ng all that has passed; why not
the two nations?

I have not presumed, and shall not presume, to touch on any question
that has arisen or may arise between the Executive Government of my
country and the Executive Government of yours. In England, Liberals have
not failed to plead for justice to you, and, as we thought, at the same
time, for the maintenance of English honor. But I will venture to make,
in conclusion, one or two brief remarks as to the general temper in
which these questions should be viewed.

In the first place, when great and terrible issues hang upon our acts,
perhaps upon our words, let us control our fancies and distinguish
realities from fictions. There hangs over every great struggle, and
especially over every civil war, a hot and hazy atmosphere of excited
feeling which is too apt to distort all objects to the view. In the
French Revolution, men were suspected of being objects of suspicion, and
sent to the guillotine for that offence. The same feverish and delirious
fancies prevailed as to the conduct of other nations. All the most
natural effects of a violent revolution--the depreciation of the
assignats, the disturbance of trade, the consequent scarcity of
food--were ascribed by frantic rhetoricians to the guineas of Pitt,
whose very limited amount of secret-service money was quite inadequate
to the performance of such wonders. When a foreign nation has given
offence, it is turned by popular imagination into a fiend, and its
fiendish influence is traced with appalling clearness in every natural
accident that occurs. I have heard England accused of having built the
Chicago Wigwam, with the building of which she had as much to do as with
the building of the Great Pyramid. I have heard it insinuated that her
policy was governed by her share in the Confederate Cotton-Loan. The
Confederate Cotton-Loan is, I believe, four millions and a half. There
is an English nobleman whose estates are reputed to be worth a larger
sum. "She is very great," says a French writer, "that odious England."
Odious she may be, but she is great,--too great to be bribed to baseness
by a paltry fee.

In the second place, let us distinguish hostile acts, of which an
account must of course be demanded, from mere words, which great
nations, secure of their greatness, may afford to let pass. Your
President knows the virtue of silence; but silence is so little the
system on either side of the water, that in the general flux of r