On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what hundreds of
thousands--I may say, what millions of Englishmen, were in the position
of the personage here sketched--Christian men, I hope, shocked at the
dreadful necessity of battle: aware of the horrors which the conflict
must produce, and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that
there was no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon! My reader,
perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he knows what good people
are to be found there; how polished, how generous, how gentle, how
courteous. But it is not the voices of these you hear in the roar of
hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes to us across the Atlantic.
You can't hear gentle voices; very many who could speak are afraid.
Men must go forward, or be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them.
I suppose after the perpetration of that act of--what shall we call
it?--of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of
us believed that battle was inevitable. Who has not read the American
papers for six weeks past? Did you ever think the United States
Government would give up those Commissioners? I never did, for my
part. It seems to me the United States Government have done the most
courageous act of the war.
Pages:
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329