almost daily when that suspension first took effect.  It was grievous that there should be necessity for such a step; and it is very grievous now that such necessity should be felt in the Northern States.  But I do not think that it becomes Englishmen to bear hardly upon Americans generally for what has been done in that matter.  Mr. Seward, in an official letter to the British Minister at Washington—­which letter, through official dishonesty, found its way to the press—­claimed for the President the right of suspending the “habeas corpus” in the States whenever it might seem good to him to do so.  If this be in accordance with the law of the land, which I think must be doubted, the law of the land is not favorable to freedom.  For myself, I conceive that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward have been wrong in their law, and that no such right is given to the President by the Constitution of the United States.  This I will attempt to prove in some subsequent chapter.  But I think it must be felt by all who have given any thought to the Constitution of the States, that let what may be the letter of the law, the Presidents of the United States have had no such power.  It is because the States have been no longer united, that Mr. Lincoln has had the power, whether it be given to him by the law or no.

And then as to the debt; it seems to me very singular that we in England should suppose that a great commercial people would be ruined by a national debt.  As regards ourselves, I have always looked on our national debt as the ballast in our ship.  We have a great deal of ballast, but then the ship is very big.  The States also are taking in ballast at a rather rapid rate; and we too took it in quickly when we were about it.  But I cannot understand why their ship should not carry, without shipwreck, that which our ship has carried without damage, and, as I believe, with positive advantage to its sailing.  The ballast, if carried honestly, will not, I think, bring the vessel to grief.  The fear is lest the ballast should be thrown overboard.

So much I have said wishing to plead the cause of the Northern States before the bar of English opinion, and thinking that there is ground for a plea in their favor.  But yet I cannot say that their bitterness against Englishmen has been justified, or that their tone toward England has been dignified.  Their complaint is that they have received no sympathy from England; but it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of sympathy during its struggle.  Sympathy is for the weak rather than for the strong.  When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the precision of his logic and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric.  There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans against England, which has done more to lower them as a people in my judgment than any other part of their conduct during the present crisis.