The recent action of the British Government, under the persuasive influence of Mr. Seward’s polite representation, that instant hostilities would be sure to follow, if England did not keep her iron pirates at home, has improved somewhat the tone of Northern feeling towards her.  The late neighborly office of the Canadian Government, in warning us of the conspiracy to free our prisoners, has produced a very favorable impression, so far as the effect of a single act is felt in striking the balance of a long account.

We can, therefore, examine some of our relations with Great Britain in a better temper now than we could do some months ago, when we never went to sleep without thinking that before morning we might be shelled out of our beds by a fleet of British iron-clad steamers.  But though we have been soothed, and in some measure conciliated, by the change referred to, there is no such thing possible as returning to the status quo ante bellum.  We can never feel in all respects to England as we felt of old.  This is a fact which finds expression in so many forms that it is natural to wish to see how deep it lies:  whether it is an effect of accidental misunderstanding and collision of interests, or whether it is because the events of the last few years have served to bring to light the organic, inherent, and irreconcilable antagonism of the two countries.

We are all of us in the habit of using words so carelessly, that it will help us to limit their vagueness as here employed.  We speak of “England” for Great Britain, for the simple reason that Ireland is but a reluctant alien she drags after her, and Scotland only her most thriving province.  We are not surprised, for instance, when “Blackwood” echoes the abusive language of the metropolitan journals, for it is only as a village-cur joins the hounds that pass in full cry.  So, when we talk of “the attitude of England,” we have a tolerably defined idea, made up of the collective aspect of the unsympathetic Government, of the mendacious and insolent press, of the mercenary trading allies of the Rebels, of the hostile armaments which have sailed from British ports, of the undisguised enmity of many of her colonists, neighbors of the North as well as neighbors of the South; all of which shape themselves into an image having very much the look of representing the nation,—­certainly much more the look of it than the sum of all those manifestations which indicate sympathy with the cause of the North.

The attitude of England, then, has been such, since the Rebellion began, as to alienate much of the affection still remaining among us for the mother-country.  It has gone far towards finishing that process of separation of the child from the parent which two centuries of exile and two long wars had failed to complete.  But, looking at the matter more clearly, we shall find that our causes of complaint must be very unequally distributed among the different classes of the British people.