spirit belonging to a
pro-slavery America. "Why do you desire the dissolution of the Union?"
asked one Englishman of another. "Oh, I have no reason, except that the
Americans are so bounceable I want to see them humbled." But we were the
weakest when Slavery made us so loud-mouthed and vaporing; we shall be
strongest when the cause of our boasting has disappeared. When a country
is fully conscious of the principles that belong to it, and sees them
cleansed with her children's blood, through eyes that stand full with
tears, she will invite, but no longer threaten; and the flag which she
once waved in the face of all mankind to exasperate will rain persuasion
as often as it is unfurled.

But it will be a long time before the Englishman appreciates the altered
condition of this country and resigns his prejudices, in consequence of
another element in this un-American feeling, namely, insular ignorance.
Among the contraband articles which are with difficulty smuggled into
any point of the English coast is an accurate knowledge of the polity
and condition of another country. Indifference is the coastguard which
protects, without moving, every inlet and harbor. The Englishman is
surprised, if all the world is not intimately acquainted with the
British Constitution, which is not a written document, but a practical
result that appears in all the administrative forms of the country, and
can be studied only on the spot; but he will not take the trouble to
inquire into the relation which the separate States bear to the Federal
government; and he seems prevented by some congenital deficiency from
understanding how the latter is the direct result of the independence of
the former. The question he asks most frequently is, "Why has not an
independent State the right to secede?" He is infected by nature with
Mr. Calhoun's fallacy. You cannot make a Tory understand that powers are
derived from the consent of the governed, and that the consent is itself
an institution. "What becomes of State rights?" he asks. And when you
reply, that the concentred function of each State is contained within a
diffused popular will whose centre is at Washington, and that
thirty-four concentrations of this kind are nothing more than
thirty-four general conveniences, he takes you slowly by the button,
looks pityingly in your face, and says, "That is a Northern crotchet,
which this civil war has come to cure," and then he leaves you. It is in
vain that you sh