For this reason we ought to cultivate pacific relations with the Government of England. Beware lest the question of the Alabama break loose to prey upon the true commerce of mankind! A war would put back the people of England for fifty years. When England is at war, the people are apt to rally to the Government. The island is so small, that, when a feeling once gets started, it sweeps all men away into an inconsiderate and almost savage support of the public honor. If Toryism cannot secure to itself the benefit of a war upon some point that involves an English prejudice or interest, it cannot prevent the rising strength of the people from going into opposition. Dissenters of every class are emptying the pews of the Establishment; liberal thinkers now hold University fellowships only to avoid surrendering all the ground to a reactionary party. The abolition of the stamp-tax has freed the daily press, and expensive newspapers no longer represent little cliques, but belong to the people of England, who take their pennyworth of honest criticism every morning; and the best of these newspapers have been for three years on the side of Northern republicanism. This is the instinct of human nature, which knows its rights and hungers to possess them. We are maintaining half a million of men in the field, half a million outlets of our heart's blood, because we believe that inclusion is better than exclusion. The nation's instinct for that truth has gone into camp. It is a belief that the life of the Republic depends upon including every State, and including every citizen, and including every emigrant, and including every slave, in the right to live, labor, and be happy, and excluding none. We feel that the blood we lose in fighting for that plain maxim of republican economy will make again fast enough when the maxim has prevailed. The weaver of Lancashire, who plays out his hunger in London streets, and our seamen who make the weaver wait while they watch three thousand miles of seaboard, are both listening to the rote of the same great truth, as it dashes on the shores of Time, and brings bracing air to the people who are sick with waiting. If we are gaining battles because we love the rights of the common people, our success will include the English weaver, Dissenters will build churches on our corner-stone of Liberty, the taxed will borrow our ballot-boxes to contain their votes, and none shall be excluded but the betrayers of mankind. FOOTNOTES: