by a graceful adhesion to an indisputable fact.  But there are some facts, even some indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible.  Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples?  Can the Pope shake hands with Victor Emmanuel?  Could the English have surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the colonies?  The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled while the circumstances are in course of action by which the fact is to be decided.  The men of the Northern States have not believed in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the Union.  The American governments have been much given to compromises, but had Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one Southern State could have been let out of the Union, he would have been impeached.  In all probability the whole Constitution would have gone to ruin, and the Presidency would have been at an end.  At any rate, his Presidency would have been at an end.  When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down—­that is, he had no alternative but war.  It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed—­with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings maintained at a cost of 150l. per annum, or ninety millions sterling per annum for the army.  Nor did we when we resolved to put down the French revolution think of such a national debt as we now owe.  These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in becoming used to them; but I cannot see that there was any moment at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried peace.  It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could have said so with any avail.  It was incumbent on him to put down rebellion, or to be put down by it.  So it was with us in America in 1776.

I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all this into consideration.  We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary.  But I do not remember to have seen any statement as to what the Northern States should have done—­what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or when they should have done it.  It seems to me that we have decided as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that therefore civil war should be avoided.  But bad things cannot always be avoided.  It is this feeling on our part that has produced so much irritation in them against us—­reproducing, of course, irritation on our part against them.  They cannot understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if it be only possible, out of the fire.