England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to
act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical
intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded
upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the
world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism
and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to
Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of
whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe,
and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has
been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of
humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the
deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not
always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there
could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid
claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very
proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the
North.

Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and
further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing
the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to
be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and
idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain
course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in
their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact
with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and
this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America:
'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of
your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long _in Italy
that I have become an American_.' We have had nothing but abuse from the
English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and
Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of
good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will
record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable
struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish
motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would
have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a
speedier conclusion,