"My dear Sir,--I thank you very much for giving me the _Thirteen Months_. Will you think that I belie the expression I have used if I tell you candidly the effect this book has produced upon my mind? I think you will not; I do not believe that you or your countrymen are among those who desire that any one should purchase your favor by speaking what is false, or by forbearing to speak what is true. The book, then, impresses me even more deeply than I was before impressed with the heavy responsibility you incur in persevering with this destructive and hopeless war at the cost of such dangers and evils to yourselves, to say nothing of your adversaries, or of an amount of misery inflicted upon Europe such as no other civil war in the history of man has ever brought upon those beyond its immediate range. Your frightful conflict may be regarded from many points of view. The competency of the Southern States to secede, the rightfulness of their conduct in seceding (two matters wholly distinct and a great deal too much confounded), the natural reluctance of Northern Americans to acquiesce in the severance of the Union, and the apparent loss of strength and glory to their country; the bearing of the separation on the real interests and on the moral character of the North; again, for an Englishman, its bearing with respect to British interests--all these are texts of which any one affords ample matter for reflection. But I will only state, as regards the last of them, that I, for one, have never hesitated to maintain that, in my opinion, the separate and special interests of England were all on the side of the maintenance of the old Union; and if I were to look at those interests alone, and had the power of choosing in what way the war should end, I would choose for its ending by the restoration of the old Union this very day. Another view of the matter not to be overlooked is its bearing on the interests of the black and colored race. I believe the separation to be one of the few happy events that have marked their mournful history; and although English opinion may be wrong upon this subject, yet it is headed by three men perhaps the best entitled to represent on this side of the water the old champions of the anti-slavery cause--Lord Brougham, the Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Buxton.