ier escaped to France, guarded by the
fond loyalty of men and women who defied alike torture and temptation.
While he lived, or the family remained, the danger continued to threaten
England, and the heart of Scotland to be fevered with a secret hope.
The old conflict of nationalities had been terribly envenomed by the
cruelties of Cumberland and the license of the conquering troops. There
was the same temptation ever lurking at the ear of France to whisper new
assaults upon England. Ireland was held as a subjugated province, and
was in a state of chronic discontent. To either wing of the British
empire, alliance with, nay, submission to France, was considered
preferable to remaining in the Union.

Thus far we have been looking at probabilities from the stand-point of
their times. There is a curious parallelism in the essentials of that
conflict with the present attempt to elevate King Cotton to the throne
of this Republic. It is close enough to show that the same great
rules have hitherto governed human action with unerring fidelity. The
Government displayed at the outset the same vacillation; the people were
apparently as thoroughly indifferent to the Hanoverian cause as the
Northern merchants, before the fall of Sumter, to the prosperity of
Lincoln's administration. The Russell of 1745, writing to the French
court his views of the public sentiment of England and especially of
London, probably gave an account of it not very dissimilar to that
which the Russell of 1861 wrote to the London "Times" after his first
encounter with the feeling of New York. There were doubtless the same
assurances on the part of confident partisans that the whole framework
of the British government would crumble at the first attack. There were,
too, the same extravagant alarms, the same wild misrepresentations, the
same volunteer enthusiasm on the part of loyal subjects a little
later on in the history. There was on the part of the rebels the same
confidence in the justice of their cause, the same utter blindness to
results, as in the devotees of Slavery. There was then, as now, an
educated and cultivated set of plotters, moved by personal ambition,
swaying with almost absolute power the minds of an ignorant and
passionate class. It was the combat so often begun in the world, yet so
inevitably ending always in the same way, between misguided enthusiasm
and the great public conviction of the value of order, security, and
peace.

The enmity s