our times.

What I say here, others will make it their business to say on the other
side of the channel; there have been, there will be, liberal and
Christian voices there, who will not fear to protest against the
incitements of passion. We have heard little yet except the bells of the
manufactories; other sounds will soon make themselves heard; the great
party which, in abolishing slavery and combating the slave trade, has
won the chief title of honor in England--this great party, I think, is
not dead. It is time for it to give signs of life.

As to America, its friends are awaiting its final resolutions with an
anxiety which I scarcely dare depict. Never was graver question placed
before a government. The whole future is contained in it. If she be
sufficiently mistress of herself to grant what is asked and to admit a
reparation, even though it be excessive, of the fault evidently
committed in her name, she will have the approbation and esteem of all
true hearts. Her ship--the ship which brings, back the Commissioners
--will be welcomed with acclamations to our shores, and it will
be plainly seen that the United States in yielding much is neither
weakened nor humiliated.

Ah! the affair would he so easily arranged, if both sides desired it! On
both sides are men so worthy to effect a reconciliation for the glory of
our times and the happiness of humanity! On both sides are nations so
well fitted to understand and to love each other! Must we despair then
of the progress of the spirit of peace? Must we look with our own eyes
upon English vessels employed in ensuring the success of the champions
of slavery? Must we veil our head with our mantle?

A. DE GASPARIN.

VALLEYRES, (SWITZERLAND,) _December_ 5, 1861.

P.S.--I wish to add here a single observation: I have not pretended to
exhaust, in this rapid study, the decisions which might be borrowed from
English authors, and which would be of a kind to be appealed to by
America. Sir William Scott, for example, (see C. Robinson, p. 467,) says
in express terms: "_You may stop the ambassador of your enemy."_ I have
been careful not to draw the conclusion from this, on my part, that
Captain Wilkes was right in acting as he did; I simply infer from it
that the case is by no means a hanging one, and that in stopping the
Commissioners and their papers without stopping the ship and turning her
from her course, he yielded perhaps (let us be just to all) to the
desire of not exp