elevated by the unneutral “words” of a foreign Cabinet into respectability which it deserves so little is only another sign we have to watch.

(9.) These same Cabinet orators, not content with giving us a bad name, allow themselves to pronounce against us on the whole case. They declare that the National Government cannot succeed in crushing Rebel Slavery, and that dismemberment is inevitable. “Jefferson Davis,” says one of them, “has created a nation.” Thus do these representatives of declared “neutrality” degrade us and exalt Slavery. It is apparent that their utterance, though made in Parliament and repeated at public meetings, was founded less on special information from the seat of war—disclosing its secret—than on political theory, if not prejudice. It is true that our eloquent teacher, Edmund Burke, in his famous Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, argued most persuasively that Great Britain could not succeed in reclaiming the colonies which had declared themselves independent. His reasoning rather than his wisdom enters into and possesses the British statesmen of our day, who do not take the trouble to see how the two cases are so entirely unlike that the example of the one is not applicable to the other,—that the colonies were battling to found a new power on the corner-stone of Liberty, Equality, and Happiness to All Men, while our Slavemongers are battling to found a new power on the corner-stone of Slavery. The difference becomes a contrast, so that whatever was once generously said in favor of American Independence now tells with unmistakable force against this new-fangled pretension.

No British statesman saw the past more clearly than Earl Russell, when, long ago, in striking phrase, he said that England, in her war against our fathers, “had engaged for the suppression of Liberty”;[21] but this is precisely what Rebel Slavery is doing. Men change, but principles are the same now as then. Therefore do I say, that every sympathy formerly bestowed upon our fathers now belongs to us their children, striving to uphold their work against bad men, who would not only break it in pieces, but put in its stead a new piratical power, whose declared object is “the suppression of Liberty.” And yet British ministers, mounting the prophetic tripod, presume most oracularly to foretell the doom of this Republic. Their prophecies do not disturb my confidence. I do not forget how often false prophets have appeared, like the author of the “Oceana,” who published a demonstration that monarchy was impossible in England[22] less than six months before Charles the Second was welcomed to London amid salvos of cannon and hurrahs of the people. Nor do I stop to consider how far such prophecies uttered in public places by British ministers are consistent with that British “neutrality” so constantly boasted. Opinions are allies more potent than subsidies, especially in an age like the present. Prophecies are opinions proclaimed and projected into the future; and yet these are given freely to Rebel Slavery. There is matter for reflection in this instance, but I adduce it only as another illustration of the times. Nothing is more clear than that whosoever assumes to play prophet becomes pledged in character and pretension to sustain his prophecy. The learned Jerome Cardan, professor and doctor, also dabbler in astrology, of great fame in the sixteenth century, undertook to predict the day of his death, and he maintained his prophetic character by taking his own life at the appointed time. If British ministers, playing prophet, escape the ordinary influences of this craft, it is from that happy nature which suspends for them human infirmity and human prejudice. But it becomes us to note well the increased difficulties and dangers to which, on this account, the national cause is exposed.

(10.) It is not in “words” only, of speeches, despatches, or declarations, that our danger lies. I am sorry to add, that there are acts, also, with which the British Government is too closely associated. I do not refer to the unlimited supply of “munitions of war,” so that our army everywhere, whether at Vicksburg or Charleston, is compelled to encounter Armstrong guns and Blakely guns, with all proper ammunition, from England; for the right of British subjects to sell these articles to Rebel Slavemongers was fixed, when the latter, by sudden metamorphosis, were changed from lawless vagrants of the ocean to lawful belligerents. Nor do I refer to the swarms of swift steamers, “a pitchy cloud warping on the eastern wind,” always under British flag, with contributions to Rebel Slavery; for these, too, enjoy kindred immunity. Of course no royal proclamation can change wrong into right, or make such business otherwise than immoral; but the proclamation may take from it the character of felony.

Even the royal manifesto gives no sanction to the fitting out in England of a naval expedition against the commerce of the United States. It leaves the Parliamentary statute, as well as the general Law of Nations, in full efficacy to restrain and punish such offence. And yet, in face of this obvious prohibition, standing forth in the text of the law, and founded in reason “ere human statute purged the gentle weal,” also exemplified by the National Government, which, from the time of Washington, has always guarded its ports against such outrage, powerful ships are launched, equipped, fitted out, and manned in England, with arms supplied at sea from another English vessel, and then, assuming that by this insulting hocus pocus all English liability is avoided, they proceed at once to rob and destroy the commerce of the United States. England is the naval base from which are derived the original forces and supplies enabling them to sail the sea. Several such ships are now depredating on the ocean, like Captain Kidd, under pretended commissions, each in itself a naval expedition. As England is not at war with the United States, these ships can be nothing else than pirates; and their conduct is that of pirates. Unable to provide a court for the trial of prizes, they revive for every captured ship the barbarous Ordeal of Fire. Like pirates, they burn what they cannot rob. Raging from sea to sea, they turn the ocean into a furnace and melting-pot of American commerce. Of these incendiaries, the most famous is the “Alabama,” with a picked crew of British seamen, with “trained gunners out of her Majesty’s naval reserve,” all, like those of Queen Elizabeth, described as “good sailors and better pirates,” and with everything else from keel to truck British, which, after more than a year of unlawful havoc, is still firing the property of our citizens, without once entering a Rebel Slavemonger port, but always keeping the umbilical connection with England, out of whose womb she sprung, and never losing the original nationality stamped upon her by origin, so that, at this day, she is a British pirate ship, precisely as a native-born Englishman, robbing on the high seas, and never naturalized abroad, is a British pirate subject.

It is bad enough that all this should proceed from England. It is hard to bear. Why is it not stopped at once? One cruiser might, perhaps, elude a watchful government. But it is difficult to see how this can occur once, twice, three times,—and the cry is, Still they sail! Two powerful rams are