of other statesmen, he is wanting in backbone.  For many years Mr. Everett has been not even inimical to Southern politics and Southern courses, nor was he among those who, during the last eight years previous to Mr. Lincoln’s election, fought the battle for Northern principles.  I do not say that on this account he is now false to advocate the war.  But he cannot carry men with him when, at his age, he advocates it by arguments opposed to the tenor of his long political life.  His abuse of the South and of Southern ideas was as virulent as might be that of a young lad now beginning his political career, or of one who had through life advocated abolition principles.  He heaped reproaches on poor Virginia, whose position as the chief of the border States has given to her hardly the possibility of avoiding a Scylla of ruin on the one side, or a Charybdis of rebellion on the other.  When he spoke as he did of Virginia, ridiculing the idea of her sacred soil, even I, Englishman as I am, could not but think of Washington, of Jefferson, of Randolph, and of Madison.  He should not have spoken of Virginia as he did speak; for no man could have known better Virginia’s difficulties.  But Virginia was at a discount in Boston, and Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston audience.  And then he referred to England and to Europe.  Mr. Everett has been minister to England, and knows the people.  He is a student of history, and must, I think, know that England’s career has not been unhappy or unprosperous.  But England also was at a discount in Boston, and Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston audience.  They are sending us their advice across the water, said Mr. Everett.  And what is their advice to us?  That we should come down from the high place we have built for ourselves, and be even as they are.  They screech at us from the low depths in which they are wallowing in their misery, and call on us to join them in their wretchedness.  I am not quoting Mr. Everett’s very words, for I have not them by me; but I am not making them stronger, nor so strong as he made them.  As I thought of Mr. Everett’s reputation, and of his years of study, of his long political life and unsurpassed sources of information, I could not but grieve heartily when I heard such words fall from him.  I could not but ask myself whether it were impossible that under the present circumstances of her constitution this great nation of America should produce an honest, high-minded statesman.  When Lincoln and Hamlin, the existing President and Vice-President of the States, were in 1860 as yet but the candidates of the Republican party, Bell and Everett also were the candidates of the old Whig, conservative party.  Their express theory was this—­that the question of slavery should not be touched.  Their purpose was to crush agitation and restore harmony by an impartial balance between the North and South:  a fine purpose—­the finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.  But such a course of compromise was now at a discount in Boston, and Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston audience.  As an orator, Mr. Everett’s excellence is, I think, not to be questioned; but as a politician I cannot give him a high rank.