Far from being a humiliation to the Government at Washington, this act of wisdom would be one of its brightest titles to glory.  It would prove that it is not wanting in moral power, that men calumniate it in representing it as the slave of a bad democracy, incapable of resisting the clamor of the streets, and of accepting, for the safety of the country, an hour of unpopularity.

Let it believe us, its true friends, that in arresting Messrs. Mason and Slidell, it has done more for the cause of the South than Generals Beauregard or Price would have done by winning two great victories on the Potomac and in Missouri.  Messrs. Mason and Slidell are a hundred times more dangerous under the bolts of Fort Warren than in the streets of Paris or London; what their diplomacy would not certainly have obtained for them in many months, Captain Wilkes has procured for them in an hour.  See what rejoicing is taking place in the camps of the Southern partisans!  They were beginning to despair; recognition, that only chance of the defenders of slavery, seemed farther off than ever; the recent successes of the Federal army announced the commencement of a great change in affairs.  The war was carried from the suburbs of Washington to the heart of South Carolina itself; the only resources of consequence remaining, were those that might spring up during the winter from the discontent of our industrial centres.  Yet behold, suddenly, the state of affairs transformed; recognition becomes possible, the blockade is threatened, the United States are in danger of being forced to turn from the South to face a more redoubtable foe!

Really, what has Mr. Jefferson Davis done for you, that you should render him such a service!

Let us now turn to England, and tell her also the truth.

So long as England shall not treat the affair of the Trent on its own merits and with coolness, so long as she shall give ear to those falsehoods invented by passion, which envenom questions of this sort, and exclude conciliatory measures and pacific hopes, she will labor actively to destroy all that she has gloriously built upon earth.  It is impossible to imagine the consequences, fatal to every form of liberty, which such a policy would comprise within itself.

It was at first supposed that Captain Wilkes had acted by virtue of instructions, and that Mr. Lincoln’s Government had expressly ordered him to seize the Southern Commissioners on board the English vessel.  Now it is found that Captain Wilkes, returning from Africa, had no instructions of any sort.  He acted, to use his expression, “at his own risk and peril” like a true Yankee.