potism, she has with marvellous celerity turned to
the inthralment of oppressed races. Maxim has superseded maxim, until
her code of international law is a bewildering complication of anomaly
and contradiction. To humble her rivals by every means, and to encourage
the efforts of a people striving for freedom only when decided advantage
would accrue to herself, has been her constant policy. This is true of
the general tone of her successive cabinets, of the press, and of those
politicians who have by comfortable doctrines most successfully gained
the public ear.

The classes who look at questions of policy with an eye to expediency
are, the leading statesmen of both parties, who regard as the proper end
of their labors the interests of Great Britain, and the
business-community, who judge of every political event by the manner in
which it affects their pockets. There are two other classes, who take a
higher view,--those who are conservative and fearful of innovation, and
those who believe in the progressive tendency of the Anglo-Saxon. Within
the last quarter of a century, the public opinion of England has been
undergoing a great change, especially that part of it which is
influenced by the lower-middle class. The people have been growing up to
the adoption of liberal principles of government. The Reform Bill of
1832 was a great stride in that direction; and the measures which have
followed upon it have widened the observation of the masses, made the
sense of political wrong quicker, and the appreciation of a free system
much more vivid. As a natural result, the attention of this class has
been drawn toward America, as the exponent of a government before which
all men are equal,--and so it is, that, as the Rebellion goes on, we
receive weekly evidence that the sober, honest thought of English
opinion is with us of the North. The class to which we refer, if it is
not now, will very shortly be, the governing element. The tendency is
irresistibly that way; the signs of its growing power are daily more and
more manifest. That it should be deeply interested in the perpetuity of
American institutions, as affecting its own position, is natural. In the
failure of man's self-governing capacity here, where every circumstance
has been favorable to its exercise, the rising spirit of a broader
liberty in England must foresee the death-blow to its own hopes. Our
failure will not be fatal to us alone; it will involve the fate of the
mil