And do others spare us? will be the instant reply of all who may read this.  In my counter reply I make bold to place myself and my country on very high ground, and to say that we, the older and therefore more experienced people as regards the United States, and the better governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards all the world beyond, should not throw mud again even though mud be thrown at us.  I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as readily as to a lady; and forbear from an interchange of courtesies with a Billingsgate heroine, even though at heart I may have a proud consciousness that I should not altogether go to the wall in such an encounter.

I left England in August last—­August, 1861.  At that time, and for some months previous, I think that the general English feeling on the American question was as follows:  “This wide-spread nationality of the United States, with its enormous territorial possessions and increasing population, has fallen asunder, torn to pieces by the weight of its own discordant parts—­as a congregation when its size has become unwieldy will separate, and reform itself into two wholesome wholes.  It is well that this should be so, for the people are not homogeneous, as a people should be who are called to live together as one nation.  They have attempted to combine free-soil sentiments with the practice of slavery, and to make these two antagonists live together in peace and unity under the same roof; but, as we have long expected, they have failed.  Now has come the period for separation; and if the people would only see this, and act in accordance with the circumstances which Providence and the inevitable hand of the world’s Ruler has prepared for them, all would be well.  But they will not do this.  They will go to war with each other.  The South will make her demands for secession with an arrogance and instant pressure which exasperates the North; and the North, forgetting that an equable temper in such matters is the most powerful of all weapons, will not recognize the strength of its own position.  It allows itself to be exasperated, and goes to war for that which if regained would only be injurious to it.  Thus millions on millions sterling will be spent.  A heavy debt will be incurred; and the North, which divided from the South might take its place among the greatest of nations, will throw itself back for half a century, and perhaps injure the splendor of its ultimate prospects.  If only they would be wise, throw down their arms, and agree to part!  But they will not.”

This was I think the general opinion when I left England.  It would not, however, be necessary to go back many months to reach the time when Englishmen were saying how impossible it was that so great a national power should ignore its own greatness and destroy its own power by an internecine separation.  But in August last all that had gone by, and we in England had realized the probability of actual secession.