ell, again in the first ministry of the elder Pitt, and once
again in the ministry of Shelburne. Not that there have not at all
times been just men among the peers of Britain--like Halifax in the
days of James the Second, or a Granville, an Argyll, or a Houghton in
ours; and we cannot be indifferent to a country that produces
statesmen like Cobden and Bright; but the best bower anchor of peace
was the working class of England, who suffered most from our civil
war, but who, while they broke their diminished bread in sorrow,
always encouraged us to persevere.

The act of recognizing the rebel belligerents was concerted with
France--France, so beloved in America, on which she had conferred the
greatest benefits that one people ever conferred on another; France,
which stands foremost on the continent of Europe for the solidity of
her culture, as well as for the bravery and generous impulses of her
sons; France, which for centuries had been moving steadily in her own
way towards intellectual and political freedom. The policy regarding
further colonization of America by European powers, known commonly as
the doctrine of Monroe, had its origin in France, and if it takes any
man's name, should bear the name of Turgot. It was adopted by Louis
the Sixteenth, in the cabinet of which Vergennes was the most
important member. It is emphatically the policy of France, to which,
with transient deviations, the Bourbons, the first Napoleon, the House
of Orleans have adherred.

The late President was perpetually harassed by rumors that the Emperor
Napoleon the Third desired formally to recognize the States in
rebellion as an independent power, and that England held him back by
her reluctance, or France by her traditions of freedom, or he himself
by his own better judgment and clear perception of events. But the
republic of Mexico, on our borders, was, like ourselves, distracted by
a rebellion, and from a similar cause. The monarchy of England had
fastened upon us slavery which did not disappear with independence; in
like manner, the ecclesiastical policy established by the Spanish
council of the Indies, in the days of Charles the Fifth and Philip the
Second, retained its vigor in the Mexican republic.

The fifty years of civil war under which she had languished was due to
the bigoted system which was the legacy of monarchy, just as here the
inheritance of slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated in
civil war. As with us there