Napoleon I., and which led to the contest of 1812,—­a contest which Franklin had predicted, and which he said would be our War of Independence, as that of 1775-83 had been our War of Revolution.  The same ignorance of America, and the same disposition to insult, to annoy, and to injure Americans, that were so common under the ministries of Pitt, Portland, and Perceval, and which move both our mirth and our indignation when we read of them long after the tormentors and the tormented have gone to their last repose, are exhibited by the Palmerston Ministry,—­though it is but justice to Lord Palmerston to say, that he has borne himself more manfully toward us than have his associates.  England treats us as she would not dare to treat any European power, making an exception in our case to her general policy, which has been, since 1815, to truckle before her contemporaries.  She has crouched before France repeatedly, when she had much better ground for fighting her than she now has for taking preliminary steps to fight us.  We are not entitled to the same treatment that she thinks is due to the nations of the continent of Europe.  She cannot rid herself of the feeling that we still are colonists, and that the rules which apply to her intercourse with old nations cannot apply to her intercourse with us, the United States having been a portion of the British Empire within the recollection of persons yet living.  No sooner, therefore, had a state of things arisen here that seemed to warrant a renewal of the insulting treatment that was a thing of course in 1807, than we were made to see how hollow were those professions of friendship for America that were not uncommon in the mouths of British statesmen during the ten or twelve years that preceded the advent of Secession.  So long as we were deemed powerful, we received assurances of “the most distinguished consideration”; but we have at last ascertained that those assurances were as false as they are when they are appended to the letter of some diplomatist who is engaged in the work of cheating some one who is neither better nor worse than himself.  It is positively mortifying to think how shockingly we have been taken in, and that the “cordial understanding” that had, apparently, been growing up between the two nations was a misunderstanding throughout, though we were sincere in desiring its existence.  Perhaps, when the evidences of the strength that we possess, in spite of Secession, shall have all been placed before the rulers of England, they will be found less ready to quarrel with the American people than they were a month ago.  A nation that is capable of placing a quarter of a million of men in the field in sixty days, and of giving to that immense force a respectable degree of consistency and organization, is worth being conciliated after having been insulted.  But would any amount of conciliation suffice to restore the feeling that existed here when the Prince of Wales was our guest?  We fear that it would not, and