sometimes malevolent, which too often pass current among us; to examine
what has been, what should be the attitude of our Europe, what is our
responsibility, what are our interests and our duties. We alone, I am
ashamed to admit it, we alone run the risk of rendering doubtful the
final triumph of the good cause; we have not ceased to be, in spite of
ourselves, the only chance and the only hope of the champions of
slavery.

Perhaps I shall enter ere long, in a new study, upon the important
subject which I confine myself to indicating here, and which
pre-occupies the government at Washington to such a degree that it seems
inclined to order defensive preparations in view of an unnatural
conflict between liberal America and ourselves. Everything may
happen--alas! the seemingly impossible like all else. It is not enough,
therefore, to declare this impossible and monstrous, it is not enough to
prove that the present state of feeling in Europe is far from giving
reason to foresee an intervention in favor of the South; it is necessary
to sap at the base these deplorable sophisms, more fully credited than
is imagined, which may, in due time, under the pressure of certain
industrial needs or of certain political combinations, urge France and
England into a course which is not their own.

For the present, I have only wished to repeat, with a strengthened
conviction, what I said a few months ago. I believed then in the
uprising of a great people; now I am sure of it.

VALLEYRES, _November_ 2, 1861.