with each other. The South will make her demands for secession
with an arrogance and instant pressure which exasperates the North;
and the North, forgetting that an equable temper in such matters is
the most powerful of all weapons, will not recognize the strength
of its own position. It allows itself to be exasperated, and goes
to war for that which if regained would only be injurious to it.
Thus millions on millions sterling will be spent. A heavy debt
will be incurred; and the North, which divided from the South might
take its place among the greatest of nations, will throw itself
back for half a century, and perhaps injure the splendor of its
ultimate prospects. If only they would be wise, throw down their
arms, and agree to part! But they will not."

This was I think the general opinion when I left England. It would
not, however, be necessary to go back many months to reach the time
when Englishmen were saying how impossible it was that so great a
national power should ignore its own greatness and destroy its own
power by an internecine separation. But in August last all that
had gone by, and we in England had realized the probability of
actual secession.

To these feelings on the subject maybe added another, which was
natural enough though perhaps not noble. "These western cocks have
crowed loudly," we said; "too loudly for the comfort of those who
live after all at no such great distance from them. It is well
that their combs should be clipped. Cocks who crow so very loudly
are a nuisance. It might have gone so far that the clipping would
become a work necessarily to be done from without. But it is ten
times better for all parties that it should be done from within;
and as the cocks are now clipping their own combs, in God's name