The

The amount of stupid prejudice and obstinate ignorance about our affairs shown by these journals, is well nigh incredible. All the old sores of the past fifty years were raked up to inflame popular prejudice. Our institutions, history, morals, manners and government were disparaged and vilified, as if no public or private virtue were left on this side of the ocean, Whatever the South said for itself, or against the North, was credulously believed; and all that the North said was ignored or denied. The tone of the British government itself was cold and diplomatic, and tended to favor the South alone. According to all recognized principles of international law, the only lawful army and navy which England had any right to see within our boundaries, was that called out by the United States. But the British government at the very outset, even before the minister of our government could arrive in England, issued a proclamation, conceding belligerent rights to the revolted as much as to the loyal states. It assumed a position of neutrality between a lawful government and its rebellious citizens. It put the privateers of the latter on the same footing with our men-of-war. Nashville wantonly destroyed the Harvey Birch by fire, and then found refuge and comfort in British ports: Earl Russell said it was a Confederate "vessel of war." Spain and Turkey have been more just than England. The Times, The Morning Herald, and The Post, followed by nearly all the leading journals, (excepting The Daily News and The Star,) have bitterly and constantly denounced the policy, the aims, the power and the right, of our Government in the prosecution of the war. In the affair of the Trent, England ignored its old policy and claims, that it might put us in the wrong. The news of the seizure of that ship was followed by a furious outburst of indignation and hostility from Johnny Groat's to Land's End. The wildest surmises were current and credited about our intent and policy; as, the manufactured lie, that the government at Washington was under the dictation of a mob; or, the gross absurdity, that the North, hopeless of subduing the South, had put a deliberate insult upon England, that it might in its extremity embroil itself in another war, and so have a decent pretext for making peace with the rebels! The British lion could not have sprung to its feet with more instant rage even in the event of a French invasion; only it was in menace of a foe supposed to be powerless, and not in panic before an empire known to be strong. In hot haste a virtual ultimatum was despatched across the Atlantic, containing no hint of possible diplomatic negotiations even on points of international law plainly involved and not yet settled. To aid diplomacy, large reinforcements were at once shipped to Canada. In the extremity of our Republic, before we had completed our preparations for coping with the rebellion, ere we had gained a single great victory, England sent us an ultimatum, and sent a large force to our borders in menace, while the whole British press poured out a volley of anathemas. Mr. Seward's note to Lord Lyons, indicating a pacific solution of the difficulty, was in the hands of the ministers of the crown, its contents carefully suppressed. And only the good sense of our government, and the moderation of our "mob," kept Old England from the unspeakable shame of making war upon a free Republic in the interests of a slave-holding confederacy. Then, of course, there came a lull in the storm, but still no concession to the justice or rights of our cause; there was silence but no favor:

Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure noeendi.

and

Of this attitude and public policy of England in respect to our struggle, there is one and only one possible solution, in consonance with all the facts of the case. The preeminence of Great Britain is the historical idea of British statesmanship. This may spring from the latent conviction that Eng

lish supremacy is for the greatest good of mankind; it is, at any rate, sufficiently powerful to absorb all minor morals and objects. The peculiarity of the British power, as compared with that of all other great historic nations, is seen in the fact that it is the only island which has ever ruled continents. The marvellous energy, pluck, good sense, and pertinacity of the British people have given it unequalled success in the planting and holding of colonies. It has also been able at home to combine the most diverse interests in one orderly and wonderful state. Monarchy, aristocracy, representative government, commerce and manufactures are wrought into one system, making one power as never before. To support all these interests, to remain a great and growing power, it must have great colonies, and a proportionate maritime and commercial superiority. It lives and thrives through and by its possessions abroad. It is by necessity ambitious for foreign conquest and rule. Some of its interests, especially those of the aristocratic, the manufacturing, and the commercial classes, seem endangered by the example, or by the growing power of our Republic. Dread of this power, and of its future growth, controls the words and policy of many of England's greatest and best men. Our democracy is disliked by their aristocracy; our manufactures rival theirs; our commerce threatens at many points to supplant theirs. We are in dangerous proximity to some of their best colonies. They can hardly replace the drain we make upon their people by the superior advantages our land holds out to their more destitute population. In this state of things, what was more natural than that, in sush a crisis as ours, all these threatened interests should rise up against us? Our hour had come; it was our time of rupture and of weakness; this Republic seemed rent asunder. Now, if ever, was the opportunity, without infringing on the letter of the public law, to make use of practicable means for giving aid and comfort to the cause of Secession, thus hastening the dissolution of the Union. In many ways this would be for the advantage of England. The United States would cease to be a first rate power. Southern cotton could be directly exchanged for English manufactures. The need of a strong force in Canada and the West Indies would be curtailed; and the Monroe Doctrine would become a dead letter. It would also be proved, that Republics tend to subdivision. Thus the material and commercial prosperity of Great Britain might be enhanced, and its aristocracy have a new lease of power, both in church and state.

AMERICANS WRITING FROM ENGLAND.-The foregoing impressions are fully confirmed by Americans visiting England. One, obviously an intelligent Christian, whose letter appears in the Boston Recorder of October 30, says: "All are bitter and severe on America. This war gives them an excuse to vent out what always has been in them, an intense dislike of our institutions, and an unconscious envy of our sudden prosperity. All are befooled and misled by the Times, which is full of lies as an egg is full of meat. It is committed to misrepresentation of us, and will publish nothing which bears on the other side. It desires to see our country divided. All the sympathies of the English are with the South; all hesitate not to avow their sympathies; all profess horror and execration of the war; all declare that our cause is hopeless. I thought I might lecture on the war; but I had rather speak to the north wind. Nobody will hear; nobody wishes to know the truth. There is a universal and intense desire to see our eternal division. It has become fashionable to sneer at the slave. There is no anti-slavery sentiment that I have heard. They say they like the South because the Southrons are gentlemen, are land-owners, are aristocrats, and are oppressed by barbarians, by plebian adventurers. It is the aim of all parties to do us

all the harm they can, because they see that the war will be fatal to their trade, and because they fear a people who can put one million men into the field. No arguments will tell on the English mind but results. When we have succeeded, they will be silent, except to curse and to hate."

We devoutly trust that all this cannot be true; but clearly there is rising between the two countries a state of feeling sure, if not checked and changed, to end in evils to both parties and the world, which no arithmetic can compute. Nobody here doubts the settled, chronic hostility of the aristocratic, ruling classes in England to our government; but the great body of her people, whose interests and political views are mainly in harmony with our own, we still regard as friendly to us, and likely to continue so, unless the aristocrats, who hold in their hands, just as our slave-holders do, the chief engines of influence, shall succeed in misleading and embittering their minds beyond cure. If they do, we see no escape from the evils ahead; and, in every view of the case, the friends of peace in the two countries will need to be constantly on their guard, and use their utmost efforts to avert the threatened storm.

OUR STRUGGLE AGAINST OUR REBELS:

ITS AIM AND SPIRIT AS VIEWED BY LOYAL CHRISTIANS.

We have been hoping that the necessity for war had passed. We thought that henceforth reason and argument, and the peaceful ballot, were to be the forces to purify and elevate mankind. We have seen, in Christian England, great measures of humanity and great constitutional reforms accomplished, with no conflict but that of free discussion, and no revolution but that of public sentiment. We have believed that this hereafter was to be the law of progress in civilized nations; but how it might be in a land where a high Christian civilization was wedded with such a barbarism as all Christendom abhors; where side by side with every liberty which is precious to man, has stood and grown mightier every day, a system whose perpetuity requires that those liberties should be restricted and deniedthis we had not taken into the account. And now the question has come squarely upon us, whether we will relinquish these hard-earned liberties, or whether we will hold them in battle, and cement them, if need be, with blood.

With multitudes of our fellow-countrymen in these alienated States, we had no controversy. To the institution of Slavery, considered as an evil entailed on them by our common ancestors, much as we lament it, we could have no active hostility. But to the system, as shaped and organized by its modern advocates into a political despotism; to the theory of government which it engenders; to its aggressions and demands; to its insolent attempt to dictate our opinions, and decide what men we shall elect to office; to the spirit of conspiracy, intrigue, and violence which is its natural fruit; every principle of freedom which we prize is irreconcilably hostile. Reason has failed to remove these differences. Argument and persuasion have been wasted. Compromises have been in vain. The laws and the Constitution have been set at naught. All that remained for us, was either to buy a base peace by the surrender of our liberties, or to establish them firmer than ever with the untaught hand of war.

Let us not think, moreover, that the conflict into which we entered, is to terminate merely with these local interests. We cannot fight the battles of our country against treason, without fighting at the same time a battle of freedom for mankind. If the Revolution which gave this land its birth, sent forth a wave of influence which rocked the thrones of the Old World, and whose vibrations still tremble in the heart of nations, so the issues of this contest are to be felt with swifter impulse in every land that knows the American name. Yes; we have great work on hand. We are to prove in the face of all nations, that a popular government is strong enough to punish treason. We are to show that a people can be as loyal to their elected rulers as to a hereditary king. We are to show, that a government can be defended and maintained as thoroughly by the rallying hosts of freemen, fresh from honest toil, as by the costly machinery of standing armies. We are to show at what price we hold our rights, what sacrifice we will make to keep them, how deeply the principles of justice have sunk into the American heart, how wisely we can use the difficult advantage, which may be put into our power, of striking the death-blow of Slavery on this Continent; for all these issues seem to be wrapt up in the contest. We shall begin by vindicating our own freedom; but, when we have thoroughly done that, we shall be apt to find that unawares we have shattered and cast down into the dust, the last power in Christendom which dared to maintain the right to enslave a fellow-man.-Rev. W. H. Goodrich.

MITIGATIONS OF WAR.

Evils of every sort are so inseparable from war— —(in any form,)—that we are glad to record any facts which can relieve a picture so revolting as a civil strife in particular must always be. The general rule will inevitably be violence, cruelty, crime, suffering; but, mingled with these, we occasionally find feelings and deeds that win our sympathy, admiration and love. We quote a few on both sides of the present struggle:

FACTS CREDITABLE TO THE REBELS.--A magnanimous Rebel. —A Colonel of one of the Louisiana regiments saw a poor private, a Federalist, lying wounded alone by the roadside, and begging for a drink. The Colonel dismounted, and, taking the soldier's canteen, went to the creek, and filled it, gave him a drink, and placed him in an easier position; all this while our bullets were flying thick around him. I am very sorry I do not know the gallant Colonel's name. He never did a nobler act on the field.

Rebel Treatment of Prisoners.—We are glad, said the Baltimore American, to contradict the rumors of barbarous treatment of our soldiers after the battle at Manassas. We learn that every attention was paid to the wounded which the most humane could have desired; one soldier affirming that when he called upon the man who had shot him down for some water, the Confederate supplied him from his own canteen. Let every humane act of either side be chronicled.

FACTS FROM OUR ARMY.-Gen. Burnside's Address to his Army before the Battle of Roanoke." On the march of the army, all unnecessary injury to houses, barns, fences, and other property, will be carefully avoided, and in all cases the laws of civilized warfare will be strictly observed. Wounded (rebel) soldiers will be treated with every care and attention; and neither they nor prisoners must be insulted or annoyed by word or act."

Generous Treatment of Inhabitants by our Troops.-They have taken special pains to guard their persons and property, even where fathers and sons were away fighting in the rebel army against the Government; and their prisoners have quite generally expressed surprise at the kind treatment received at our hands, and thousands have refused to return on exchange or parole. "It is worthy of remark," says a Chaplain writing from Winchester, Va., "that I have not seen or heard of a single invasion of private right or intrusion since our arrival in this town. This course is highly appreciated by the Secessionists, and tends greatly to disabuse the Southern mind of the impression that we are all barbarians."

Absence of Malice in the Army.-"I have conversed," says a correspondent of the Prot. Churchman, "with innumerable soldiers, officers and privates, with a view to discover their prevalent feelings. In some cases I have found that thoughtless ardor for a brush or a battle which pervades all armies; but in no one instance have I detected a spirit of malignity. On the contrary, over and over again have I heard generous and sad regrets at the dreadful necessity of taking up arms against brethren, profound wonder at the infatuation which seeks to overthrow this most beneficent of human governments, hopes that the Union may be preserved with little bloodshed, and that fraternal feeling toward their Northern brethren may soon revisit the South. This, beyond all doubt, is the prevailing spirit of this magnificent citizen army.'

General Spirit of our People.-Sad as the present aspect of affairs throughout our land must appear to those who may have hoped for better things, it is still cheering to discern traces of the softening and humanizing spirit of the Gospel, as shown in the forbearance of our Government toward those who have so wantonly sought to overthrow it; in the great reluctance to the shedding of blood, which from the first has been manifest among those who do not feel restrained from taking part in the strife; and in the earnest desire of the great mass of our fellow-countrymen, that the contest might be a short one. May we not here see the happy result of those Christian sentiments which have been cherished during a long period of peace and prosperity.—Friend, Philadelphia.

The feeling prevalent from the first all over the North, is thus described by Rev. Dr. BUTLER, Episcopal minister in Washington :-" Having so long breathed an atmosphere heavy with the poisonous fumes of treason, I found the patriotic gales which were sweeping over the mountains, plains and cities of the loyal States. most invigorating and refreshing. Some of the observations which I then made, were very encouraging. First, and best of all, I was glad to find a calm and kind temper prevailing at the North. As I had heard so much in this community of its bitter spirit, I determined particularly to notice spontaneous expressions of feeling. Mingling as I did with all classes, and in various places, I recollect, but two instances in which I heard expressions of revengeful feeling; and those had reference to South Carolina. Since my return, I have heard Mr. Holt (a slaveholder) repeat emphatically the declaration made in one of his public speeches, that in all his wide sweep over the West and North, he did not hear one revengeful or unbecoming expression of feeling towards the South."

RELIGION IN OUR ARMY.-Its general Character.-There has never been a war in human history, unless it was that between the Parliamentary forces and the Royalists in England, which resulted in the dethronement of Charles I., in which there was so large a number of praying men on the right side of the conflict, as in ours. Nearly every regiment which