The Press, Though Very Liable To
Error, Labors Hard At Its Vocation In Teaching Foreign Politics,
And Spares No Expense In Letting In Daylight.
If the light let in
be sometimes moonshine, excuse may easily be made.
Where so much
is attempted, there must necessarily be some failure. But even the
moonshine does good if it be not offensive moonshine. What I would
deprecate is, that aptness at reproach which we assume; the
readiness with scorn, the quiet words of insult, the instant
judgment and condemnation with which we are so inclined to visit,
not the great outward acts, but the smaller inward politics of our
neighbors.
And do others spare us? will be the instant reply of all who may
read this. In my counter reply I make bold to place myself and my
country on very high ground, and to say that we, the older and
therefore more experienced people as regards the United States, and
the better governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards
all the world beyond, should not throw mud again even though mud be
thrown at us. I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as
readily as to a lady; and forbear from an interchange of courtesies
with a Billingsgate heroine, even though at heart I may have a
proud consciousness that I should not altogether go to the wall in
such an encounter.
I left England in August last - August, 1861. At that time, and for
some months previous, I think that the general English feeling on
the American question was as follows:
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