e hands, and long feet, and ungainly stature;
and the British secretary of state for foreign affairs made haste to
send word through the places of Europe that the great republic was in
its agony; that the republic was no more; that a headstone was all
that remained due by the law of nations to "the late Union." But it is
written, "Let the dead bury their dead"; they may not bury the living.
Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out
government of a class, and infuse new life into the British
constitution by confiding rightful power to the people.

But while the vitality of America is indestructible, the British
government hurried to do what never before had been done by Christian
powers; what was in direct conflict with its own exposition of public
law in the time of our struggle for independence. Though the insurgent
States had not a ship in an open harbor, it invested them with all the
rights of a belligerent, even on the ocean; and this, too, when the
rebellion was not only directed against the gentlest and most
beneficent government on earth, without a shadow of justifiable
cause, but when the rebellion was directed against human nature itself
for the perpetual enslavement of a race. And the effect of this
recognition was, that acts in themselves piratical found shelter in
British courts of law. The resources of British capitalists, their
workshops, their armories, their private arsenals, their shipyards,
were in league with the insurgents, and every British harbor in the
wide world became a safe port for British ships, manned by British
sailors, and armed with British guns, to prey on our peaceful
commerce; even on our ships coming from British ports, freighted with
British products, or that had carried gifts of grain to the English
poor. The prime minister, in the House of Commons, sustained by
cheers, scoffed at the thought that their laws could be amended at our
request, so as to preserve real neutrality; and to remonstrances, now
owned to have been just, their secretary of state answered that they
could not change their laws ad infinitum.

The people of America then wished, as they always have wished, as they
still wish, friendly relations with England, and no man in England or
America can desire it more strongly than I. This country has always
yearned for good relations with England. Thrice only in all its
history has that yearning been fairly met: in the days of Hampden and
Cromw