ual, growing, and peaceful interests.
And while it had become a rhetorical truism with English historians
and statesmen, that relations with the independent Republic were
stronger, safer, and more valuable than those of the old colonial
connection, her own principles of constitutional liberty were re-
invigorated by the skill and the breadth with which they were
applied and administered by her own children in a new country.
England could not but know that all this was due to the Union,--
the Union which had concentrated the weakness of scattered States
into a government that protected the citizen and welcomed the
immigrant, which carried law and liberty to the pioneer on the
remotest border, which had made of provincial villages centres of
wealth and civilization that would not have discredited the capitals
of older nations, and which above all had created a Federal
representative government whose successful working might teach
England herself how to hold together the ample colonies that still
formed the outposts of her Empire.

More than all, a Cabinet, every member of which by personal relation
of tradition connection belonged to the great liberal party that
felt the achievement of Emancipation to be a part of its historic
glory, should have realized that no diminution of a rival, no
monopoly of commerce, could bring to England any compensation for
the establishment of a slave-holding empire upon the central waters
of the world.

With this natural expectation the Government in less than sixty
days after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, sent its minister to London,
confident that he would at least be allowed to present to the
British Government for friendly consideration, the condition and
policy of the Republic before any positive action should disturb
the apparently amicable relations of the two countries. Mr. Charles
Francis Adams, who was selected for this important duty, was
instructed to explain to the British Government that the peculiar
relation of the States to the Federal Government, and the reticence
and reservations consequent upon a change of administration, had
hitherto restrained the action of the President in the formation
and declaration of his policy; that without foreign interference
the condition of affairs still afforded reasonable hope of a
satisfactory solution; and especially that it was necessary, if
there existed a sincere desire to avoid wrong and injury to the
United States, for foreign powe