spiracy, has been paid us grudgingly,
tardily, sparingly, while our debt, as in the case of the Rebel
emissaries, has been extorted fiercely, swiftly, and to the last
farthing. We have recognized a change, it is true, ever since Earl
Russell gave the hint that our cause was more popular in England than
that of the South. We have gratefully accepted the friendly acts already
alluded to. Better late than not at all. But the past cannot be undone.
British "neutrality" has strengthened the arms that have been raised
against our national life, and winged the bloody messengers that have
desolated our households. Still, every act of justice which has even a
show of good-will in it is received only too graciously by a people
which has known what it is to be deserted by its friends in the hour of
need. Whatever be the motives of the altered course of the British
Government,--an awakened conscience, or a series of "Federal"
successes,--Mr. Sumner's arguments, or General Gillmore's long-range
practice,--a more careful study of the statistics of Slavery, or of the
lists of American iron-clad steamers,--we welcome it at once; we take
the offered hand, if not with warm pressure, at least with decent
courtesy. We only regret that forbearance and good offices, and that
moral influence which would have been almost as important as an
offensive and defensive alliance, had not come before the flower of our
youth was cut down in the battle-field, and mourning and misery had
entered half the families of the land.

The British _aristocracy_, with all its dependent followers, cannot help
being against us. The bearing which our success would have on its
interests is obvious enough, and we cannot wonder that the instinct of
self-preservation opens its eyes to the remote consequences which will
be likely to flow from the continued and prosperous existence of the
regenerated, self-governing Union. The privileged classes feel to our
labor- and money-saving political machinery just as the hand-weavers
felt to the inventor and introducers of the power-loom. The simple fact
is, that, if a great nation like ours can govern itself, they are not
needed, and Nobility has a nightmare of Jews going about the streets
with half a dozen coronets on their heads, one over another, like so
many old beavers. What can we expect of the law-spinning heir-loom
owners, but that they should wish to break this new-fangled machine, and
exterminate its contrivers? The righ