LXXVIL] TO MB. T. B. POTTER.

931

assigns as the main cause for the hostility of the ruling 1865.
class (for the masses we know are on the other side) to the Zir.60.
North to the fact that the Americans have (previous to the
war as well as since) shown a disposition to go to war with
us, This is the old indictment, and I have but one answer
to it. The United States maintained previous to the outbreak
 of the Civil War an army of 17,000 men and a navy
of 7000, and for ten years previous had never commissioned
a line-of-battle ship. Yet in her dealings with England and
Europe, with their standing armies of half a million of men,
and their navies of scores of line-of-battle ships, the United
States carried, we are now told, matters with a high hand |
Was there ever a stronger admission of the superiority of
moral force and of republicanism? When a Bobadil or a
Drewcansir is represented on the stage, he is always armed
to the teeth. But here you have an unarmed nation bullying
 great military and naval powers. Would to Heaven
that France, Russia, Austria, England, Italy, and Prussia
would follow this fashion of bullying! . . ..
“What is running in Lord ——’s head is the common
fallacy of confounding the language of certain newspapers
and parties in America with the acts of the Government.
Is it fair to forget that there are nearly two millions of
persons who were born in Ireland living in the United
States, and perhaps as many more the offspring of Irish
parents, all of whom are animated with the most intense
hatred towards England? New York city alone at the last
census had 260,000 Irish, actually more than the population
of Dublin in 1851, thus making New York the greatest
[rish city in the world. These people have their newspapers,
their orators, and they have votes. Considering how demonstrative
 they are, it is not wonderful that their voices
are heard at every period of excitement. But what shall be
3aid of the fairness of those Englishmen, who, knowing