To
Them For Many Years It Would Be Absolutely Ruinous.
It would entail
not only all those losses which such a war must bring with it, but
that greater loss which would arise to the nation from the fact of
its having been powerless to prevent it.
Such a war would prove
that it had lost the freedom for which it had struggled, and which
for so many years it has enjoyed. For the sake of that people as
well as for our own - and for their sakes rather than for our own -
let us, as far as may be, abstain from words which are needlessly
injurious. They have done much that is great and noble, ever since
this war has begun, and we have been slow to acknowledge it. They
have made sacrifices for the sake of their country which we have
ridiculed. They have struggled to maintain a good cause, and we
have disbelieved in their earnestness. They have been anxious to
abide by their Constitution, which to them has been as it were a
second gospel, and we have spoken of that Constitution as though it
had been a thing of mere words in which life had never existed.
This has been done while their hands are very full and their back
heavily laden. Such words coming from us, or from parties among us,
cannot justify those threats of war which we hear spoken; but that
they should make the hearts of men sore and their thoughts bitter
against us, can hardly be matter of surprise.
As to the result of any such war between us and them, it would
depend mainly, I think, on the feelings of the Canadians. Neither
could they annex Canada without the good-will of the Canadians, nor
could we keep Canada without that good-will. At present the feeling
in Canada against the Northern States is so strong and so universal
that England has little to fear on that head.
I have now done my task, and may take leave of my readers on either
side of the water with a hearty hope that the existing war between
the North and the South may soon be over, and that none other may
follow on its heels to exercise that new-fledged military skill
which the existing quarrel will have produced on the other side of
the Atlantic. I have written my book in obscure language if I have
not shown that to me social successes and commercial prosperity are
much dearer than any greatness that can be won by arms. The
Americans had fondly thought that they were to be exempt from the
curse of war - at any rate from the bitterness of the curse. But the
days for such exemption have not come as yet. While we are hurrying
on to make twelve-inch shield plates for our men-of-war, we can
hardly dare to think of the days when the sword shall be turned into
the plowshare. May it not be thought well for us if, with such work
on our hands, scraps of iron shall be left to us with which to
pursue any of the purposes of peace? But at least let us not have
war with these children of our own. If we must fight, let us fight
the French "for King George upon the throne." The doing so will be
disagreeable, but it will not be antipathetic to the nature of an
Englishman. For my part, when an American tells me that he wants to
fight with me, I regard his offense, as compared with that of a
Frenchman under the same circumstances, as I would compare the
offense of a parricide or a fratricide with that of a mere
commonplace murderer. Such a war would be plus quam civile bellum.
Which of us two could take a thrashing from the other and afterward
go about our business with contentment?
On our return to Liverpool, we stayed for a few hours at Queenstown,
taking in coal, and the passengers landed that they might stretch
their legs and look about them. I also went ashore at the dear old
place which I had known well in other days, when the people were not
too grand to call it Cove, and were contented to run down from Cork
in river steamers, before the Passage railway was built. I spent a
pleasant summer there once in those times: God be with the good old
days! And now I went ashore at Queenstown, happy to feel that I
should be again in a British isle, and happy also to know that I was
once more in Ireland. And when the people came around me as they
did, I seemed to know every face and to be familiar with every
voice. It has been my fate to have so close an intimacy with
Ireland, that when I meet an Irishman abroad I always recognize in
him more of a kinsman than I do in your Englishman. I never ask an
Englishman from what county he comes, or what was his town. To
Irishmen I usually put such questions, and I am generally familiar
with the old haunts which they name. I was happy therefore to feel
myself again in Ireland, and to walk round, from Queenstown to the
river at Passage, by the old way that had once been familiar to my
feet.
Or rather I should have been happy if I had not found myself
instantly disgraced by the importunities of my friends. A legion of
women surrounded me, imploring alms, begging my honor to bestow my
charity on them for the love of the Virgin, using the most holy
names in their adjurations for half-pence, clinging to me with that
half-joking, half-lachrymose air of importunity which an Irish
beggar has assumed as peculiarly her own. There were men, too, who
begged as well as women. And the women were sturdy and fat, and,
not knowing me as well as I knew them, seemed resolved that their
importunities should be successful.
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