likewise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languors, and infirmities; and for the last three or four years have, with a few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick bed, hopeless of a recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal; and I, thus on the very brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is faithful to perform what He hath promised, and has preserved, under all my pains and infirmities, the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His Spirit from me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the Evil One. "Coleridge! blessings on his gentle memory! Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would beat calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death-attack like a martyr. He suffered an almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the world at large has the unwithering fruits of his labours, and his genius, and his sufferings." From Macmillan's Magazine. THE CASE OF THE ALABAMA. BY GOLDWIN SMITH. NEITHER the American nor the English nation, at this moment, at all contemplates a war. But civilized nations never contemplate a war. They drift into situations in which war becomes inevitable. The disposition of the Americans towards England, so far as we can see, though not yet cordial, is improving, and is very far from being such as of itself to lead to a rupture. But a political struggle is about to commence in America, which in its issue may possibly bring a party, by tradition and interest unfriendly to England, again into the ascendant, and thus materially change the aspect of affairs. It was a strange thing for England to be thrown into the arms of the slave-owners. It was an equally strange thing for her to be thrown into the arms of the Democratic party. The Democratic party, which our proSouthern aristocracy and their journals delighted to honour as the "Conservative," was headed, as everybody who knows anything of American politics is aware, by the Southern slave-owners, who drew after them as their political dependants the Irish of the Northern cities. A section of rich men at the North connected with the South by commerce, or sympathizing socially with the slave-owning aristocracy, and a certain number of mere party adherents, formed the remaining elements of the confederation, the main objects of which latterly became slavery at home and aggression abroad. The slave-owners, who led the party, were of course bitterly hostile to this country on account of slavery and the slave-trade. The sentiments of the Irish towards England it is not necessary to describe. We have said before, but we cannot too often repeat, that it was from the Democratic party, which down to the outbreak of this revolution had enjoyed some thirty years of almost uninterrupted ascendancy, that England received all the affronts and insults which, under the guidance of our great public instructors, we have been sagaciously wreaking on the heads of the Republicans, now, after a long exclusion, restored by the rebellion to power. It was the Democratic party that made war upon us in 1812. The Republican party suffered ostracism on that occasion for the suspicion under which it lay of sympathizing with the mother country rather than with France, and for its resis tance, as the party of morality, of religion, and of Washington, to an immoral war. Short-sighted people here have embraced the Democratic party as the party of Free Trade. But it included in its ranks the iron-masters of Pennsylvania, the most inveterate of all Protectionists, whose organs fan the flame of hostility to England, in order to exclude our iron, though it be at the risk of war. The rebellion cut the Democratic party in two. The tail of it in the North, sympathizing too openly with the head in the South against the national cause, fell into utter discredit, and received at the last Presidential election what seemed a decisive overthrow; and had the Old England known her own interest, she and her statesmen would have rejoiced in that great victory of law, order, morality, and peace, as heartily as the New. But Mr. Lincoln fell by a blow which history, misled by no fanciful interpretations of Providence, will always reckon among the great calamities of the world. The new President, in spite of sinister appearances, has proved himself a skilful, temperate, and dignified ruler. But though a strong Unionist, and now on political grounds a decided Abolitionist, he was formerly a member of the Democratic party, and a slave-owner. It is too early (we say it most emphatically) as yet to pronounce judgment on Mr. Johnson's reconstructive policy. But its present tendency appears to be towards a reconstruction not only of the Union, but of the old Democratic party. It is not without a colour of reason, at least, that the President receives the calamitous approbation of the Southern press in this country. And the destinies of the nation are to a great, to a terrible extent in the hands of this one man; who, from the schism which has taken place in the Republican ranks on the subject of negro suffrage, has evidently all parties at his feet. Should the Democratic party rise again, it would again consist of slave-owners, or serfs-owners inheriting the interests and sentiments of the slave-owners, as its head, and of Fenians as its tail. Its game would be a spirited foreign policy, especially in relations with England. It would hope thus to purge itself in the eyes of the nation of the fatal stain of disunion and rebellion. It would hope thus to dissipate in the whirlwind of new passions the accusing memories of the civil war. And a man must have a very inadequate idea of the character of Southern politicians if he refuses to believe them capable, in case it suits their tactics, of exciting the American people to hostility against this country, for having allowed Southern corsairs to issue from our ports. :: Of the military designs of the Fenians we need entertain no fear. Fortunately for the mutual interest of the two Anglo-Saxon communities, the Irish at this moment are not popular in America. The assertion which one English journal repeated after another till all began to believe the slander, that the American armies were mainly composed of Irishmen, was the reverse of the fact. The Irish, from their jealousy of the negro, as well as from their Democratic connection, were throughout opposed to the war, and, after the fall of the Democratic general, M-Clellan, very few of them entered the ranks. They voted as one man for M'Clellan and slavery at the last Presidential election and their insurrection in New York, marked as it was with the same horrible atrocity which has always characterized the insurrections of Celts in Ireland and in France, did not fail to leave a deep impression on the minds of the most humane and law-loving of nations. No disposition, therefore, exists on the part of the AngloAmericans to second Fenian enterprise; on the contrary, there is, perhaps, rather a disposition to make more allowance than has been hitherto made for the difficulties which England has to encounter in_ruling and civilizing this unhappy race. But Fenians have votes; and, if the opportunity presents itself to them of using their votes in such a way so as to determine American policy in a sense adverse to England, we fear they will not show themselves sufficiently grateful for all the applause and encouragement which they received as "the Conservative party," from their admirers in the London press. With this cloud on the horizon, it is desirable in the interests of peace and all that depends on peace (including constitutional government and national solvency in American as well as English trade) that all questions between the two nations should be settled while each remains in its present temper and under its present government; and that the settlement should not be delayed till the Democrats get into power on one side, and the Tories on the other. On the part of neither government at present is there any lack of determination to maintain the national honour, while both are, as we hope and believe, sincerely auxious to avoid a war. The continuance of the general disarmament in America divests any claims which may be presented by that government of the air of intimidation; and, surely, every Englishman, with a vestige of candour in his nature, will allow that the Americans have so borne themselves, both in their civil war and after its close, that the proudest of nations need not feel itself humiliated by rendering to them all that justice requires; if, indeed, in any question of justice there could, under any circumstances, be so great a humiliation as persistence in a wrong. The only question really remaining for settlement is that of the Alabama claims. But this question derives its angry and (we fear it must be said) threatening character in part, at least, from other grievances which have rankled in the heart of the American people. The American ambassador still dwells on the general attitude of England during the war. In reply to the soothing assurances of the kindly feelings of England, tendered by Earl Russell, he still complains of the "coldness and apathy which he has found prevailing in many quarters from which his countrymen had a right to expect warm and earnest sympathy." We are not careful to answer Mr. Adams in this matter. We are ourselves among the Englishmen who have deplored as much as he has the sympathy shown for the wrong cause by a large class in this country: and we do not doubt that he has had personally, in his intercourse with English society during this period, much to endure, and by the almost heroic patience and forbearance with which he has endured it earned a title to the gratitude of both nations. But he is eminently a man of sense. He knows whether his countrymen, or the friends of political equality and religious liberty in general, have much reason to be surprised and scandalized because the old aristocracies and established hierarchies of Europe do not exhibit warm and earnest sympathy for a democracy whose friends proclaim that its success is their inevitable doom, if they are even somewhat unmeasured in their joy over such a respite to old institutions as the apparent downfall of the model republic. He knows, in short, whether it is quite rational to upbraid the thistle of aristocracy for not bearing republican figs. He knows also whether, in the quarters where he had really a right to look for warm and earnest sympathy in a crusade against the attempt to erect a slave empire, the character of the struggle was, or could be at the outset, sufficiently apparent to produce its full moral effects. Did he ever experience a chiller blast of adverse sentiment in the "coldest" society of aristocratic London than that which blew upon him, and all enemies of the greatest offence, and the memory of slavery, but a few weeks ago from his own which rankles most deeply, is the concession coast, when Connecticut refused political of belligerent rights to the South. To this rights to the negroes? Did not an American the American ambassador, on behalf of his proclaim the other day to English scepticism Government, still reverts in a tone of unathat after all it was right, for that, to the bated resentment. It is for this, as we susbest men in America, the negro was an ob- pect, that we are being called to account in ject of loathing? Is there not among his the case of the Alabama, almost as much as own countrymen, at this moment, a consid- for the depredations of the Alabama themerable party entitled to the sympathy only selves. of these Englishmen who are for "the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, and the negroes as they were?" If the object of the civil war had been simply to restore the territorial greatness of the American republic, it might have commanded the sympathies of those whose political views lead them to wish that the American republic should be very powerful and influential among nations. But no man is bound by any moral obligation to have this object at heart, much less to desire that it should be sought at the cost of an effusion (which long seemed an utterly hopeless effusion) of seas of blood. Each of the two kindred nations has in it explosive elements, which are dangerous to the common peace and welfare. We have our Tory aristocracy, our Liverpool plutocracy, our High Church Bishops. The Americans have their Fenians, their slaveowners, their violent war politicians. There is much on both sides to be controlled, and though, upon the whole, the control has been effectual, we must not wonder if there is still something on both sides to be forgiven. England may be reasonably experted to bury in magnanimous oblivion the unauthorized sallies of American subordinates. Americans may be as reasonably (and, considering their splendid victory over all their enemies and detractors, more reasonably) expected to bury in magnanimous oblivion the vain fulminations of our orators, the unheard prayers of our prelates, and the unfulfilled predictions of our po Now, no Englishman, however great may be his admiration of America, however strong may be his conviction that her greatness is, or ought to be, identical with that of the nation from which she sprang, however firmly he may have believed that the hopes of humanity were bound up in the cause of the North, however warmly he may have resented all proceedings on the part of his own countrymen adverse to that cause, even though he may have incurred the opprobrium of a "Yankee" and an "un-Englishman," can scarcely hope to be regarded by Americans as free from partiality in passing judgment on the acts of his own country. But Englishmen, of whom all this is true, are not able, after giving the case the best and calmest consideration in their power, to see that in this matter their Government did, much less that it intended, a substantial wrong. famous, traitorous, and accursed it may be, A power had sprung into existence, inbut exercising dominion practically complete over a vast and united territory, and having mighty armaments in the field. That at some point this power must have been recognized as possessing belligerent rights, all parties will allow. And never for one single moment, or in one single transaction, did the Federals themselves withhold those rights from their opponents. Never from the time when the first shots were interchanged between the besiegers and the garrison of Fort Sumter, did the Federals themselves incur in a single instance the awful risk of treating the Confederates as rebels, At all events, let want of sympathy, how-to be hanged when they were taken, not as ever discreditable and provoking, be retaliated by want of sympathy, not by slaughter and destruction. Every soldier who should fall merely to avenge the wounded selfesteem of his nation, would be murdered by the government which sent him into the field. We moralize on the king who plunged two nations in blood to avenge an epigram on his mistress. Why are these things less horrible in nations than in kings? litical seers. Of the acts of the English Government, as distinguished from the general attitude of the English nation, the one which gave regular enemies, entitled to quarter, and to all the other rights of regular war. The only question, then, was as to the time when the recognition of belligerency should take place. This question, depending on the extent of an insurrection and the consistency which it has assumed, is, of course, one which in any given case it is very difficult to decide. No one can decide it infallibly. stander, provided he is acting in good faith, But the judgment of a byis more likely to be right than that of either of the parties engaged. It appears to us that our Government was right, or, at all events, that it was not palpably wrong, in deciding that there existed from the moment of the Secession a great power, which neutrals could not avoid recognizing as belligerent, and investing with the rights — and it must be remembered at the same time with the liabilities belonging to that character. Such was, in fact, the opinion of Americans themselves, when, not having our conduct or any other disturbing consideration before their eyes, they were led to take an impartial view of the subject. The judgment of the United States Court in 1862, cited by Lord Russell, in laying down the law in favour of the course taken by the American Government, practically rules the question of belligerency in favour of ours. ports. But at the time it was unquestionably founded on the real state of the case between the Federals and Confederates, as it appeared to the most ardent friends of the Federals on this side of the water. The measure emanated, in fact, immediately, not from any diplomatic deliberations in the bosom of the Cabinet itself, but from the call which our Admiral on the station addressed to his Government for a rule of conduct, on merely professional grounds. That an English Government, looking at the question in the interest of England, desired to give strength to the rebellion, and to prolong the civil war, and that it set justice and decency at defiance for that diabolical purpose, will not be easily believed by any one who remembers the awful peril, not only commercial, but social, with which "This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local organized the cotton famine threatened us, and the insurrections. However long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprang forth suddenly from the parent brain, a Minerva in the full panoply of war. The President was bound to meet it in the shape it presented itself without waiting for Congress to baptize it with a name; and no name given to it by him or them could change the fact." It would be a curious instance of the inconvenience resulting from the want of cognate words in the English language, if the friendly relations between the two portions of the English race were to be disturbed because, while they were agreed that there was a war, one of them denied that there were belligerents. Let us suppose, however, that the British Government were mistaken. They cannot be the proper objects of serious blame, much less of sanguinary vengeance, if, in a matter notoriously difficult and doubtful, they acted in good faith. Now, that they did act in good faith, that they were determined in recognizing the Confederates as belligerents, not by any unfriendly designs or feelings towards the Federal Government, but by an honest sense of the necessity of the case, is a fact about which we believe no candid and reasonable Englishman, however little he may have admired the Government of that day, entertains any serious doubt. Lord Russell has, perhaps, in the course and under the pofemical temptations of the controversy, cast a shadow of retrospective suspicion on the character of his own act by defending it too much on mere technical grounds, such as the declaration by the Federal Government of an intended blockade of the Southern thrill of alarm and horror which, upon the dawning of that peril, ran through the whole land. The minds of many Americans, in judging of the motives which have actuated England, are full of the gains which we are supposed to have made, or hoped to make out of American calamity by trafficking in Confederate bonds, and for which a great nation is imagined to have sold its honour; though such a speculation is to the general trade of England as the contents of a pedlar's pack are to the contents of the greatest warehouse in New York. It is forgotten that we had the most tremendous motive for desiring the peace and tranquillity of the republic; and that, in fact, we have borne to an enormous extent the pecuniary burden of what to us also was almost a civil war. As to the substance of this act of its Government, then, the conscience of the English nation is clear; and if a war were forced on England ostensibly or really on that ground, she would have much reason indeed to mourn (and on other grounds than that of loss of money or even of blood), but she could have no reason to fear; for she would be fighting as the North has been fighting, in self-defence and for the right. There was more ground for complaint, we must frankly confess, as to the manner in which the act was done. Full of affliction and anguish as the American nation then was, under the pressure of a sudden and overwhelming calamity, every right feeling dictated that a step which, however inevitable, could not fail to be most unwelcome, should be taken with all the forms of studious and considerate courtesy of which the circumstances of the case would per |