ritories. The fault was
acknowledged; but the matter was pressed by your Government in a temper
which we thought showed a desire to humiliate, and a want of that
readiness to accept satisfaction, when frankly tendered, which renders
the reparation of an unintentional offence easy and painless between men
of honor. These wounds had been inflamed by the unfriendly criticism of
English writers, who visited a new country without the spirit of
philosophic inquiry, and who in collecting materials for the amusement
of their countrymen sometimes showed themselves a little wanting in
regard for the laws of hospitality, as well as in penetration and in
largeness of view.

Yet beneath this outward estrangement there lay in the heart of England
at least a deeper feeling, an appeal to which was never unwelcome, even
in quarters where the love of American institutions least prevailed. I
will venture to repeat some words from a lecture addressed a short time
before this war to the University of Oxford, which at that time had
among its students an English Prince. "The loss of the American
Colonies," said the lecturer, speaking of your first Revolution, "was
perhaps in itself a gain to both countries. It was a gain, as it
emancipated commerce and gave free course to those reciprocal streams of
wealth which a restrictive policy had forbidden to flow. It was a gain,
as it put an end to an obsolete tutelage, which tended to prevent
America from learning betimes to walk alone, while it gave England the
puerile and somewhat dangerous pleasure of reigning over those whom she
did not and could not govern, but whom she was tempted to harass and
insult. A source of military strength colonies can scarcely be. You
prevent them from forming proper military establishments of their own,
and you drag them, into your quarrels at the price of undertaking their
defence. The inauguration of free trade was in fact the renunciation of
the only solid object for which our ancestors clung to an invidious and
perilous supremacy, and exposed the heart of England by scattering her
fleet and armies over the globe. It was not the loss of the Colonies,
but the quarrel, that was one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest
disaster that ever befell the English race. Who would not give up
Blenheim and Waterloo, if only the two Englands could have parted from
each other in kindness and in peace,--if our statesmen could have had
the wisdom, to say to the Americans generous