absolutely demanded of us an acknowledgment of the Southern Confederacy’s independence, on the ground that it is inhuman to wage war for the maintenance of our national life.  She has compared our mild and forbearing government with the savage proconsulate of Alva in the Netherlands!  She has charged us with waging war against civilization, because we have employed stone fleets to close entrances to the harbor of Charleston, though her own history is full of instances of their employment for similar purposes!  She has encouraged her traders and seamen to furnish the rebels with arms of all kinds, and stores of every description!  She has excluded our ships-of-war from her ports, refusing to allow them to coal at places at which she had granted us the privilege, in time of peace, of establishing stations for fuel!  She has given shelter and protection to the privateers of the rebels, vessels that had violated her own laws almost within sight of her own shores, and certainly within the narrow seas!  She has acknowledged the belligerent character of the South, which is virtually an acknowledgment of its independence, for none but nations can lawfully wage war.  She has, through her Minister for Foreign Affairs, declared that our war with the secessionists is of the same character as the war which the Spaniards carried on with their American colonists, and that there is no difference between it and the attempt of the Turks to subdue the Greeks!  Monstrous perversions of history for even Earl Russell to be guilty of!  Her leading periodicals and journals, with few exceptions, have denounced our country, our course, and our government in the bitterest language, and to the manifest encouragement of the rebels, who see in their language the rapid growth and prompt exhibition of a sentiment of hostility to this country, and which must, sooner or later, end in war; and war between England and America would be sure to lead to the success of the Confederates, even if we should come out of it victoriously.

Thus we see that the attempt to establish peace on the basis of the true interests of nations has not only failed, but that it has failed signally and deplorably.  The solid Doric Temple of Mammon has no more been able to stand against the storms of war than has the Crystal Palace of Sentiment.  The fair fabric which was the type of materialism has fallen, and it would be most unwise to seek its reconstruction.  That which was to have stood as long and as firmly as the Pyramids has fallen before the first moss could gather upon it.  Nor is the reason of this fall far to seek, as it lies upon the surface, and ought to have been anticipated—­would have been, only that men are so ready to believe in what they wish to believe.  England, as a nation, has two interests to consult, and which do not always accord.  She has her commercial interest and her imperial interest; and, when the two conflict, the last is sure to become first.  Her position as a nation was threatened