stayed not at words, but sprang into deeds of the most hostile character. And by a singular transition, from that people to whom we looked for the greatest amount of sympathy and encouragement we obtained the least. More than half a century before the war was commenced by the South for the defence of slavery, and joined in and prosecuted by the North in part, at least, for its destruction, a great law lord had announced from the bench that the air of England was so pure that slavery could not exist for a moment in that favored land, and that upon touching English soil the shackles would fall from the limbs of the slave, and he must stand forth a free man. And less than five and twenty years before, the legislature had determined that this unpolluted element should not be confined to Britain alone, but should spread over the world, to all the colonies and dependencies of that realm, and that slavery should exist no more under the British flag. And no achievement of that power during its thousand years of rule had been more gratifying to the national pride than the peaceful one of emancipation.
With this record, it was not strange that Northern Americans should expect English sentiment to take their side in the great struggle. Why were they disappointed? Why was it that a vast majority of the intelligence, the decency and respectability of England was willing to see the bad cause succeed? The answer is, that it was the same influence which had made the Americans of the South for a century hold Africans in servitude, and the Americans of the North encourage and support them in doing so—pride and arrogance of race, engendered mainly by selfishness and greed. That the English people on the east side of the Atlantic were not different from those other English people whose ancestors had migrated to the west side of the ocean, and taken to themselves a new name; that these
Englishmen who had crossed the sea had not brought away with them ali of the brutality, all of the selfishness, or all of the insolence of power, but only their fair proportion of those qualities; that their brethren whom they had left behind them were neither better nor worse than themselves; and that the offspring of the separated families, with an obedience to the original plans of nature singularly faithful, were found when they again met to have a resemblance as strange as the resemblance of Antipholus of Syracuse to his brother of Ephesus. Different climates and different habits of life had marked certain peculiarities upon the form and features, while different social influences had stamped their effects upon the minds of the people; but as these influences were slightly different, so was the change but trifling.
The great leading peculiarities of the English nation, as it existed on both sides of the water, were found to be identical. Whether it showed itself in the whipping of negroes in South Carolina or coolies in Mauritius, the braining of pappoose at Humboldt Bay or blowing Sepoys from the mouths of loaded cannon at Lucknow, it was the same spirit of Anglo-Saxon selfishness, and disregard for the rights and feelings of others.
Both nations were willing enough to run up and down the world trading with those who would, and robbing those who would not, and asserting and perhaps believing they were spreading Christianity and the elegant arts of peace; both attacking barbarism with bullets instead of books, and standing ready to spread civilization with Henry rifles or Snyder breech-loaders.
The high-spirited youth who pelts defenceless Chinamen with stones in the streets of San Francisco, or tears their flesh with dogs, feels that he is performing a commendable duty in resisting the encroachments of an inferior race, in presuming to breathe of the air
