[
570]
That abuse was often expressed in phrases so unmanly and ungenerous, and even coarse and vulgar at times, that high-minded Englishmen blushed with shame.
Only here and there throughout the kingdom, for a long time, was heard a voice of real sympathy for a great and enlightened nation struggling for existence, which had, in a measure, sprung from the loins, as it were, of the
English people.
Those few voices were pleasant to the ears of the earnest champions of the
Republic and universal freedom, during the conflict; and the memory of the utterers will be ever cherished in the heart of hearts of a grateful and generous people, who can, with the magnanimity of true nobility, forgive the arrogant and the misinformed in other lands, who, failing to comprehend the dignity of the cause for which the loyal
Americans were contending, treated them unkindly in the hour of their greatest distress.
How powerfully the conspirators were aided by the
British Government and
British subjects, under the overshadowing wing of the
Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality, and so prolonged the war at least two years, will be observed hereafter.
The
French Emperor, to whose court
William L. Dayton, of
New Jersey, was sent, by the new Administration, to succeed
Faulkner, of
Virginia,
1 was cautious and astute.
While expressing the most friendly feelings, toward the
Government and people of the
United States, he followed the
British Queen in according belligerent rights to the insurgents, by a decree issued on the 11th of June;
and, as we shall observe hereafter, he entered into political combinations and military enterprises, at about the same time, for the aggrandizement of his empire, and the propagation of imperialism on the
American Continent, with the belief that the days of the Great Republic were numbered, and its democratic forces hopelessly paralyzed.
The
Queen of
Spain also hastened to proclaim the neutrality of her government,
and to combine with the
French Emperor in replanting the seeds of monarchical institutions in the New World, now that the menacing Republic was expiring.
The
King of
Portugal also recognized
the insurgents as belligerents; but the enlightened
Emperor of
Russia, who was about to strike the shackles from almost forty millions of slaves in his own dominions,
2 instructed his chief
