lied other nations,-they are ready at suita- | struggle is of their making, their ruling, ble seasons to overlook or violate interna- their working: it is bone of their bone and tional obligations, to squander money, to lav- flesh of their flesh. Sooner than give it up, ish men. On foreign policy, such a nation they will spend every greenback they can never hears its opponent. It is told that its issue, and send to death every soldier they side is the right side, indisputably the right can find. Upon us the effect must be serious. side; that there is no doubt about it, that As we showed nearly four years since, as has it is subjecting itself to humiliation and to been proved since by most painful experience, loss of dignity by tolerating a discussion. our manufacturing industry never can be Even if international obligations were dinned soundly prosperous, never can be based on incessantly into its ears, a young nation, the firm laws of habitual supply and habitual anxious to win its spurs, might be likely to demand, while the civil war in America conoverlook them; but when it never hears tinues, at any rate, while it is at all such a them, when its flatterers deny them, when civil war as it now is. The cotton of the they inculcate the duty of maintaining the South will always be a supply in suspense. national honor by trampling upon others, as What cotton it may have on hand,-what well as tickle the sense of self-exaltation,-its powers of growing cotton may be in when it never hears a word that can do it good, and hears perpetually every word that can do it harm,-who can wonder that an eager nation in the pride of youth and riches should trample upon other nations,-who that knows human nature would not wonder if it were meck, conscientious, and Christian, -who would expect of it even that imperfect and mitigated morality into which old nations have been saddened and chastened by the pains of experience and by the difficulties of years? We cannot expect of the American Republic a conscience commensurate with its strength, but we fear from it an immorality proportioned to its size. Both the Union and slavery are in different ways and various degrees evils. We wish to be rid of them both. But General McClellan wished to keep both, and therefore his success would unquestionably have been a heavy augmentation even to the misfortunes of America, misfortunes already too heavy to need augmentation.

But though we rejoice that Mr. Lincoln, the anti-slavery advocate of the civil war, has prevailed over General McClellan, the pro-slavery advocate, we must remember the significant and painful lessons which that event has to teach both as to ourselves and as to America.

First, as to ourselves. The war party, the party which began the war, the party whose very life-blood is now identified with the war, has been elevated to a new four years' reign. As long as they can make the war go on, so long we may be now sure it will go on. For four years and a half, till March four years, -March, 1869,—the Republican party is fixed in power; no disaster, no change of opinion, no ebb or flow of affairs, can drive it thence. It may have to yield to events. The North may be exhausted; it may refuse to supply money; it may be unable to supply men.

The rulers at Washington, like all other rulers, must bow to results and to facts. But the war party will be the rulers. The

future, will be matters of estimate and argument,-mattere almost of guess; but that store of cotton-that power of producing cotton-will be, according to some conjecture of their magnitude or other, an element of unhealthy and depressing uncertainty; will make the cotton trade, and to some extent the other clothing trades, different from all other trades,-will prevent those trades being what they would be if America did not exist, or what they would be if we could take advantage of their existence. Nothing depresses trade like the certain presence of an uncertain element; of a force which must be important, which may be very great, which no one can pretend to measure precisely and in figures. The assured presence for a year or two longer of such a suspended agency, Lancashire and the cotton trade must endure.

But, though this is the gravest lesson which we can derive from this important event, it is hardly the greatest which Americans ought to think most of, or which an impartial philosopher, if such a person exist, would think most of. Nothing is so dangerous as to read a sermon to another nation. It always seems like forgetting our own sins to attend to other people's: it is always liable to a retort upon some analogous affair of ours; it often misses the mark, because, though the broad result is true, some local detail is missed. But, nevertheless, thought and philosophy are truthless unless they enable us to interpret events and derive teachings from what we see. And it is a lesson of events that America should be obliged to elect such a man as Mr. Lincoln in admitted default of a better to such a place as his at such a moment as this. Mr. Seward is forward to declare that it is the crisis of American history; events make it plain without his help; the president is, for practical purposed, omnipotent at this crisis; Congress is unheard of and unthought of. It is not even contended that Mr. Lincoln is a man of eminent ability. It is only said that he is a man

of common honesty, and it seems this is so rare a virtue at Washington that at their utmost need no other man can be picked out to possess it and true ability also.

pockets, they purchased from the first Napoleon the State of Louisiana with the money of the old Union for three millions sterling. Well, now, some two or three hundred thouDoubtless there are quite as many honest sand people have squatted there. Some Engpeople in America as elsewhere; in a rich, lish, some French, and some Americans have prosperous, educated community, like the taken into their heads that they will carry off North, they probably exist in greater pro- this State, and place the mouths of that great portion to the rest of mankind than in most river, the outlet of that vast country, in the other places. But the American constitution hands of a foreign State. I have said that it and political life give the nation no means of would be far easier for Essex or Kent to carry getting hold of them. From a multitude of off the mouths of the Thames and set up an causes an idea is diffused that it is needless East-Anglian kingdom than for Louisiana to to get hold of them. Cultivated Americans carry off the mouths of the Mississippi and will be found to say, " that it is unnecessary set up for an independent State. There are to have great statesmen," and a few say, " it some few hundreds of thousands in the counis better to be without them." But no idea ties of Kent and Essex; but the valley of the can well be more false. Even supposing that Mississippi will become the home of two they could conduct the course of one of the hundred millions, and this makes it infinitely greatest civil wars in history without great more impossible that the United States should ability even supposing they could manage allow the mouths of the Mississippi to be one of the vastest executive administrations carried off than that England should suffer without great ability, that ability would still the mouth of the Thames to be taken away. be of the first necessity. It is absolutely Why should they do so when they can prenecessary to foreign nations. European fa- vent it by the smallest expense, and retain vor, which the Northerners anxiously desire, possession of it; for a few gunboats could -English sympathy, which they desire still easily blockade the outlets of that river? more, cannot be attracted by inean rulers. Even if the North cannot conquer Louisiana, For ages a certain greatness in speaking has they might cut the dikes above New Orleans belonged to the rulers of great States, and and drown the whole of that State. In saying the Old World expects it even if the New this I am speaking of the motives and possiWorld can dispense with it. Mr. Lincoln bilities, and not of wishes or feelings of my has been honest, but he has been vulgar; own. If you think that Mr. Jefferson Davis and there is no greater external misfortune- would be contented with the Cotten States and there are few greater external misfortunes-not be allowed to extend into Texas, he would than for a great nation to be exclusively rep-not thank you. They are fighting in the resented at a crisis far beyond previous, and South to carry slavery beyond Taxas into the perhaps beyond future, example, by a person whose words are mean even when his actions are important.

vast regions of Central America. Now, I say that if the geographical features of the country had been looked at by the ruling classes and those who write in the newspapers they would not have arrived at a conviction of the success of the Southern side. There Mr. Cobden on the United States of America. is a newspaper in London read by everybody, Speech at Rochdale, 23 November. but I have marvelled at the ignorance which Now, with regard to the issue itself, I told it has betrayed of the geographical features of you two years ago that I did not believe that this territory. In one article recently there I should live to see two independent States was a river of five hundred and eighty miles on that continent of North America. I have of internal navigation, to which the largest repeated that assertion since, and I now come river in this country is a mere rivulet, and to confirm that opinion, but with far more it was made to turn up hill any number of emphasis than I have ever expressed before. I do not believe that that country in my day will ever be separated. I look upon the geographical difficulties in the way of separation to be absolutely insurmountable. Now there is a real danger in the ignorance Take the case of the Mississippi; that river of what, for want of a better term, I may with its tributaries flows through twenty call the ruling classes of this country,-there thousand miles of navigable waters into the is a real danger from their total ignorance of Gulf of Mexico, and in order that the United everything relating to America, and you may States might have its mouths in their own get into difficulties from this ignorance which occupation, that they might have, as it were, may cost much national dishonor to escape the keys of their own doors in their own from. If I were a rich man, I would endow

miles into another river, and these two rivers cemented were made to fall into a third river, into which neither really pours a drop of

water.

a professor's chair at Oxford and Cambridge superior advantages; but to bring up young to instruct the undergraduates of those uni- men from college with no knowledge of the versities in American history. I would un-country in which the great drama of modern dertake to say, and I speak advisedly, that I politics and national life is now being worked will take any undergraduate now at Oxford out, who are ignorant of a country like or Cambridge, and I will bring him to a map America, but who, whether it be for good or of the United States, and ask him to put his for evil, must exercise more influence in this finger on Chicago, and I will undertake to country than any other class,-to bring up say that he does not go within one thousand the young destitute of such knowledge, and miles of it. Yet Chicago is a place of one to place them in responsible positions in the hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, from government, is, I say, imperilling its best inwhich one to two millions of people in our own terests; and earnest remonstrances ought to country are annually fed. These young gen- be made against such a state of education by tlemen know all about the geography of an- every public man who values in the slightest cient Greece and Egypt. Now I know I degree the welfare of his country. You shall be pelted with Greek and Latin quota- know my opinions with respect to the future tions for what I am going to say. When I of America. I don't desire to carry them was at Athens I sallied out one summer out, and I should not have said so much if so morning to seek the famous river, the Ilis- much had not been said on the other side. sus, and after walking some hundred yards I want nothing but neutrality. But if we or so up what appeared to be the bed of a are to have perfect neutrality on this subject, mountain torrent, I came upon a number of let us try, for Heaven's sake, to have a little Athenian laundresses, and I found that they more temper in the discussion of a question had dammed up this famous classical river, for which, happily for us, we are not responand were using every drop of its water for sible. I am mute and silenced when I recoltheir own sanitary purposes. Why, then, lect that I have been protesting against war should not these young gentlemen who know ever since I came into public life; but I have all about the geography of the Ilissus know never succeeded in preventing wars all over also something about the geography of the the world. I could not say to America, Mississippi? I am a great advocate of cul-"Why do you insist on carrying on this civil ture of every kind, and I say when I find a man like Professor Goldwin Smith or Professor Rogers, who, in addition to profound classical learning, have a vast knowledge of modern affairs, and who, as well as scholars, are profound thinkers,-these are men whom I know to have a vast superiority over me, and I bow to them with reverence for their

war?" I should at once be subject to the reply, "Why do you not take the beam out of your own eye before you take the mote out of ours?" But I fear that the advocates of all these wars, against which I have always been vainly protesting, are now turning up the whites of their eyes as if they had been Quakers from their birth.

AN ANTICIPATED CALAMITY.-On the departure of Bishop Selwyn for his diocese, New Zea land, Sydney Smith, when taking his leave of him, said: Good-by, my dear Selwyn; I hope you will not disagree with the man who eats you!"

In the naming of the modern streets of Paris! recourse has been had to the most celebrated names that occur in the fine arts. Whereas in a former age titles which were suggestive of war and victory were the most prominent at the street corners, there are now to be read the names of Quinault, Marmontel, Herold, Beethoven, Donizetti, Bellini, Lesueur, Cimarosa, Mehul, Wilhelm, Orlando Lasso, Beranger, Musset, Lesage, A DISAPPOINTING SUBSCRIBER.-To all letters Petrarque, Talma, Poussin, Raphael, Titian, Ru- soliciting his " subscription to anything, Lord bens, Greuze, David, Scheffer, Ingres, Vernet, Erskine had a regular form of reply: namely, Decamps, Visconti, and Erard. Mozart, Haydn," Sir, I feel much honored by your application Boieldieu, Meyerbeer, Corneille, Rousseau, D'- to me, and beg to subscribe" (here the reader Alembert, Gluck, Gretry, and others, are to fol- had to turn over leaf) "myself, your very obelow next.-Orchestra. dient servant," etc.