l)id us choose
between a concession to their designs and war, all aristocratic as

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we are, we slioiikl have chosen war. Every Englishman who takes
the Southern side is compelled by public opinion to ])rel\ice his
advocacy Avith a disclaimer of all sympathy with Slavery. The
agent of the slaveowners in England, Mr. Spcnce, pleads their
cause to the English people on the ground of gradual emancipation.
Once the Times ventured to speak in defence of Slavery, and the
attempt was never made again. The principle, I say, holds firm
among the mass of the people ; but on this, as on other moral
questions, we are not in our noblest mood.

In justice to my country, however, let me remind you that you
did not — perhaps you could not — set the issue between Freedom
and Slavery plainly before us at the outset ; you did not — jjcrhaps
you could not — set it plainly before yourselves. With the progress
of the struggle your convictions have been strengtliened, and the
fetters of legal restriction have been smitten oft' by the hammer
of war. But your rulers began with disclaimers of Anti-Slavery
designs. You cannot be surprised if our people took your rulers
at their word, or if, notwithstanding your change — a change wliich
tliey imagined to be wrought merely by expediency — they retained
their first impression as to the object of the war, an ini]n-ession
which the advocates of the South used every art to per]X'tuate in
their minds. That the opponents of Slavery in England shoidd
desire tlie restoration of the Union with Slavery, and with Slavery
strengthened, as they ex])ected it wouhl be, by new concessions, was
what you could not reasonably expect. And remend)er — I say it
not with any desire to trench on American politics or to ])ass judg-
ment on American ])arties — that the restoration of the Union with
Slavery is a\ hat a large section of your people, and one of tlie can-
didates for your Presidency, are in fact ready to embrace now.

Had you been ablt; to say ])lain]y at tlie outset that you were
lighting against Slavery, the English ]>eo])le would scarcely have
given ear to the cunning fiction of Mr. Spence, It would scarcely
have been brought to believe that tiiis great contest was only about
a Tariff. It would liavo seen that the Southern ]>lanti'r, if he was
a Froe-Trader, was a Fri'C-'J'rader not from enlightenment, but
liecause fn»m the degradation of labour in his dominions he had
no manufactures to support ; and that he was in fact a protectionist

of his only home production which feared com])ctition — the home-
bred slave. I liave heard the Tariff Theory called the most suc-
cessful lie in history. Very successful it certainly was, and its
influence in misleading; Enofland ouii'lit not to be overlooked. It
was propounded with <;Teat skill, and it came out just at the right
tinie, before people had formed their opinions, and when they were
glad to have a theory presented to their minds. But its success
woidd have been short-lived, had it not received ^hat seemed
authoritative confirmation from the laufjuao-e of statesuKni here.

I might mention many other things which have influenced
opinion in the wrong way : the admiration felt by our peoi)le, and,
to your honour, equally felt by you, for the valour and self-devotion
which have been shown by the Southerners, and which, when they
have submitted to the law, will entitle them to be the fellow-
citizens of freemen ; a careless, but not ungenerous, sympathy for
that which, by men ignorant of the tremendous strength of a Slave
Power, was taken to be the weaker side; the doubt really, and,
considering the conflict of opinion here, not nnpardonably, enter-
tained as to the question of State Sovereignt}- and the right of
Secession. All these motives, though they ()})erate against your
cause, are dilferent from hatred of you. But there are two points
to which in Justice to my country I must especially call attention.

The first is tliis — that you have not yourselves l)een of one
mind in this matter, n(»r has the vc»icc of your own jieople been
unanimous. No English speaker or journal has denounced the
war or reviled the conduct of yoiu' Ciovernment more bitterly than
a portion of American politicians and a section of the American
press. The worst things said in l']ngland of your statesmen, of
your genin-als, of your armit's, of your contractors, of your social
state and character as a people, have been hut the eeho of things
which liave been said liere. If the New York corrcs])ondents of
some Englisli journals have been virulent and calumnious, thiir
virulenee an<l their calunmies have been drawn, to a great extent,
from the American circles in which tlu'y have lived. No slanders
poured by Knglish ign(»rance or malevolence ou American society
have been so foul as those \,hicli came from a renegade Amei'ican
writing imnw of our Tory journals under tlie name of " iMaidiattau,"

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Dec 11

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No lamentations over the subversion of tlie Constitution and the
destruction of personal liljerty have been louder than those of your
own Opposition. The chief enemies of your honour have been
those of your own household. The crime of a great mass of our
people against you has, in fact, consisted in believing statements
about America made by men whom they knew to be Americans,
and did not know to be disloyal to the cause of their country. I
have seen your soldiers described in an extract from one of your
own journals as gaol-birds, vagabonds, and foreigners. I have
seen your President accused of wishing to provoke riots in New
York, tliat he might have a pretence for exercising military power.
I have seen him accused of sendhig to the front, to be thinned, a
regiment which was likely to vote against him. I liave seen him
accused of decoying his political ojnionents into forging soldiers'
votes, in order to discredit them. What could the Thnca itself
say more ?

The second point is this. Some of your journals did their l)est
to prevent our people from desiring your success by declaring that
your success would be followed by nggressiim on us. The drum,
like strong Avine, is apt to get into weak heads, especially when
they are unaccustomed to the sound. An Kngiishinan coming
among you is soon assured that you dtt not wish to attack Caiiiula.
Apart from considerations of morality and honour, he tiiuls every
man of sense here aware that extent of territory is your danger, if
you wish to be one nation; and further, that freedom of develop-
ment, and not procrustean centralization, is the best thing for the
New as well as for the Old \Vorl<l. But the mass of our people
have not been among you, nor do they know that the hot words
sedulously repeated to them by our Soutliern press are not
authentic exi)ressions of your di'signs. Tlicy are doubly mistaken —
mistaken both in tliinking that you wish to seize Oanatla, and in
thinking that a divisi(»n of tlu; Union into two hostile nations,
which would compel you to keep a standing army, would render
you h'ss daugero\is to your neighbours. 15ut your own demagogues
are the authors of the irror, and the Monroe doctrine and tlie
Osteiid manifesto are still ringing in our ears. 1 am an adherent
of tlx' Monroe doctrine if it means, as it did on the lijis of Onnnmg,

that the reactionary influence of the old European governments is
not to be allowed to mar the hopes of man in the New World ;
but if it means violence every one nmst be against it who respects
the rights of nations. When you contrast the feelings of England
towards you with those of other nations, Italy for example, you
must remember that Italy has no Canada. I hope Canada will
soon cease to be a cause of mistrust between us. The political
dominion of England over it, si'-ioe it has had a free constitution
of its own, has dwindled to a mere thread. It is as ripe to be a
nation as these colonies were on the eve of the American revolu-
tion. As a dependency it is of no solid value to England, since
she has ceased to engross the colonial trade. It distracts her
forces, and prevents her from acting with her full weight in the
affairs of her own quarter of the world. It belongs in every sense
to America, not to Euiope; and its peculiar institutions — its
extended suffrage, its freedom from the hereditary principle, its
voluntary system in religion, its common schools — are opposed to
those of England, and identical with those of the neighbouring
states. All this the English nation is beginning to feel ; and it
has tried in the case of the Ionian Islands the policy of moderation,
and found tliat it raises, instead of lowering, our solid reputation
and our real power. The confederation whicli is now in course of
formation between the North American colonies tends manifestly
to a fuilher change; it tends to a further change all tlie more
manifestly because sucli a tendency is anxiously disclaimed. Yes,
Canada will soon cease to trouble and divide us. But while it is
England's it is England's; and to threaten her with an attack on
it is to threaten a proud nation with outrage and an assault upon
its honour.

Finally, if our people have misconstrued your acts, let rac con-
jure you to make due allowance for our ignorance — an ignorance
which, in many cases, is as dark as night, but which the progress
of e Wilts here begins gloriously to dispel. We are not such a
nation of travellers as you arc, and scarcely one Englishma!\ has seen
America for a hundred Americans that have seen P^ngiand. "Why,
does not Bt'auregard Hy to the assistance of Lee?" said a highl}'
educated Englishman to an American iu England. "Because,"

was the reply, "the distance is as great as it is from Rome
to Paris." If those three thousand miles of ocean that lie between
us could be removed for a few days, and the two great branches of
the Anglo-Saxon race could look each other in the face, and speak
their minds to each other, there would be an end, I believe, of all
these fears. When an Englishman and an American meet, in
this country or in England, they are friends, notwithstanding all
that has passed ; why not the two nations ?

I have not presumed, and shall not presume, to touch on any
cpiestion that has arisen or may arise between the executive govern-
ment of my country and the executive government of yours. In
England, English Liberals have not failed to plead for justice to
you, and, as we thought, at the same time, for the maintenance of
English honour. But I will venture to make, in conclusion, one
or two brief remarks as to the general temper in which these
questions should be viewed.

In the first place, when great and terrible issues hang upon
our acts, perhaps upon our words, let us control our fancies and
distinguish realities from fictions. There hangs over every great
struggle, and especially over every civil war, a hot and hazy atmo-
sphere of excited feeling which is too apt to distort all objects to
the view. In the French Revolution men were susi)ected of being
objects of suspicion, and sent to the guillotine for tliat offence.
The same feverish and delirious fancies prevailed as to the conduct
of other nations. All the most natural effects of a violent revolu-
tion — the depreciation of the assignats, the disturbance of trade,
the consequent scarcity of food — were ascribed by frantic rhetori-
cians to the guineas of Pitt, whose very limited amount of secret-
service money was quite inadetpiate to the performance of such
wonders. When a foreign nation has given oftence it is turned by
popular imagination into a fiend, and its fiendish infiueuce is traced
with appalling clearness in every natural accident that occurs. I
have heard England accused of having built the Chicago Wigwam,*

* Eiigliah readers may perhaps require to bo informed that the Chicago Wigwam
was the great bootli at Cliicago in which the opponents of Mr. Lincoln met to
frame their "platform," and to chose their candidate for the Tresidency.

with the building of which she had as much to do as with the
building of the Great Pyramid. I have heard it insinuated that
her policy was governed by her share in the Confederate Cotton
Loan. The Confederate Cotton Loan is, I believe, four millions
and a half There is an English nobleman whose estates are
reputed to be worth a larger sum. "She is very great," says a
French writer, "that odious England." Odious she may be, but
she is great — too great to be bribed to baseness by a paltry fee.

In the second i^lace, let us distinguish hostile acts, of which an
account must of course be demanded, from mere words, which great
nations, secure in their greatues >, may afford to let pass. Your
President knows the virtue of silence ; but silence is so little the
system on either side of the water that in the general flux of
rhetoric some rash things are sure to be said. One of our states-
men, while starring it in the provinces, carelessly throws out the
expression that Jeff. Davis has made the South a nation; another
says that you are fighting for empire and the South for indepen-
dence. Our Prime iVIinister is sometimes etFensive in his personal
bearing towards you — as, to our bitter cost, he has often been towards
other nations. On the other hand, your statesmen have said hard
things of England ; and one of your ambassadors to a great conti-
nental state published, not in his private but in his (jflicial capacity,
language which made the Northern party in England for a moment
hang their heads with shame. A virulence, discreditable to Eng-
land, has at times broken forth in our House of Commons, as a
virulence not creditable to this country has at times broken forth
in your Congress. But what has the House of Commons done?
Threatening motions were announced in favour of recognition — in
defence of the Confederate rams. They were all set aside by the
good sense of the house and of the nation. It ended in a solemn
farce — in the question being put very formally to the government
whether it intended to recognise the Confederate States, to which
the government replied that it did not.

And wJKii the actions of our government are in ((uestion, fair
allowance nuist bo made for the bad state of international law^
Tlie very term itself is, in fact, as matters at present stand, a dan-
There can 1)C no law, in a real sense, where there

sei

th(

yerous fiction.

is no lawgiver, no tribunal, no power of giving legal eftcct to a
sentence — but where the party on whose side the law is held to
be must after all be left to do himself rij-ht with the stronsr hand.
And one consequence is that governments are induced to rest in
narrow technicalities, and to be rided by formal precedents, when
the question ought to be decided on the broadest grounds of right.
The decision of Lord Stowell, for example, that it is lawful for the
captor to burn an enemy's vessel at sea rather than suffer her to
escape, though really applying only to a case of special nt.cessity,
lias been supposed to cover a system of burning prizes at sea,
which is opposed to the policy and sentiment of all civilized nations,
and which Lord Stowell never could have had in view. And it
must be owned that this war, unexampled in all respects, has been
fruitful of novel questions respecting belligerent rights, on which
a government meaninof no evil mifiht easilv bo led astrav. Amons;
its results we may hope thrt this revolution will give birth to a
better system of international law. Would there were reason to
hope that it might lead to the erection of some high tril)unal of
justice among nations to supersede for ever the dreadful and un-
certain ordeal of war. Has the gtjvernment of England, in any
case where your right was clear, really done you a wrong? If it
has, I trust that the English nation, temperately and res[)ectfully
approached, as a proud nation requires to be, will surely constrain
its government to make the reparation which becomes its honour.
But let it not be forgotten that, in the worst of times, at the
moment of your lowest depression, England has refused to recog-
nise the Confederate States, or in any way to interfere in their
behalf; and that the .steadiness of this refusal has driven the Con-
federate envoy, Mr. Mason, to seek what he deems a more hosj^itable
shore. The inducement of cotton for our idle looms and our
famishing ])eople has been a strong one to our statesmen as well
as to our people, and the tempter has been at their side. Des-
potism, like Slavery, is necessarily propagandist. It cannot bear
the contagion, it cannot bear the moral rel)uke of neighbouring
fiecfdom. The new French .satrapy in Mexico needs sonic more,
congenial and some weaker neighbour than the United l{ej)ublic
and we have had more than one intimation that this need is felt.

And this suggests one closing word as to our blockade running'.
Nothing done on our side, I should think, can liave been more
galling, as nothing has been so injurious to your success. For
myself, in common with all who think as I do on these questions,
I abhor the blockade runners; I heartily wish that the curse of
ill-gotten gain may rest on every piece of gold they make; and
never did I feel less proud of my country than when, on my way
hither, I saw those vessels in Halifax sheltered under English
guns. But blockade running is the law; it is the test, in fact, of
an effective blockade. And Englishmen are the blockade runners,
not because England as a nation is your enemy, but because her
merchants are more adventurous and her seamen more daring than
those of any nation but your own. You, I suspect, would not be
the least active of blockade runners if we were carrying on a
blockade. The nearness of our fortresses at Halifax and Nassau
to your shores, which makes them the haunt of blockade runners,
is not the result of malice, but of accident — of most unhappy acci-
dent as I believe. We have not planted them there for this
purpose. They have come down to us among the general inheri-
tance of an age of conquest, when aggression was tliouglit to be
strength and glory — when all kings and nations were alike rapa-
cious — and when the prize remained with us, not because we were
below our neighbours in morality, but because we were more
resolute in council and mightier in arms. Our con(|uenng hour
was yours. You, too, were then English citizens. You welcomed
the arms of Cromwell to Jamaica. Your hearts thrilled at the
tidings of Blenheim and Ramilies, and exulted in the thunders of
Chatham. You shared the laurels and the conquests of Wolfe.
For you and with you we overthrew France and Spain upon this
continent, and made America the land of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Halifax will .share the destinies of the North American confedera-
tion — destinies, as I said before, not alien to yours. Nassau is an
appendage to our West Indian possessions. Those possessions are
and have long been, and been known to every reasoning English-
man to be, a mere burden to us. But wo have been bound in
honour and humanity to protect our emancipated slaves from a
danger which lay near. An ocean of changed thought and feeling

ye
P(

runniiio'.
en more
!S,s. For
uestions,
curse of
ike; and
my way-
English
1 fact, of
runners,
luse her
ing than
I not be
ig on a
Nassau
runners,
ipy acci-
for this
inheri-
it to be
e rapa-
we were
■e more
ig hour
'Icomed
at the
iders of
Wolfe,
on this
n race,
federa-
u is an
i3ns are
nglish-
und in
from a
feeling

has rolled over the memory of this nation within the last three
years. You forget that but yesterday you were the great Slave
Power,

You, till yesterday, were the great Slave Power. And England,
with all her faults and shortcomings, Avas the great enemy of
Slavery. Therefore the slave-owners, who had gained possession
of your government, hated her, insulted her, tried to embroil you
with her. They represented her, and I trust not without truth, as
restlessly conspiring against the existence of their great institution.
They laboured, not in vain, to excite your jealousy of her maritime
ambition, when, in enforcing the right of search and striving to put
down the slave trade, she was really obeying her conscience and
the conscience of mankind. They bore themselves towards her in
these controversies as they bore themselves towards you — as their
character compels them to bear themselves towards all with whom
they have to deal. Living in their own homes above law, they
proclaimed doctrines of lawless aggression which alarmed and
offended not England alone, but every civilized nation. And this,
as I trust and believe, has been the main cause of the estrange-
ment between us, so far as it has been an estrangement between
the nations, not merely between certain sections and classes. It
is a cause which will henceforth operate no more. A Scandinavian
hero, as the Norse legend tells, waged a terrible combat through a
whole night with the dead body of his brother-in-arms, animated
by a demon; but with the morning the demon fled.

Other thoughts crowd upon my mind — thoughts of what the
two nations have been to each other in the past, thoughts of what
they may yet be to each other in the future. But these thoughts
will rise in other minds as well as in mine, if +hey are not stifled
by the passion of the hour. If there is any question to be settled
between us, let us settle it without disparagement to the just
claims or the honour of eitlier party, yet, if possible, as kindred
nations ; for, if we do not, our posterity will curse us. A century
hence the passions which caused the quarrel will be dead, the
black record of the quarrel will survive and be detested. Do what
we will now we shall not cancel the tie of blood, nor prevent it
from hereafter asserting its undying power. The Englishmen of

this day will not prevent those who come after them from being
proud of England's grandest achievement, the sum of all her noblest
victories — the foundation of this the great commonwealth of the
New World. And you will not prevent the hearts of your children's
children from turning to the birthplace of their nation, the land of
their history and of their ea'ly greatness, the land which holds the
august monuments of your ancient race, the works of your illustrious
fathers, and their graves.

A. IBILAWD & Co., Printers, PaU MaU Court, MiincheeteJ;

n being
" noblest
I of the
lildren's
land of
3lds the
-istrious

S Tl 53