waste
of blood, subversion of your laws and liberties, and the destruction of
your own prosperity and that of the nations whose interests are bound up
with yours. This belief they maintain with as little of ill-feeling
towards you as men can have towards those who obstinately disregard
their advice. And, after all, though you may have found the wisest as
well as the bravest counsellors in your own hearts, he need not be your
enemy who somewhat timidly counsels you against civil war. Civil war is
a terrible thing,--terrible in the passions which it kindles, as well as
in the blood which it sheds,--terrible in its present effects, and
terrible in those which it leaves behind. It can be justified only by
the complete victory of the good cause. And Englishmen, at the
commencement of this civil war, if they were wrong in thinking the
victory of the good cause hopeless, were not wrong in thinking it
remote. They were not wrong in thinking it far more remote than you did.
Years of struggle, of fear, of agony, of desolated homes, have passed
since your statesmen declared that a few months would bring the
Rebellion to an end. In justice to our people, put the question to
yourselves,--if at the outset the veil which hid the future could have
been withdrawn, and the conflict which really awaited you, with all its
vicissitudes, its disasters, its dangers, its sacrifices, could have
been revealed to your view, would you have gone into the war? To us,
looking with anxious, but less impassioned eyes, the veil was half
withdrawn, and we shrank back from the prospect which was revealed. It
was well for the world, perhaps, that you were blind; but it was
pardonable in us to see.

We now come to the working-men of England, the main body of our people,
whose sympathy you would not the less prize, and whom you would not the
less shrink from assailing without a cause, because at present the
greater part of them are without political power,--at least of a direct
kind. I will not speak of the opinions of our peasantry, for they have
none. Their thoughts are never turned to a political question. They
never read a newspaper. They are absorbed in the struggle for daily
bread, of which they have barely enough for themselves and their
children. Their condition, in spite of all the benevolent effort that is
abroad among us, is the great blot of our social system. Perhaps, if the
relation between the two countries remains kindly, the door of hope may