Which is, that our English critics see only, or chiefly, in the fearful and momentous conflict in which we are engaged, “a bursting of the bubble of Democracy”!  Shall we challenge now the intelligence or the moral principle, the lack of one or the other of which is betrayed in this sneering and malignant representation—­this utter misrepresentation—­of the catastrophe which has befallen our nation?  Intelligent Englishmen know full well that the issue raised among us does not necessarily touch or involve at a single point the principles of Democracy, but stands wide apart and distinct from them.  We might with as much propriety have said that the Irish Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny showed “the bursting of the bubble of Monarchy.”  The principles of Democracy stand as firm and find our people as loyal to them in every little town-meeting and in every legislature of each loyal State in the Union as they did in the days of our first enthusiastic and successful trial of them.  Supposing even that the main assumption on which so many Englishmen have prematurely vented their scorn were a fact; we cannot but ask if the nation nearest akin to us, and professing to be guided in this century by feelings which forbid a rejoicing over others’ great griefs, has no words of high moral sympathy, no expressions of regretful disappointment in our calamities?  Is it the first or the most emphatic thing which it is most fitting for Christian Englishmen to say over the supposed wreck of a recently noble and promising country, the prospered home of thirty millions of God’s children,—­that “a bubble has burst”?  We might interchange with our foreign “comforters” a discussion by arguments and facts as to whether a monarchy or a democracy has about it more of the qualities of a bubble, but the debate would be irrelevant to our present purpose.  We believe that Democracy in its noblest and all-essential and well-proved principles will survive the shock which has struck upon our nation, whatever the result of that shock may yet prove to be.  We believe, further, that the principles of Democracy will come out of the struggle which is trying, not themselves, but something quite distinct from them, with a new affirmation and vindication.  But let that be as it may, we are as much ashamed for England’s sake as we are aggrieved on our own account that from the vehicles of public sentiment in “the foremost realm in the world for all true culture, advanced progress, and the glorious triumphs of liberty and religion,” what should be a profoundly plaintive lament over our supposed ruin is, in reality, a mocking taunt and a hateful gibe over our failure in daring to try an “un-English” experiment.[A]