g will it be before retaliation on England begins,
and, _when_ it begins, how will it end? Ay--_how_ will it end? It is not
to be supposed that we can long be blinded by such a flimsy humbug as a
transfer to Southern possession of these vessels 'for the Chinese
trade!' Are the English mad, demented, or besotted, that they suppose we
intend to endure such deliberate aid of our enemies? When those vessels
'for the Chinese' are afloat, and our merchants begin to suffer, let
England beware! We are not a people to stop and reason nicely on legal
points, when they are enforced in the form of fire and death. Better for
England that she weighed the iron of that fleet pound for pound with
gold, and cast it into the sea, than that she suffered it to be
launched. _Qui facit per alium, facit per se._ England is the _real_
criminal in this business, for her Government could have _prevented_ it;
and to her we shall look for the responsibility. All through America a
spirit of fierce indignation has been awakened at hearing of this
'Chinese' fleet, which will burst out ere long in a storm. We are very
far from being afraid of war--we are in it; we know what it is like--and
those who openly, brazenly, infamously, aid our enemies and make war for
them, shall also learn, let it cost what it may.

England hopes to cover the world's oceans with pirates, with murder,
rapine, and robbery--to exaggerate still more the horrors of war--and
yet deems that her commerce will escape! This is a different matter from
the affair of the Trent.

* * * * *

Don't grumble! Don't be incessantly croaking from morning to night at
the war and the administration and the generals, and everything else!
Things have gone better on the whole than you imagine, and your endless
growling is just what the traitors like. Were there no croakers there
would be no traitors.

It was growling and croaking which caused the reverses of the army of
the Potomac--sheer grumbling. Now the truth is coming out, and we are
beginning to see the disadvantages of eternal fault-finding. The truth
is that the war in the Crimea was much worse conducted than this of ours
has been--even as regards swindling by contracts--and it was so with
every other war. We have no monopoly of faults.

Now that the war is being reorganized, we would modestly suggest that a
little severity--say an occasional halter--would not be out of place as
regards deserters. There has