For years after the Civil War there came from the press, from the lecture platform, and from the political rostrum, the most relentless abuse of Great Britain and everything British. Lecturers gave their audiences vivid descriptions of the Revolution and the war of 1812, in which American valor was always rated high and British brutality was held up to scorn. These lectures were frequently of thrilling interest because the speakers were not handicapped by matters so paltry as facts of history. But the most formidable batteries of wrath were trained against everything British from the political stump. The iron-lunged orators told of the iniquity of England, of its infamous tariff laws, the oppression of Ireland, etc. He was but a poor speaker who could not enliven a political meeting by twisting the tail of the British lion. All this is now changed. It was brought about by President Cleveland's Venezuelian message of December, 1895, and the Spanish War. When the Venezuelian episode occurred, England was believed to be isolated and without an ally. It proved that war could be declared against Great Britain at any time, in ten minutes, upon any pretext. The insolent message fell upon every one in England, from Lord Salisbury down, as a bolt from the blue sky. Englishmen were as innocent as babes of intentional offence to the United States. They had no conception that there existed in the United States such latent irritation or antagonism as under the first provocation would lead to an almost open avowal of national enmity. It, however, happily disclosed the fact that there still existed in the United States a numerous highly educated and conservative element (not dissimilar to the vanished Loyalists of the last century) in which one seldom finds a trace of antagonism to the old mother country. Following the message, magazine reviews, the public press, and the pulpit overflowed with a brilliant series of public utterances and these soon checked the noisy approving outbursts of a reckless half-educated majority to obtain whose votes at the next election undoubtedly prompted the presumptuous interference of the chief of the Republic and the unfriendly tone of his message.