In democracies such as America or France, every citizen feels an insult to his country as an insult to himself. The Alabama question is in the mouth or in the heart--which is worse--of every American who talks with an Englishman in England or America. All nations commit, at times, the error of acting as though they think that every people on earth, except themselves, are unanimous in their policy. Neglecting the race distinctions and the class distinctions which in England are added to the universal essential differences of minds, the Americans are convinced that, during the late war, we thought as one man, and that, in this present matter of the Alabama claims, we stand out and act as a united people. A New Yorker with whom I stayed at Quebec--a shrewd but kindly fellow--was an odd instance of the American incapacity to understand the British nation, which almost equals our own inability to comprehend America. Kind and hospitable to me, as is any American to every Englishman in all times and places, he detested British policy, and obstinately refused to see that there is an England larger than Downing Street, a nation outside Pall Mall. “England was with the rebels throughout the war.” “Excuse me; our ruling classes were so, perhaps, but our rulers don‘t represent us any more than your 39th Congress represents George Washington.” In America, where Congress does fairly represent the nation, and where there has never been less than a quarter of the body favorable to any policy which half the nation supported, men cannot understand that there should exist a country which thinks one way, but, through her rulers, speaks another. We may disown the national policy, but we suffer for it. The hospitality to Englishmen of the American England-hater is extraordinary. An old Southerner in Richmond said to me in a breath, “I‘d go and live in England if I didn‘t hate it as I do. England, sir, betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way--talked of sympathy with the South, and stood by to see us swallowed up. I _hate_ England, sir! Come and stay a week with me at my place in ---- County. Going South to-day? Well, then, you return this way next week. Come then! Come on Saturday week.”