If Another Proof Were Wanting, This Would Afford Another Proof Of The Immense Weight Attached In America To All The Proceedings And To All The Feelings Of England On This Matter.

The very anger of the North is a compliment paid by the North to England.

But not the less is that anger unreasonable. To those in America who understand our constitution, it must be evident that our government cannot take official measures without a public avowal of such measures. France can do so. Russia can do so. The government of the United States can do so, and could do so even before this rupture. But the government of England cannot do so. All men connected with the government in England have felt themselves from time to time more or less hampered by the necessity of publicity. Our statesmen have been forced to fight their battles with the plan of their tactics open before their adversaries. But we in England are inclined to believe that the general result is good, and that battles so fought and so won will be fought with the honestest blows and won with the surest results. Reticence in this matter was not possible; and Lord John Russell, in making the open avowal which gave such offense to the Northern States, only did that which, as a servant of England, England required him to do.

"What would you in England have thought," a gentleman of much weight in Boston said to me, "if, when you were in trouble in India, we had openly declared that we regarded your opponents there are as belligerents on equal terms with yourselves?" I was forced to say that, as far as I could see, there was no analogy between the two cases. In India an army had mutinied, and that an army composed of a subdued, if not a servile race. The analogy would have been fairer had it referred to any sympathy shown by us to insurgent negroes. But, nevertheless, had the army which mutinied in India been in possession of ports and sea-board; had they held in their hands vast commercial cities and great agricultural districts; had they owned ships and been masters of a wide-spread trade, America could have done nothing better toward us than have remained neutral in such a conflict and have regarded the parties as belligerents. The only question is whether she would have done so well by us. "But," said my friend, in answer to all this, "we should not have proclaimed to the world that we regarded you and them as standing on an equal footing." There again appeared the true gist of the offense. A word from England such as that spoken by Lord John Russell was of such weight to the South that the North could not endure to have it spoken. I did not say to that gentleman, but here I may say that, had such circumstances arisen as those conjectured, and had America spoken such a word, England would not have felt herself called upon to resent it.

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