y depression to our arms, the field of the
Rebellion has steadily contracted,--that those great conflicts which
have seemed drawn games have contributed in every instance to the
general end,--that repulse has been invariably followed by overbalancing
success. They must have been aware that the contrast between the feeling
of the North and that of the South has tended to foreshadow the issue.
Upon grounds of political economy, a life-long study to them, they must
have viewed with vast suspicion the ability of a people to attain
independence, who are trammelled by a blockade which they are themselves
fain to acknowledge effectual, prevented from the usual methods of
subsistence by inferiority of population, and under dreadful
apprehensions from the existence in their midst of millions of
malcontent slaves. They have not needed a subtle knowledge of political
philosophy to teach them that during the progress of the war the Federal
idea has received new strength, which its success will make permanent,
and which only total failure can diminish. Their favorite doctrine, that
governments within a government cannot exist, and that our Constitution
is weakened by the accession of every new State and the rise of every
new disagreement, is meeting its refutation every day. A concentration
of extraordinary power at the centre does not seem to shatter every bond
of union, as they have predicted,--and the States hold together and work
together with amazing zeal for so feeble a tie as that they have
represented. In their intercourse with our Government, they have
illustrated the effect which events have had on their policy.

The course pursued by our Government seems to us to present a favorable
contrast to that pursued by Great Britain. The United States has always
manifested an anxiety to preserve amity. But the effort to preserve
amity has been dignified. We have claimed to be treated as a friendly
sovereign State. We have urged that the war should be regarded by
foreign powers as the rightful exercise of a complete nationality to
suppress insurrection. That the insurgents should be put upon a par with
the Government, that they should enjoy the benefits of an established
system, that they should have every right and every immunity as if the
quarrel were between equal powers, has seemed to us a fallacy tinctured
with deep prejudice. That feeling has been courteously, but firmly
represented by our ministers. Since it pleased the Europ