861. Only seven years
before, we had gratuitously offended four countries at once. Three of
our foreign ministers (two of them from the South) had met at Ostend
and later at Aix in the interests of extending slavery, and there, in
a joint manifesto, had ordered Spain to sell us Cuba, or we would take
Cuba by force. One of the three was our minister to Spain. Spain had
received him courteously as the representative of a nation with whom she
was at peace. It was like ringing the doorbell of an acquaintance, being
shown into the parlor and telling him he must sell you his spoons or you
would snatch them. This doesn't incline your neighbor to like you. But,
as has been said, Mr. Adams was an American who did know how to behave,
and thereby served us well in our hour of need.

We remember the Alabama and our English enemies, we forget Bright, and
Cobden, and all our English friends; but Lincoln did not forget them.
When a young man, a friend of Bright's, an Englishman, had been caught
here in a plot to seize a vessel and make her into another Alabama, John
Bright asked mercy for him; and here are Lincoln's words in consequence:
"whereas one Rubery was convicted on or about the twelfth day of
October, 1863, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the
District of California, of engaging in, and giving aid and comfort
to the existing rebellion against the Government of this Country, and
sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of ten thousand
dollars;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is of the immature age of twenty
years, and of highly respectable parentage;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is a subject of Great Britain, and
his pardon is desired by John Bright, of England;

"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of
the United States of America, these and divers other considerations me
thereunto moving, and especially as a public mark of the esteem held
by the United States of America for the high character and steady
friendship of the said John Bright, do hereby grant a pardon to the said
Alfred Rubery, the same to begin and take effect on the twentieth day of
January 1864, on condition that he leave the country within thirty days
from and after that date."

Thus Lincoln, because of Bright; and because of a word from Bright to
Charles Sumner about the starving cotton-spinners, Americans sent from
New York three ships with flour for those faithful English friends of