encouragement they have received from abroad.  The trade of France was not so great with America as that of England; yet it was valuable, and the French have suffered much from its suspension, perhaps we should say its loss.  The North has purchased but little from Europe for a year, and the South has sold less to Europe in that time.  There has been a trade in food between the North and some European countries, in which grain has been exchanged for gold, though it would have been better for both parties could anything else than gold have been brought to America, true commerce consisting in the interchange of commodities.  For all the sufferings that have been experienced by Englishmen and Frenchmen, they have none but themselves and their governments to censure.  That peace has not been preserved is not our fault; and the war that has been blown into so fierce a flame has been fed from Europe; it has been fanned by breezes from France and England.  When it was first seen that there was danger of civil war, the governments of those countries, if they had really had any regard for the true interests of their countries, would have discouraged the rebels in the most public and pointed manner imaginable, not because they cared for us, but for the simple reason that they were bound so to act as should best promote the welfare of their own peoples.  War in America meant suffering to the artisans and laborers of Europe, who, thus far, have suffered more from the war than have any portion of the American people, except the residents of Southern cities.  Napoleon III. and Lord Palmerston should have said to the agents of the Confederacy, and have taken care to publish their words, ’We can afford you neither aid in deeds nor encouragement in words.  Our relations with both sections of the American nation are such, that our respective countries must suffer immensely from the course which you are about to pursue, not because you have been oppressed, or fear oppression, but because you have been beaten in an election, and power, for the time, has been taken from your hands.  You ask us to act hostilely against the established government of the United States, that government having given us no cause of offense,—­to become the patrons of a revolution that has no cause, but the consequences of which may be boundless.  To revolutions we are averse; and one of our governments exists in virtue of opposition to the party of disorder in Europe.  You ask us to do that which would lessen the means of livelihood to millions of our people; for, granting that you should succeed, still there would necessarily be so great a change produced by your action, and by our intervention in American affairs, that for years America would not be the good customer to France and England that she has been for a generation.  With the merits of your cause we can have nothing to do, our true interests pointing to the maintenance of the strictest neutrality in the contest between you and the federal government;