eavy national debt, with
augmented authority in the central government. John Bull's ill-humor
against the "Yankees" has been in vigorous exercise these four years,
and has assumed fair latitude for growling itself out: it has been
palpably wrong in some of its inferences; for the bubble of Democracy
has _not_ burst, nor the Republic been split up into two or three
federations, nor the abolition of slavery been a mere pretext and
hypocrisy. Englishmen, with their practical turn, and candid frankness
towards those to whom they have done less than right, may be expected in
the future to look upon the States with a degree of confidence and
cordiality long deplorably absent. The events of the war have, in the
long run, compelled even the hostile party to respect the Unionists and
their government: the plague of slavery is fast going, and, with its
disappearance, will relieve Englishmen from either (as they used to do)
reprobating the Americans as abettors of and trucklers to the barbaric
institution, or else (as they have been doing of late) from inventing
half-sincere excuses for that same institution, to subserve partisan
feelings. As matters stand at present in the United States, there
appears to be only one contingency which would again rouse into a fierce
flame the glowing embers of pro-Southern sentiment among Englishmen, and
restore Southerners to the position of angels of light, and Northerners
to that of angels of darkness, in British imaginations. This contingency
is harshness in the treatment and trial of ex-President Davis, and more
especially his execution as a traitor. Southern sympathizers declare
that such a proceeding would be an abominable crime: the steadiest, most
thorough, and most confiding adherents of the North believe, that,
whatever else it might be, it would, at any rate, be most
deplorable,--an ugly blight-spot upon laurels won arduously and
gloriously, and as yet nobly worn.

* * * * *

I have now, in however cursory or limping a mode, gone over the ground I
proposed to cover. The main conclusion of all may be summarized in the
briefest terms thus. A slight majority of the whole British nation
probably sided with the North, and that chiefly on anti-slavery grounds:
a great majority of the more influential classes, certainly, sided with
the South, and that chiefly on general grounds of antagonism to the
United States. For anything I have said which may possibly soun