shman than
one of our States. He lives on an island which is to him larger than all
the rest of the world, though any one starting from the centre of it, on
a fast horse, unless he crossed the border into Scotland, could scarcely
ride in any direction twenty-four hours without getting overboard.

To the actual ignorance or obfuscation of mind of the majority of the
English people, as regards our country and its institutions, we are
doubtless to refer much of the ill-toned and seemingly unfriendly
comments made upon our affairs in their organs. Thus, it is intimated
to us by many English writers, that they regard the North now as
simply undertaking to patch up a Union founded and sustained by mean
compromises, an object which has already led us into many humiliating
concessions,--and that the moment we announce that we are striking a
blow for Liberty, we shall have their sympathy without stint or measure.
No Englishman who really understood our affairs would talk in that way.
One of the chief lures which instigated and encouraged the Southern
rebellion was the assurance, adroitly insinuated by the leading traitors
into their duped followers, that opposition by the rest of the country
to their schemes would take the form of an anti-slavery crusade, in
which form the opposition would be put down by the combined force of
those who did not belong to the Republican party. They were deceived.
Opposition to them took the form of a rallying by all parties to the
defence of the Constitution, the maintenance of the Union. For any
anti-slavery zeal to have attempted to divert the aroused patriotism of
the land to a breach of one of its fundamental constitutional provisions
would have been treacherous and futile. The majority of our enlisted
patriotic soldiers would have laid down their arms. If the leadings of
Providence shall direct the thickening strife into an exterminating
crusade against slavery, doubtless our patriots will wait on Providence.
But we could not have started in our stern work avowing that as an
object of our own. And as to the meanness of our concessions and
compromises for Union, we have to consider what woes and wrongs that
Union has averted. Has England no discreditable passages in her own
Parliamentary history? Have her attempts at governing large masses of
men, Christian and heathen, Roman Catholic and Protestant, and of all
sects, privileged and oppressed, never led her into any truckling or
tyrannical leg