We have chosen a guarded and passionless wording for a topic on which we wish to offer a few frankly spoken, but equally passionless remarks.  With the bitterness and venom and exaggeration of statement which both English and American papers have interchanged in reference to matters of opinion and matters of feeling connected with our national troubles we do not now intermeddle.  We would not imitate it:  we regret it, and on our own side we are ashamed of it.  We have read editorials and communications in our own papers so grossly vituperative and stinging in the rancor of their spirit, that it would not have surprised us, if some Englishmen, of a certain class, had organized a hostile association against us in revenge for our truculent defiance.  The real spirit of bullyism, of the cockpit and the pugilistic ring, has been exhibited in this interchange of newspaper opinion.  The more is the reason why we should not overlook or be blind to the real grievances in the case, nor fail to give expression to them in the strongest way of which their emphatic, but unembittered, statement will admit.  Whether the London “Times” is or is not an authoritative vehicle for the utterance of average English opinion, and an index, in its general tone, of the prevailing sentiment of that people, is a question which, so far from wishing to decide, we must decline to entertain, as mainly irrelevant to our present purpose.  As a matter of fact, however, if we did accept that print as an authority and a standard in English opinion, we should throw more of temper than we hope to prevent escaping through our words into the remarks which are to follow.  That paper evidently represents the opinion of one class, perhaps of more than one class of Englishmen.  An intelligent American reader of its comments on our affairs can always read it, as even the best-informed Englishman cannot, with the skill and ability to discern its spirit, often covertly mean, and to detect its misrepresentations, some of the grossest of which are made the basis of its arguments and inferences.  From the very opening of our strife to the last issue of that print which has crossed the water, its comments and records relating to our affairs have presented a most ingenious and mischievous combination of everything false, ill-tempered, malignant, and irritating.  It is at present exercising itself upon the financial arrangements of our Government, and uttering prophecies, falsified before they have come to our knowledge, about the inability or the unwillingness of our loyal people to furnish the necessary money.

But enough of the London “Times.”  We have in view matters not identified with the spirit and comments of a single newspaper, however influential.  We have in view graver and more comprehensive facts,—­facts, too, more significant of feelings and opinion.  Stating our point in general terms, which we shall reduce to some particulars before we close, we affirm frankly and emphatically, that the North, we might