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to tear it up by the roots. Our God will not suffer it to be. He may chastise us, but He will not destroy. The signs of the times are propitious. The armies of the aliens are put to flight; distress has seized hold upon them. They are suffering the just judgment of God. They have called evil good, and good evil; they have put darkness for light, and light for darkness, bitter for sweet. and sweet for bitter. They have justified the wicked for a reward, and taken away the righteousness of the righteous from him." Alas, how many innocent victims of their passions lay this last sin to their charge! "Therefore," says God, "as the fire devoureth the stubble, and as the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel, therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against His people; He hath stretched forth His hand against them and hath smitten them, and their carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets. And in this day He roars against them like the roaring of the sea; and if we look unto their land, behold, darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof."

It may be long ere this Presidential word shall be brought to perfection. It may be refused by the Pharaoh hardness. of border slaveholders, in order that Ilis strong arm may give the more speedy and more complete liberation which he threatens. The struggle with the hoary and haughty sin may be long, and fierce, and bloody. Seven years of suffering and death passed before the Declaration became the Deliverance. We have been partaker of their sins, and the measure of the judgment we have meted out to our enslaved brethren shall be measured to us again. We must suffer in our basket and store; we must suffer in our hearts, in our anxiety for those who go out from us to keep the foe from ravaging our firesides, in the dreadful griefs of wife,

and mother, and child, over those who shall return no more. But yet we may rejoice that not all the desolations of war, nor even its chief miseries, are permitted by our loving and just God to come upon us. We may especially rejoice that

His chastisements are leading us to repentance, that we are not only fasting before Him, but doing as He requires; preparing to "break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free." Then, after due infliction, after the godly sorrow has wrought its perfect work, after Congress and the legislatures of the guilty States shall coöperate in this divine work, or the President shall himself decree liberty, and shall with his own hand break the shackles from every limb, then, as He has promised, He will surely perform; "then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily. For thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Soon will the great Proclamation be answered by resounding praises from over the sca; sooner, by more grateful and more ringing hallelujahs from our Southern shores; and our nation, delivered from its enemies, delivered of the sin which has brought her to the verge of destruction, shall resume her place, shall ascend to a far higher place, among the nations of the earth. Her enemies at home, her rivals abroad, shall bend down to the soles of her feet, and all the other powers of earth shall

"perforce

Sway to her from their orbits as they move,
And girdle her with music."

Standing on the cheery hight to which the great words of our leader have lifted us, I have striven to speak, as Paul did in the storm, words of truth and of encouragement. The Ship of State, the Ship Union and Liberty, shall not go down. There shall be a loss, a blessed and eternal loss, of

the accursed lading, but the ship shall be saved.

We are

flinging overboard that which caused the storm; we shall soon be able to sing, with our finest lyrist :

"The good Ship Union's voyage is o'er;

At anchor safe she swings,

And loud and clear, with cheer on cheer,
Her joyous welcome rings.

Hurrah! hurrah! it shakes the wave,
It thunders on the shore;

One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One nation evermore."

LETTER TO THE LONDON

WATCHMAN.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE WATCHMAN:

JAVING been lately permitted to make a brief visit to the land of my ancestors, and to behold for myself the spots made memorable by past deeds,

H

as well as the great centers of present life and duty, I unexpectedly found all eyes turned away from their own things, historic or living, and fixed intently on those of America.

I could not ask a peasant the way, or follow a verger in his tour of curiosities, or "take mine ease at mine inn," but that, if they learned that I was an American, they instantly plied me with questions as to our present and prospective condition. The fullness with which our news is detailed, the frequency, elaborateness, and intensity of the leaders in your journals, the articles in every magazine and review,

* Letter to the London Watchman, written from Paris, July 4, 1862. Sce Note XI.

the excitement attending parliamentary debates on our mutual relations, all show the depth and fervor of this feeling.

The Times attempts to ridicule us, by saying that we suffer all the extremes of intermittent fever, as conflicting reports rapidly succeed each other. It is properly so; for we feel that we are hanging over the sick bed of an intensely loved nationality-sick almost unto death; and every symptom, favorable or otherwise, naturally excites us. We are giving of the fruit of our body for the saving of our nation, and personal feelings are thus mingled profoundly in the struggle. But I see that here, without any such causes, almost as great excitement follows every important event; and British nerves respond as keenly as American to the varying telegrams that sweep over them.

I have found, with this deep and wide-spread interest, two other facts, painful to a lover of both England and Americato a lover of liberty and humanity. They are a want of sympathy with the United States, and an apparently intentional blindness as to the cause of the rebellion, and the course the government is pursuing against not only the revolt, but its primal and only cause. With few and most honorable exceptions, the tone of inquiry lacked that of sympathy. It was curiosity, not love, that prompted the querist. Especially was the ignorance of intelligent men of the connection of slavery with the rebellion, and of the movements of the nation against that sin, most evident and most deplorable. This last, I consider, arises from the first; for hostility or indifference of feeling will breed ignoAnd yet the latter affects, if it does not create, the

rance.

former. Will you permit me to attempt to remove this ignorance from any of your readers who may be thus affected? I am certain that, if removed, the fountains of sympathy will break forth. Will you allow me, therefore, to state in your columns the American cause as it appears to Americans. It