illions more out of
the United States exchequer, will they be richer or more inclined to
pay debts, or less willing to evade them, or more popular with their
creditors, or more likely to get money from men whom they deliberately
announce that they will cheat? I have not followed the Herald on the
"stone-ship" question--that great naval victory appears to me not less
horrible and wicked than suicidal. Block the harbors for ever; destroy
the inlets of the commerce of the world; perish cities,--so that we
may wreak an injury on them. It is the talk of madmen, but not the less
wicked. The act injures the whole Republic: but it is perpetrated. It is
to deal harm to ages hence; but it is done. The Indians of old used to
burn women and their unborn children. This stone-ship business is Indian
warfare. And it is performed by men who tell us every week that they
are at the head of civilization, and that the Old World is decrepit, and
cruel, and barbarous as compared to theirs.

The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and threaten to
confiscate trust-money, say that when the war is over, and the South
is subdued, then the turn of the old country will come, and a direful
retribution shall be taken for our conduct. This has been the cry all
through the war. "We should have conquered the South," says an American
paper which I read this very day, "but for England." Was there ever such
puling heard from men who have an army of a million, and who turn and
revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have
from the war of Troy? Or is it an outcry made with malice prepense? And
is the song of the New York Times a variation of the Herald tune?--"The
conduct of the British in folding their arms and taking no part in the
fight, has been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war,
and occasioned a prodigious expense on our part. Therefore, as we have
British property in our hands, we &c. &c." The lamb troubled the water
dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous indignation, "confiscated" him.
Of course we have heard that at an undisturbed time Great Britain would
never have dared to press its claim for redress. Did the United States
wait until we were at peace with France before they went to war with
us last? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he confesses to be just,
until he himself was menaced with war? How long were the Southern
gentlemen kept in prison? What caused them to be set free? and