nsiderations, should this Republic be broken up into half a dozen
feeble and quarrelsome confederacies. But with the United States in
existence, and powerful enough to command respect, he would not dare to
seek the overthrow of the British Empire. We could not permit him to
head a crusade for England's annihilation, no matter what might be our
feeling toward the mother-land. A just regard for our own interests
would impel us to side with her, should she be placed in serious danger.
Such was, substantially, President Jefferson's opinion, sixty years ago,
when the first Napoleon was so bent upon the conquest of England; and we
think that his views are applicable to the existing circumstances of the
world. Where should we have been now, if England had quarrelled with and
been conquered by Napoleon III.? We must distinguish between the English
nation and Englishmen,--between the English Government, which has,
perhaps, borne itself as favorably toward us as it could, and that
English aristocracy which has, as a rule, exhibited so strong a desire
to have us extinguished, even while it has repeatedly refused to take
steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to
understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being
placed in great danger. The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks
of Englishmen is to be found in success. That answer would be complete;
and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said
of us by foreigners? The bitterest attacks can never disturb the dead.

One cause of the change of England's course toward us is to be found in
our own change of moral position. The President's Emancipation
Proclamation went into effect on the first of January, 1863; and from
that time the anti-slavery people of England have been on our side; and
their influence is great, and bears upon the supporters of the
Palmerston Ministry with peculiar force. Had our Government persisted in
the pro-slavery policy which it favored down to the autumn of 1862, it
is not at all unlikely that the English intervention party would have
been strong enough to compel their country to go with France in her
mediation scheme,--and the step from mediation to intervention would
have been but a short one; but the committal of the North to
anti-slavery views, and the union of their cause with that of
emancipation, threw the English Abolitionists, men who largely represent
England's moral wort