I do not know that our
bitterest foes in the Northern States have accused us of acting
unjustly.
It is not justice which they have looked for at our
hands, and looked for in vain - not justice, but generosity! We have
not, as they say, sympathized with them in their trouble. It seems
to me that such a complaint is unworthy of them as a nation, as a
people, or as individuals. In such a matter generosity is another
name for injustice, as it too often is in all matters. A generous
sympathy with the North would have been an ostensible and crushing
enmity to the South. We could not have sympathized with the North
without condemning the South, and telling to the world that the
South were our enemies. In ordering his own household a man should
not want generosity or sympathy from the outside; and if not a man,
then certainly not a nation. Generosity between nations must in its
very nature be wrong. One nation may be just to another, courteous
to another, even considerate to another with propriety. But no
nation can be generous to another without injustice either to some
third nation or to itself.
But though no accusation of unfairness has, as far as I am aware,
ever been made by the government of Washington against the
government of England, there can be no doubt that a very strong
feeling of antipathy to England has sprung up in America during this
war, and that it is even yet so intense in its bitterness that, were
the North to become speedily victorious in their present contest,
very many Americans would be anxious to turn their arms at once
against Canada.
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