The French amateur in McClellan's army is disgusted with McNapoleon, and speaks with contempt of the reckless waste of men, of material, etc. He calls it cruel, brainless, and uses a great many other exclamations.
The healthful activity of Stanton, his broad and clear perception of almost all exigencies of these critical times, are continually baffled and neutralized by the allied McClellan, Blair, Seward, New York Times and New York Herald. Such an alliance can easily confuse even the strongest brains.
The colonization again on the tapis, and all the wonted display of ignorance, stupidity, ill-will, and phariseeism towards genuine liberty.
Seward gave up his Yucatan scheme. Chiriqui has the lead. And finally, some foreign diplomats try to make conspicuous their little royalties. So Denmark tries to cultivate the barren rocks of St. Thomas with the poor captives. It will be a new kind of apprenticeship under cruel masters. I hear that Mr. Lincoln is caught in the trap, and that a convention ad hoc is soon to be concluded. This time, at least, Mr. Seward's name will remain outside.
I am uneasy, fearing we may commit some spread-eagleism towards France during this present Mexican imbroglio. I will do my utmost to explain to influential senators the truth concerning Louis Napoleon's political conduct towards the North, the absurdity of any hostile demonstration against France, and the dirt constituting the substratum of the new Mexican treaty.
"French policy may change towards us," say the anti-Napoleons; "Louis Napoleon will unmask his diplomatic batteries," etc., etc.
Well, Louis Napoleon may change when he finds that we are incorrigible imbeciles, and that the great interests, which to defend is his duty, are jeopardized; but not before. As for masked batteries, I considered worse than fools all those who believed in masked batteries at Manassas; and in the same light I consider all the believers in diplomatic masked batteries. I was not afraid of the one, and am not of the other.
Not one single French vessel has run, or attempted to run, the blockade; not one has left the ports of France, or of the French West Indies, loaded with arms or ammunition for the insurgents. As for the barking of French papers, or of some second or third rate saloons, barkings thus magnified by American letter-writers, I know too much of Paris and of society to take notice of it. I am sure that the whole rebel tross in Paris, male and female, have not yet been admitted into any single saloon of the real good or high society in Paris, and never will be. A thus called highly accomplished and fashionable lady from New Orleans, or from Washington, may easily be taken for a country dress-maker, or for a chamber-maid, not fit for first families of the genuine good and high society in Paris, and all over Europe.
Stanton, the true patriot, frets in despair at McClellan's keeping the army in the unhealthiest place of Virginia. Stanton's opponents, the rats, find all right, even the deaths by disease. In the end McClellan is to be all the better for it. Is there no penitentiary for all this mob?
New regiments pour in, the people are sublime in their devotion; only may these regiments not become sacrificed to the Jaggernaut of imbecility.