In assuming a strictly impartial position, England follows a sense of interest, which is proper and praiseworthy.  She cannot, supposing her to be wise, be desirous of our destruction; for, that accomplished, she would be more open than ever to a French attack.  Let Napoleon III. accomplish those European purposes to which his mind is now directed, and he would be impelled to quarrel with England by a variety of considerations, should this Republic be broken up into half a dozen feeble and quarrelsome confederacies.  But with the United States in existence, and powerful enough to command respect, he would not dare to seek the overthrow of the British Empire.  We could not permit him to head a crusade for England’s annihilation, no matter what might be our feeling toward the mother-land.  A just regard for our own interests would impel us to side with her, should she be placed in serious danger.  Such was, substantially, President Jefferson’s opinion, sixty years ago, when the first Napoleon was so bent upon the conquest of England; and we think that his views are applicable to the existing circumstances of the world.  Where should we have been now, if England had quarrelled with and been conquered by Napoleon III.?  We must distinguish between the English nation and Englishmen,—­between the English Government, which has, perhaps, borne itself as favorably toward us as it could, and that English aristocracy which has, as a rule, exhibited so strong a desire to have us extinguished, even while it has repeatedly refused to take steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being placed in great danger.  The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks of Englishmen is to be found in success.  That answer would be complete; and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said of us by foreigners?  The bitterest attacks can never disturb the dead.

One cause of the change of England’s course toward us is to be found in our own change of moral position.  The President’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on the first of January, 1863; and from that time the anti-slavery people of England have been on our side; and their influence is great, and bears upon the supporters of the Palmerston Ministry with peculiar force.  Had our Government persisted in the pro-slavery policy which it favored down to the autumn of 1862, it is not at all unlikely that the English intervention party would have been strong enough to compel their country to go with France in her mediation scheme,—­and the step from mediation to intervention would have been but a short one; but the committal of the North to anti-slavery views, and the union of their cause with that of emancipation, threw the English Abolitionists, men who largely represent England’s moral worth, on our side.  The Proclamation, therefore, even if it could be proved that it had not led to the liberation of one slave, has been of immense service to us, and the President deserves the thanks of every loyal American for having issued it.  He threw a shell into the foreign Secession camp, the explosion of which was fatal to that “cordial understanding” that was to have operated for our annihilation.