the highest legal authorities in England, Lord Lyndhurst,
declared Sir John Bowring's action, and that of the British
authorities who aided him, to be unjustifiable on any principle either
of law or reason; and Mr. Cobden, himself an old friend of Sir John
Bowring, moved in the House of Commons that "the papers which have
been laid upon the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for
the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the
'Arrow.'"

Nearly all the best men in the House of Commons--Gladstone, Roundell
Palmer, Sydney Herbert, Milner Gibson, Sir Frederick Thesiger, as well
as many of the chief Tories--supported Mr. Cobden; and the vote of
censure was carried against Lord Palmerston's government by 263 to
247. But Lord Palmerston, then the hero of the Evangelical Church
party,--"Palmerston, the true Protestant," "Palmerston, the only
Christian Prime Minister,"--knew exactly the strength of British
Christianity when it interfered with the sale of British beer, or
Indian opium, or Manchester cotton, and appealed to the shop-keeper
instincts of the British people. He dissolved Parliament; and Cobden,
Bright, Milner Gibson, W.J. Fox, Layard, and many others were left
without seats. Manchester rejected John Bright because he had spoken
in the interests of peace and honor, and condemned one of the most
cowardly, brutal, and unprovoked wars of the century.

We see the same cause at work in Ireland. One British bishop, Dr.
Thirlwall, of St. David's, had the manliness to favor Mr. Gladstone's
bill for the disestablishment of the Irish Church; but most of them
acted in this matter in direct opposition to the teachings of Him whom
they profess to worship as their God. Mr. John Bright warned the Lords
that, by throwing themselves athwart the national course, they might
meet with "accidents not pleasant to think of"; and there is no doubt
that the warning had its effect. And even now I do not think that the
people of Ireland will ever get from the House of Lords that measure
of right which even the House of Commons has unwillingly and
grudgingly, accorded to them, unless the Irishmen of America come to
their aid in a more effective manner than they have ever yet done.

Newfoundland, unlike Ireland, has few friends in the United States,
and therefore is wholly at England's mercy. What it suffered in the
past I have already told. Let us see how England has treated it in the
last few years.

It was f