"If we do concede the demands of England, however, it will only be because we desire to crush this rebellion, as a duty we owe to mankind. It will be because we prefer to master the great evil, and do not wish to be alienated from our duty by an international and comparatively unimportant quarrel; it will be because we prefer national salvation to the gratification of any feeling of national pride. It will be a great act of self-denial. But when we come from this rebellion it will be with a magnificent army, educated and organised, and with the sense of this wrong weighing upon them. It will be with a navy competent to meet any navy upon the globe. It will be for us then to remember how England was our enemy in the day of our misfortune, and to make that remembrance a dark and fearful page of her history, and an eternal memory of our own."
That these are the opinions of most people in America nobody on this side of the Atlantic will believe. But that there are roughs and rowdies in the States, who as they have nothing they can lose by war are always full of bluster and warlike in their talk, this may any one in England very easily conceive. Of course it is to please them that such stuff as we have quoted is stuck in Yankee newspapers; and our sole surprise is that the journals which admit it find it pays them so to do. The rowdies as a rule are not overflushed with wealth and can ill afford to spend their coppers upon literature, which, the chances are, they scarcely would know how to read.
For the benefit of the American jingoes Punch on December 7th, issued the following warning, with an appropriate cartoon:
A WARNING TO JONATHAN;
OR, "DOTH HE WAG HIS TAIL?"
Jonathan, Jonathan, 'ware of the Lion:
He's patient, he's placable, slow to take fire:
There are tricks which in safety a puppy might try on,
But from dogs of his own size they waken his ire.
With your bounce and your bunkum you've pelted him often,
Good humoured he laughed as the missiles flew by,
Hard words you've employed, which he ne'er bid you soften,
As knowing your tallest of talk all my eye.
When you blustered he still was content with pooh-poohing,
When you flared up he just let the shavings burn out:
He knew you were fonder of talking than doing,
And Lions for trifles don't put themselves out.
But beware how you tempt even leonine patience,
Or presume the old strength has forsaken his paw:
He's proud to admit you and he are relations,
But even relations may take too much law.
If there's one thing he values, 'tis right of asylum;
Safe who rests 'neath the guard of the Lion must be:
In that shelter the hard-hunted fugitive whilome
Must be able to sleep the deep sleep of the free.