and the dictates of interest are fortified by the suggestions of principle.  Your movement is essentially disorderly in its character, and it is undertaken avowedly in the interest of slavery; and not only are we the supporters of the existing order of things the world over, but we are hostile to slavery, having abolished it in all parts of our dominions.  Our advice to you is, to submit to the federal government, and to seek for the redress of your grievances, if such you have, by means recognized in the constitution and laws of your country.  From us you can receive no aid, and you should dismiss all expectation of it from your minds at once and forever.  We are indifferent to the form of the American government, and its internal policy can not concern us; but the interests of our peoples require that we should live in peace with the people of America, whether they be of the South or of the North, slave-holders or abolitionists; and we shall not quarrel with any portion of them for the sake of facilitating the erection of a republic to be founded on the basis of the divine nature of slavery, the first time that so preposterous a pretension was ever put forward by the audacity or the impudence of men.’  Had something like this been said to the agents of the rebels, and had the English press supported the same views, the rebellion would have been at an end ere this, and the commercial relations of America and Europe would have experienced no sensible interruption.  English interests, in an especial sense, demanded that the rebels should be discouraged, and discouragement from London would have rendered rebellion hopeless, and have promoted peace in Savannah and New Orleans.

But it was not in England’s nature to pursue a course that would have been as much in harmony with her material interests as with that high moral character which she claims as being peculiarly her own.  There appeared to have presented itself an opportunity to effect the destruction of the American Republic, and England could not resist the temptation to strike us hard:  and, for almost a year, she has been to the Union a more deadly foe than we have found in the South.  We do not allude to the Trent question, for in that we were clearly in the wrong, and Mason and Slidell should have been released on the 16th of November, and not have been detained in captivity six weeks.  Secretary Seward has placed the point so emphatically beyond all doubt, that we must all be of one mind thereon, whether in England or America.  England might have been moderate in her action, in view of her repeated outrages on the rights of neutrals, but no intelligent American can condemn her position.  It is to other things that we must look for evidence of her determination to effect our extinction as a nation.  She has, while dripping with Hindoo blood, and while yet men’s ears are filled with accounts of the blowing of sepoys from the muzzles of cannon by her military executioners,