I find in your speech grand compensation for the long postponement to which you have been constrained. It marks an epoch in a great cause. I know you will not rest. But this speech alone, with the signal result, will make your Parliamentary life historic. Surely Mr. Gladstone acted under some imagined exigency of politics. He cannot, in his soul, differ from you. Honoring him much, I regret that he has allowed himself to appear on the wrong side. What fame so great as his, if he would devote the just influence of his lofty position to securing for nations the inappreciable benefits of a tribunal for the settlement of their differences! How absurd to call your motion Utopian, if by this word is meant that it is not practical. There is no question so supremely practical; for it concerns not merely one nation, but every nation; and even its discussion promises to diminish the terrible chances of war. Its triumph would be the greatest reform of history. And I doubt not that this day is near. Accept my thanks and congratulations, and believe me, my dear Sir, Sincerely yours, CHARLES SUMNER. HENRY RICHARD, ESQ., M.P., LONDON. A COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM IRRESPECTIVE OF COLOR. LETTER TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON, JULY 29, 1873. WASHINGTON, July 29, 1873. GENTLEMEN,--I am honored by your communication of July 26th, in which, after congratulating me upon returning health, and expressing your sincere hopes that I may resume my labors in the Senate, there to take up again the cause of Equal Rights, you mention that the colored citizens of Washington are now engaged in agitating what you properly call “a common-school system for all children.” I desire to thank you for the good-will to myself which your communication exhibits, and for your hopes that I may again in the Senate take up the cause of Equal Rights. Health itself is valuable only as it enables us to perform the duties of life, and I know no present duty more commanding than that to which you refer. I confess a true pleasure in learning that the colored people are at last rising to take the good cause into their own hands, because through them its triumph is certain. But they must be in earnest. They must insist and labor, then labor and insist again. Only in this way can indifference, which is worse even than the stubbornness of opposition, be overcome. The open foe can be met. It is hard to deal with that dulness which feels no throb at the thought of opening to all complete equality in the pursuit of happiness.