eer from Pensacola could seize
an English ship that should be engaged in bringing arras to New York or
Philadelphia. Thus are the two "parties" to the war placed on the same
footing by the decision of the English Government, though the one party
is a nation having treaties with England, and engaged in maintaining the
cause of order, and the other is only a band of conspirators, who have
established their power through the institution of a system of terror,
much after the fashion of Monsieur Robespierre and his associates, whose
conduct was so offensive to all Britons seven-and-sixty years ago. But
Montgomery is much farther from England than Paris, and the French had
no cotton to tempt the British statesmen of 1793-4 to strike an account
between manufacturing and morality. Distance and time appear to have
united their powers to make things appear fair in the eyes of Russell
that inexpressibly horrible to those of "the monster Pitt."

The Royal Proclamation forbids Englishmen affording the Union assistance
in any way. No British gunmaker can sell us a weapon, no English
merchant can use one of his ships to send us the cannon and rifles we
have purchased in his country, and no English subject of any degree can
lawfully carry a despatch for our Government. Never was there--a
more forbidding state-paper put forth; and the arid language of the
Proclamation is rendered doubly disagreeable by the purpose for which
it is employed. We are placed by its terms on the level of the men of
Montgomery, who must be vastly pleased to see that they are held in as
much esteem in England as are the constitutional authorities of the
United States. If we were to seek for a contrast to this extraordinary
document, we should find it in the proclamation put forth by our own
Government at the time of the "Canadian Rebellion," and in which it was
_not_ sought to convey the impression that we had the right to regard
rebels and loyalists as men entitled to the same treatment at our hands.
It is a source of pride to Americans, that nothing in their own history
can be quoted in justification of the cold-blooded conduct of the
British Government.

It has been sought to defend the action of England by referring to
precedents. We are reminded by Lord John Russell of the acknowledgment
of the Greeks as belligerents by England; and others have pointed to her
acknowledgment of the Belgians, and of those Spanish--Americans who had
revolted against the rule