h
ministers have placed their country on the side of those men who have
revolted in America because they saw that they could no longer make use
of slavery to misgovern the Union; and we must wait to see how far they
are to be supported by the opinion of that country, before a distinction
can be made between the ministers and the people. Left to themselves,
and unbiased by any of those selfish motives that go to make up the sum
of politics, we have not the slightest doubt that the English people, in
the proportion of ten to one, would decide in behalf of the supporters
of freedom in this country; but we are by no means so sure that the
ministers would not be sustained, were they to plunge their country into
a third American War, and sustained, too, in sending fleets to raise
our blockade of the American coast of Africa, and armies to fight the
battles of Slavery in Virginia and the Carolinas, where British officers
stole negroes eighty years ago, and sent them to the West India markets,
and found that that kind of commerce flourished well in war. A war for
the maintenance of American slavery, and to secure for slaveholders
the full and perfect enjoyment of all the "rights" of their "peculiar"
property, would be no worse than was the war which was waged against our
ancestors of the Revolution, or than those wars which were carried on
against Republican and Imperial France, ostensibly for the preservation
of order, but really for the restoration of a despotism which cannot now
find a single apologist on earth. There is often a wide distinction to
be made between a nation and its government, as our own recent history
but too deplorably proves; and the men who govern England may be enabled
to do that now which has more than once been done by their predecessors,
array their country in support of evil against that country's sense and
wishes. We should be prepared for this, and should look the evil that
threatens us fairly in the face, as the first thing to be done to
prevent it from getting beyond the threatening-point. The words of Sir
Boyle Roche, that the best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump, are
strikingly applicable to our condition. If we would not have a foreign
war on our hands before we shall have settled with the rebels, we should
make it very clear to foreigners that to fight with us would be a sort
of business that would be sure not to pay.

That war may follow from the course which England has elected to pu