Change the scene, and let any American judge in the following supposed and parallel case.  Imagine expeditions fitted out in England, in spite of Government, to free the slaves in the Southern States; imagine a Lopez termination to the affair, and the rowdy blood of England forming other Filibustero expeditions; then imagine the Hon. Mr. Tenderheart identifying himself with them, and receiving an appointment as minister to Washington; after which, imagine him serenaded at St. James’s by thousands of people bearing transparencies, the first representing a naked woman under the slave-driver’s lash; the second, containing some such verses as “The Antilles Flower,” &c.; for instance:—­

  “The slaves must be plucked
    From the chains that now gall ’em,
  Though American wolves
    An inferior race call ’em.”

Let the minister accept the serenade, and address the multitude, declaring “that this mighty nation can no longer be chained down to passive interference,” &c.  Let me ask any American how the Hon. Mr. Tenderheart would be received at Washington, particularly if a few days after he took a shot at his French colleague because another person insulted him in that gentleman’s house?—­I ask, what would Americans say if such a line of conduct were to be pursued towards them?  I might go further, and suppose that a conclave of English Ministers met at Quebec, and discussed the question as to how far the flourishing town of Buffalo, so close on the frontier, was calculated to endanger the peace and prosperity of Canada, and then imagine them winding up their report with this clause—­If it be so—­“then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from its present owners.”  The American who penned that sentence must possess a copy of the Scriptures unknown to the rest of the world.  Surely America must imagine she has the monopoly of all the sensitiveness in the world, or she would never have acted by Spain as she has done.  How humiliated must she feel while contemplating the contrast between her act in appointing the minister, and Spain’s demeanour in her silent and dignified reception of him!

This same sensitiveness peeps out in small things as well as great, especially where England is concerned:  thus, one writer discovers that the Americans speak French better than the English; probably he infers it from having met a London Cit who had run over to Paris for a quiet Sunday, and who asked him “Moosyere, savvay voo oo ey lay Toolureeze?" Another discovers that American society is much more sought after than English; that Americans are more agreeable, more intelligent, more liberal, &c.; but the comparison is always with England or the English.  And why all this?  Simply because it feeds the morbid appetite of many Republican citizens, which the pure truth would not.