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deeply, flagrantly, France and England have already sinned against us, he admonishes them against persistence in the evil course on which they have entered, against aggravating beyond endurance the indignities and outrages they have already heaped upon us. * * Mr. Sumner's is the authentic voice, not of the mob, but of the people.
He utters the sentiments of the conscientious, the intelligent, the peacelov-ing.
His inoffensive protest against the wrongs to which we have been subjected, is utterly devoid of swagger or menace.
It is a simple but cogent demonstration, by the application thereto of the established principles of International Law, of a systematic injustice to which we as a people have been subjected.
A miracle of historical and statesmanlike erudition, his address is severe without being harsh,—an indictment, judicial in its calmness, its candor, its resistless cogency.
This speech had inflamed a spirit of bitter animosity towards the country among the leading classes of
England.
Earl Russell not only justified everything the
British Ministry had done in a hostile spirit towards the
United States, but he gloried in it. Even the
London Daily News, which tried to be favorable to us, criticised the speech at length, with great severity.
And in the press of the
British Empire, hardly a journal of any especial influence could speak of us without bitterness, except the
Morning Star, of
London, which from the beginning to the end of the
Rebellion, bravely and nobly sustained our national cause.
It said:
The Hon. Charles Sumner has not belied the confidence inspired by a long and illustrious career.
He is as firmly as ever the friend of peace, and especially of peace between Great Britain and America.
The eloquent voice which has so often employed the stores of a richly furnished mind in persuasives to international amity, has not, as the telegrams suggested, been inflamed by the heat of domestic conflict to the diffusion of discord between kindred peoples.
His speech at New York on the 10th of September is, indeed, heavy with charges against France and England.
But it is an appeal for justice, not an incentive to strife.
It is a complaint of hopes disappointed, of friendship withheld, of errors hastily adopted and obstinately maintained.
It is,
