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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 V. 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. i 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 X. 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. I ed, when, and exas- e for the statesmen ot fail to le of our and anti- lad been, ven those lalized at im which ;he arch- 1 English your ter- s pressed ho wed a ept satis- ion of an • honour, ticism of spirit of e amuse- 3 a little in pene- he heart as never it deceived Iiad com- littcd one, onal law. f regret if vhich was i RRtisfac- s renewed 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 4 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 o 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 c 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 8 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, I }) 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- 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 Moeluf 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 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 Eurrhaps 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.- . 15 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 16 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 17 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 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 22 I ¥ 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 23 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 24 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 25 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 26 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 t7 u your knew loiight t price, ■liievc- inoncy nst the t.nnpcr rhoosc •.'itic as 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 28 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, 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 is sei be Ai na th( yerous fiction. 33 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. 34 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 86 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. 1^ A. IBILAWD & Co., Printers, PaU MaU Court, MiincheeteJ; n being " noblest I of the lildren's land of 3lds the -istrious S Tl 53