It is very soothing for the quiet of private life to ignore newspapers; but all over Europe men in power, sovereigns and ministers, carefully and daily study and watch the opinions of the newspapers, and principally of those which oppose and criticise them.
Such, Mr. Lincoln, is the wisdom of the truly experienced statesman. Better ask Louis Napoleon than Seward.
I am astonished that concerning Mexico Louis Napoleon was taken in by Almonte. Experience ought to have fully made him familiar with the general policy of political refugees. This policy was, is, and will be always based on imaginary facts.
Political refugees befog themselves and befog others. And this Mr. de Saligny must be a d——; Louis Napoleon ought to expel him from the service.
Halleck likewise seems to lay the track to the White House. Nothing has been done since he took the command in person. Halleck, as does also McClellan, tries to make all his measures so sure, so perfect, that he misses his aim, and becomes fooled by the enemy. In war, as in anything else, after having quickly prepared and taken measures, a man ought to act, and rely as much as possible on fortune—that is, on his own acuteness—how to cut the knot when he meets it in his path.
Halleck before Corinth, and McClellan before Manassas and Yorktown, both spend by far more time than it took Napoleon from Boulogne and Bretagne to march into the heart of Germany, surround and capture Mack at Ulm, and come in view of Vienna.
The French and English naval officers in the Mississippi assured our commanders that it was impossible to overcome the various defences erected by the rebels. Our men gave the lie to those envious forebodings. McClellan, in a dispatch, assures the Secretary of War that he, McClellan, will take care of the gunboats. Risum teneatis.
The most contemptible flunkeys on the face of the earth are the wiseacres, and the thus-called framers of public opinion. Until yet McClellan, literally, has not stood by when a cartridge was burned, and they sing hosanna for him.
Ten thousand men have been disabled by diseases before Yorktown; add to it the several thousands in a similar way disabled in the camp before Manassas, and it makes more than would have cost two battles, fought between the Rappahannock and Richmond,—battles which must have settled the question.
Although ultra-Montane, the Bishop of Orleans nobly condemns slavery. The Bishop's pastoral is an answer to H. E., Archbishop of New York. The French bishop therein is true to the spirit of the Catholic church. The Irish archbishop, compared to him, appears a dabbler in Romanism.