London, June 10, 1864
You can with difficulty imagine the anxiety existing in all circles here about the news. When it comes favorable to us, it makes rather long faces among the upper ten thousand, who do not like to believe we may possibly succeed. Conscious that their behavior is now well understood in America, they are still more desirous than ever that our power should be permanently impaired, on the principle that dead men tell no tales. These poor infatuated devils are playing their game, they think, much more surely and with less risk, than they could do it themselves. This game is one, however, which it is never safe for a nation to play, much less one so full of selfishness as England. At the present moment I cannot see a single country which it has succeeded in conciliating. Denmark and Germany, at odds with each other, are about equally indignant with it. France, though apparently in calm, as certainly detests it. No greater evidence of this could be afforded than the manner in which the success of the French horse at a late race at Paris over Blair Athol who had just won at the Derby, was hailed by the mass of the people present. The newspapers all describe it as if they had actually gone distracted for joy. This is a trifle in itself, it is true. But just such trifles always display most strikingly the prevailing passions. If we turn to America the appearance is the same. They have done enough to alienate us without pleasing the rebels. Both parties see equally well that the course adopted has no origin in any feeling of good will to either. It rather springs from a hope of personal benefit growing out of the dissension. A nation which acts on such principles may prosper commercially for a time, but in the long run it takes the chances of adverse events against itself. It was just this which left England alone in the war of our revolution. And so it may be hereafter when Russia and the United States, both remembering the manner they have respectively been treated, happen to have in their hands the power to turn the scales against her. The first of these powers has this year made a great step towards emerging out of the difficulties in which she has been involved. The long struggle in Circassia is over, and the ill-judged Polish insurrection has justified extreme measures which will probably prevent any recurrence of it hereafter. At the same time the serf emancipation is going on quietly but safely to its completion. Here are three causes of national weakness removed at once. The external policy of Russia may henceforward be conducted with increasing firmness, in proportion to the degree of development which her domestic forces reach.
On our side we are yet passing through the painful trial consequent upon the effort to remove a great cause of weakness. How much it may yet cost us, it is quite impossible to calculate. But the time should not pass without effecting the object, even if it be at the expense of the deportation of the whole body of existing slave owners. It may take us fifty years to recover from this effort. That is as a mere moment in comparison with the blessing it will give to our latest posterity to be free from the recurrence of such a calamity from the same cause. . . .
