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let us fortify our frontier. Let us lock up Mason and Slidell in Fort Warren on bread and water, and then give the gallant Wilkes an ovation. Whereupon these intelligent citizens of the greatest nation the world ever saw, join hands and perform, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, the most extraordinary dance, round the most extraordinary idol, that any human beings, civilised or savage, ever did homage to. They not only decree, by the mere will and pleasure of a sovereign people, that England must make no serious stir in the matter, but they also decree that Commander Wilkes has performed some act of singular daring which entitles him to be admitted into the very select band of the heroes of the American navy. Some excuse may be found in the fact that Americans must applaud'something American, and that many months of war have given birth to no achievement in arms which they can be more proud of than the attack of a mail-packet by a ship of war. What particularly delights Governor Andrew is, that the packet thus assailed "bore the British lion at its head." Other official personages are equally jocular and congratulatory; and, at last, Com mander Wilkes, intoxicated with the success of his bid for popularity, not only believes himself a hero, but begins to lament his own weak generosity in letting a rich prize slip through his fingers. Listen to the impudent pirate: "I should have felt justified in seizing the Trent itself, but I concluded to allow the vessel to proceed, though I thus deprived my men of a prize worth 150,000 dollars."

These sentiments would have been very suitable to another eminent American commander, Captain Kid, though we wrong his memory by the allusion, for he proved that he could fight hard for his plunder. But though little surprised that they should have found expression, under the circumstances, at the Boston festival, we were scarcely prepared to find a Cabinet Minister

imparting his buccaneering intentions to Congress. His ideas of spoliation are on a grand scale; for, while Commander Wilkes looks regretfully back on the escape of a single argosy, the Secretary of the Navy looks hopefully forward to seeing whole fleets of confiscated British merchantmen brought into American harbours. "The prompt and decisive action of Captain Wilkes on this occasion," says Mr Gideon Welles in his report, "merited and received the emphatic approval of the Department; and if a too generous forbearance was exhibited by him in not capturing the vessel which had these rebel enemies on board, it may, in view of the special circumstances and of its patriotic motives, be excused; but it must by no means be permitted to constitute a precedent hereafter for the treatment of any case of similar infraction of neutral obligations by any foreign vessels engaged in commerce or the carrying trade."

Many people seem to anticipate that even should the present difficulty end without war, the Americans will not fail very soon to inflict upon us some other unendurable insult. This anticipation we do not share; on the contrary, we are confident that if they manage in this instance to evade the consequences of the outrage, the proof that we are in earnest will suffice to prevent a repetition. Even Mr Gideon Welles will, we are persuaded, consent to forget the corsair in the minister, and will appear before Congress in future in a character less romantic and picturesque, but more official, than that of the Red Rover.

In arguing the question whether or not the Federal Government sanctioned the insult to England, it has been said that the policy so often attributed to the North, of attempting, when coercion has failed, to unite all conflicting parties against a foreign foe, cannot avail in this case, because the capture of the Southern Commissioners will only still more exasperate the South.

But the secession of the South is not the only nor the greatest peril that threatens the Republic. There is an Abolition party that is hostile to Union; there is a Union party that is hostile to Abolition; and though these discordant elements have hitherto been held together by the common tie of hatred of the South, yet they threaten speedily to start asunder. Nor will the North be split by party conflicts alone; territorial differences are likely to cause further dismemberment. Is it strange, then, that a desperate Cabinet, possessing no influence of talent or character by which to reconcile contending factions, and feeling the planks starting under its feet, should seek, even by such a desperate expedient as a war with a powerful enemy, to keep together the remains of the Republic On such a theory, the occasion of provoking the war would seem well chosen, as England, in protecting the Southern Commissioners, may be made to appear to adopt the cause of the South, which it has been the object of the Federal Cabinet to accuse her of favouring throughout the struggle; and the new war may thus be rendered popular both with Abolitionists and Republicans. But we do not attribute to the presumptuous and incapable Phaetons of the North any such deep designs. We rather suppose them to be ready, in their extremity, to cling to any measure that comes to hand, no matter how preposterous or fatal, as the pedant in Hierocles, when the ship was sinking, laid hold of the anchor.

Whether war comes or not, we think that the opportunity should be taken of our state of preparation to adopt a policy more suitable to our own position and to the interests of the world, than that of by

standers in this cutthroat quarrel. The questions of the recognition of the Southern Confederacy and the raising of the ineffectual blockade, i in conjunction with France, are entitled to be immediately considered. As it is, our neutrality tells against the South. We do not impute this to anybody as a fault-we merely mention it as a fact. For every weapon, rifle or cannon, that our foundries have supplied to the South, the North have been enabled, by their possession of safe means of water carriage, to get twenty. Every intention, opinion, and desire of the South comes to us through a distorting Northern medium. And, while we continue our commercial relations with the North, we permit the trade of the South to be extinguished by paying undue respect to a notoriously sham blockade. Does neutrality mean an over-scrupulous regard for the interests of one party? Have the Northern Government or people deserved from us a strained interpretation of law in their favour? Have they been moderate and courteous in prosperity? Have they been reasonable and dignified in adversity? Have they been modest in profession and great in action? Have their councillors been respectable for wisdom, their troops for bravery, or their financiers for prudence? Have they defined, or even shadowed for themselves, any line of policy in the present crisis that can be accepted as right or practicable by any reasonable Englishman? And if, by any concurrence of circumstances (our own interpretation of the duties of neutrals among the rest), they should reduce the South to submission, is it likely that, as victors, the contrivers of the Stone Fleet will be more generous than they are as foes? If these

In our last Number (articles, "A Month with 'The Rebels,"" and "Some Account of Both Sides of the American War") we gave the first authentic accounts of the position of affairs in the South which had reached this country since the commencement of the struggle, and the statements made in these papers have since been fully confirmed in the interesting letter of Captain Maury published in the Athenæum of December 21st.-ED. B. M.

VOL. XCI.-NO. DLV.

I

questions can receive but one answer, what reason is there that we should longer sacrifice our own interests, and the interests of justice, to an extreme consideration for the morbid irritability of an arrogant people? If we are, at any rate, certain of the captiousness and hostility of the North, let us at least do something to secure the friendship of the South.

And the South, so far as can be seen, deserve recognition, independence, and sympathy. Their only crime has been a desire to take no further part in a system to which not even the letter, far less the spirit, of the law can prove that they were bound by any principle stronger than convenience, and the operation of which they declare to have been intolerably oppressive. It is natural that they should object to accept an Abraham Lincoln as their chief man, and to have their destinies influenced by such a Cabinet and mob as that of the North, when, as they have shown, they can do so much better for themselves. They have chosen as President a man of judgment and conduct, who can give to their impulses unity of action, and can both excite and control their enthusiasm. If the Messages of the rival Presidents may be considered as indicative of the policy of those who chose the chiefs, or of the merits of the causes which

they respectively advocate, the South are amply justified for regarding with "the contemptuous astonishment" which Jefferson Davis's language attributes to them, the proceedings of the North. Resolution and devotion have been shown not merely by the Southern troops, but by the entire population. They appear to bear their privations with uncommon cheerfulness and courage. They make no querulous appeals for sympathy nor complaints of neglect. They speak of their successes with modesty, prepare for new distresses with fortitude, and express none of the vindictiveness so prominent in the measures of their enemies. A war between England and the North will, at least, have the good effects of shortening the sufferings and hastening the independence of a people who are proving themselves very capable of self-government, who will at once assume a creditable position among nations, and who will act as a permanent check on Northern turbulence. And it is to be hoped that, if war is to be, we may put our whole strength and will into it, and conduct it so as to leave the orators and writers of the North, with all their skill and practice in the falsification of history, no possibility of turning its incidents to our disadvantage and to their own glorification.

THE PRINCE CONSORT.

"With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-Eve."

TENNYSON-In Memoriam.

HAD any foreigner, unacquainted with our national habits of thought and feeling, and whose own education and sympathies were wholly democratic, sought an explanation of the old English term Loyalty-had he desired an illustration of its meaning, not as expressed by the shouts of an excited crowd at a Royal progress or a coronation, but in its gentler and more affecting forms, the spectacle exhibited throughout the length and breadth of England on the third Sunday in December, would not only have explained, but have riveted it for ever on his memory.

From London to the Land's End, in the crowds that gathered round town churches as their congregations slowly filed out—in the little groups that met and talked together in such far-off country villages as the news had somehow reached-there was but one thing spoken of, or thought of, for hours. It was the news that the Prince Consort was dead-"the Queen's husband," as many a rough but kind-spoken voice explained it to his neighbour. There were many who had never beheld the persons of the Queen or the Prince— who knew them only as their rulers "by the grace of God"-upon whom, nevertheless, those tidings fell as of a private personal loss. The "perceptible movement," noticed in many congregations when the omission of the familiar name from the prayer gave, as it were, official confirmation to the event, was only the recurrence of the shudder with which they at first had heard it. If any man thinks there is much leaven of republicanism really working in the mass of the English people, he might have undeceived himself at every step on that Sunday afternoon.

For it was not only that there had been taken from us one who had long filled the foremost place in the public eye, and filled it worthily; it was not merely that there had been struck down-suddenly, as it seemed to most of us--one of the Heads of the people, who had so adorned his high calling as to have won the people's love;

it was all this, but it was something more. The first burst of national sorrow for the Prince was different, not only in degree, but in its very nature; it was that, being what he was, he was the Husband of the Queen.

The first words that sprang to the lips of thousands were-not of the public loss, great and irreparable as that was felt to be, but"The poor Queen!" Common words-not over courtly; with little in them of the ordinary euphemisms of loyal speech. "Most Gracious Majesty"-"Sovereign Lady"-these were all good, in their time and place; but it was that homely phrase, that hearty English sympathy, that told the real strength of her subjects' love that showed how the Royal affliction had "bowed the heart of all the men of England,' even as the heart of one man." Now, when the suddenness of the shock has passed, and we can calmly call to mind all that he was, and all that he might yet have been, we have time to think and say, "What a loss to England!" But the cry of that Sunday was the spark struck out at heat from the heart of the nation "The poor Queen!"

What a wonderful principle it is, deeper than can be reached by any logical analysis, this union of a personal love with a loyal obedience to the Sovereign! How good it is for a great nation that its government should rest in a human personality, living and feeling -not in a mere abstract Code, or body corporate! Nay, have we not the same lesson taught us at this Christmas season? He who knows men's hearts, because He made them, when He vouchsafed a last revelation of Himself, clothed it in Flesh and Blood, gave us, not what philosophers would give us, an abstract idea of the Divine nature, but a Person-living, loving, suffering-that so our unruly wills and affections might be subdued by a personal Love. We must not usurp the preacher's office; yet not least remarkable among the signs of this time of mourning has been the leading paragraph of a political daily newspaper, closing with words of solemn intercessory prayer.*

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Almighty and most merciful God, who art the Helper of all that put their trust in Thee, look, we beseech Thee, on the sadness and sorrow of our beloved Queen. Comfort and sustain her with Thy presence; be a light to her in darkness; bind up her broken heart; help her to cast all her care on Thee; and bring her again into Thy house with a song of thanksgiving; through Jesus Christ our Lord."--Daily News, December 16.

We heartily commend this prayer as a model to our Ecclesiastical authori

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