‘But you need not,’ she replied, ’have been so eager to put the South on the footing of belligerents.’

‘On what other footing,’ I asked, ’could we put them?  On what other footing does the North put them?  Have they ventured, or will they venture, to hang a single seceder?’

‘At least,’ she said, ’you might have expressed more sympathy with the North?’

‘I think,’ I answered, ’that we have expressed as much sympathy as it was possible to feel.  We deplore the combat, we hold the South responsible for it, we think their capricious separation one of the most foolish and one of the most wicked acts that have ever been committed; we hope that the North will beat them, and we should bitterly regret their forcing themselves back into the Union on terms making slavery worse, if possible, than it is now.  We wish the contest to end as quickly as possible:  but we do not think that it can end by the North subjugating the Southerns and forcing them to be its subjects.

’The best termination to which we look forward as possible, is that the North should beat the South, and then dictate its own terms of separation.

’If they wish to go farther than this, if they wish us to love or to admire our Northern cousins in their political capacity, they wish for what is impossible.

’We cannot forget that the Abolitionists have been always a small and discredited party; that the Cuba slave trade is mainly carried on from New York; that they have neglected the obligations formally entered into by them with us to co-operate in the suppression of the slave trade; that they have pertinaciously refused to allow us even to inquire into the right of slavers to use the American flag; that it is the capital of the North which feeds the slavery of the South; that the first act of the North, as soon as the secession of the South from Congress allowed it to do what it liked, was to enact a selfish protective tariff; that their treatment of us, from the time that they have felt strong enough to insult us, has been one unvaried series of threats, bullying, and injury; that they have refused to submit their claims on us to arbitration, driven out our ambassadors, seized by force on disputed territory, and threatened war on every pretence.’

‘It is true,’ said Beaumont, ’that during the last twenty years American diplomacy has not been such as to inspire affection or respect But you must recollect that during all that time America has been governed by the South.’

‘It is true,’ I said, ’that the presidents have generally been Southerns, but I am not aware that the North has ever disavowed their treatment of us.  This is certain, that throughout the Union, insolence to England has been an American statesman’s road to popularity.’

Monday., August 19.—­We walked in the afternoon over the commons overlooking the sea, and among the shady lanes of this well-wooded country.