ly and at the right season,
'You are Englishmen, like ourselves; be, for your own happiness and for
our honor, like ourselves, a nation'? But English statesmen, with all
their greatness, have seldom known how to anticipate necessity; too
often the sentence of history on their policy has been, that it was
wise, just, and generous, but too late. Too often have they waited for
the teaching of disaster. Time will heal this, like other wounds. In
signing away his own empire, George III. did not sign away the empire of
English liberty, of English law, of English literature, of English
religion, of English blood, or of the English tongue. But though the
wound will heal,--and that it may heal ought to be the earnest desire of
the whole English name,--history can never cancel the fatal page which
robs England of half the glory and half the happiness of being the
mother of a great nation." Such, I say, was the language addressed to
Oxford in the full confidence that it would be well received.

And now all these clouds seemed to have fairly passed away. Your
reception of the Prince of Wales, the heir and representative of George
III., was a perfect pledge of reconciliation. It showed that beneath a
surface of estrangement there still remained the strong tie of blood.
Englishmen who loved the New England as well as the Old were for the
moment happy in the belief that the two were one again. And, believe me,
joy at this complete renewal of our amity was very deeply and widely
felt in England. It spread far even among the classes which have shown
the greatest want of sympathy for you in the present war.

England has diplomatic connections--she has sometimes diplomatic
intrigues--with the Great Powers of Europe. For a real alliance she must
look here. Strong as is the element of aristocracy in her Government,
there is that in her, nevertheless, which makes her cordial
understandings with military despotisms little better than smothered
hate. With you she may have a league of the heart. We are united by
blood. We are united by a common allegiance to the cause of freedom. You
may think that English freedom falls far short of yours. You will allow
that it goes beyond any yet attained by the great European nations, and
that to those nations it has been and still is a light of hope. I see it
treated with contempt here. It is not treated with contempt by
Garibaldi. It is not treated with contempt by the exiles from French
despotism, who ar