not always easily perforable either by eloquence or by reason. And during the progress of all great measures, including especially foreign negotiations, which require to be left undisturbed in their prog ress from germination to maturity, he is subject to be goaded almost to madness every day by vicious in terpellations, not only on the part of members of the Opposition, but even his own supporters in the House of Commons.

How different is the spectacle of government in the United States! Here, the President,-that is, the Prime Minister of the sovereign people,—is placed in power for a fixed period of time, during which he ist politically independent of faction, and can look at the temporary passions of the hour with calmness, so as to judge them at their true value, and accept or reject their voice according to the dictates of public duty and the command of his conscience. Neither he nor any of the members of his Cabinet are subject to be badgered by factious or unreasonable personal inter rogation in either house of Congress.

Moreover, the House of Representatives does not presume to set itself up as the superior either of the President or of the Senate. Nor is the Senate in the condition of being terrified from the discharge of its duty by threats on the part of the President or of the House of Representatives to subjugate its free will at any moment by thrusting into it a batch of twenty new administration Senators. Least of all does the House of Representatives presumo to possess and ex ercise the powers of a constituent national convention,

to change in its discretion the, constitution of the United States.

Thus it was that, in the matter of the discussion of this Treaty, Mr. Gladstone and the other Ministers were tossed to and fro on the surging waves of public opinion, and pestered from day to day in Parlia ment, while solicitously engaged in reflecting how best to keep faith with the United States and at the same time do no prejudice to Great Britain. If, at that period, the Ministers said in debate any thing unwise, any thing not strictly true or just,-Mr. Glad stone did, but Lord Granville did not,―let it not be remembered against them personally, but charged to the uncontrollable difficulties of their position, and the sigual defectiveness and intrinsic weakness of the or ganic institutions of Great Britain.

During all that period of earnest discussion on both sides of the ocean, it was to me, as an American, matter of the highest thankfulness and gratulation and patriotic pride, to see the Government of the United States,-President, Secretary of Stai, Cabinet, Congress, continue in the even tenor of their public duty, calm, unruffled, self-possessed, as the stars in heaven. The Executive of the United States is, it is true, by its very nature, a thoughtful and self-contained power. Congress, on the other hand, is the field of debate and the place where popular passions come into evidence, as the winds in the cave of Eolus. But, on this occasion, no more debate occurred in either IIouse than that least possible expression of opinion, which was necessary to show accord with the

Executive. Even the Opposition, to its honor be it said, conducted itself with commendable reserve and consideration. How different from all this was the spectacle exhibited by the British Parliament!

ENGLISH MISCONCEPTION OF AMERICAN SENTIMENT.

I contradict, with equal positiveness, the suggestion that demagogic agitation in the United States feeds itself largely on alleged hatred of Great Britain. I think topics of international reproach are more common in England than here. The steady current of emigration from England, Scotland, and Ireland to the United States, and especially at the present time from England, is not a grateful subject of contemplation in Great Britain. England perceives, but not with perfect contentedness, that the British race in America bids fair soon to exceed in numbers and in power the British race in Europe. And, above all, the gradually increasing force of those factions or parties in Great Britain, which demand progressive enlargement of the basis of suffrage, equal distribu. tion of representation, vote by ballot, the separation of Church and State, subdivision of the great prop. erties in land, cessation of hereditary judicial and political power, intellectual and social elevation of the disinherited classes,-I say such parties or factions, in appealing to the institutions of the United States as a model, provoke criticism of those institutions on the part of the existing depositaries of property and polit ical power. Owing to these, and other causes which might be indicated, it seems to me that the United

States encounter more criticism in Great Britain than Great Britain does in the United States.

Moreover, it should be borne in mind that much of the inculpation of Great Britain which is perceived in the United States proceeds from British immigrants,— largely Irish, but in part Scottish and English,-who, like other Europeans, are but too prone to come here with all their native political prejudices clinging to them; who not seldom hate the Government of their native land; and who, of course, need time to cease to be Europeans in spirit and to become simply Amer icans. And it would not be without interest in this relation to see how many of such persons, in the newspaper press or elsewhere, say or do things tending to cause it to be supposed that opinion in the United States is hostile to Great Britain.

There is one other class of facts which it is proper to state in this relation, and particularly proper for

me to state.

The successful revolution of the thirteen Colonies was an event most unacceptable, of course, to England. We, the victors in that contest, should not murmur if resentful memories thereof lingered for some time in the breasts of the defeated party. I think, however, such feelings have ceased to manifest themselves in England. It is to quite other causes, in my opinion, that we are to attribute the successive controversies between the two countries, in which, as it seems to me, the greater wrong has in each case, been on the side of England. I think we did not afford her suffi cient cause of complaint for continuing in hostile oc

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cupation of the Northwestern Territory for so many years after we had made peace. I think she was wrong in issuing the notorious Orders in Council, and in the visitation of our ships and impressment of our seamen, which morally constrained us, after exhaust. ing all other means of redress, to have recourse to war. I think she was wrong in contending that that war extinguished the rights of const fishery assured to us by the Treaty of Independence. I think she was wrong in the controversy on the subject of colonial trade, which attained so much prominence during the Presidency of Jolin Quincy Adams. I think she was wrong in attempting to set up the fictitious Mos. quito Kingdom in Central America. I think she was wrong in the so-called San Juan Question. And so of other subjects of difference between the two Gov.

ernments.

Now, it has happened to me, in the course of a long public life, to be called on to deal officially, either in Congress, in the Cabinet, or at the Bar, with many of these points of controversy between the two Govern ments, of which it suffices to mention for example three, namely: 1, the Question of British Enlistments; 2, the Hudson's Bay Company; and 3, the Alabama Claims,

In regard to the first of these questions, the United States, and the persons who administered the Govern ment, were so clearly right that, although the British Government, in its Case, improvidently brought into controversy at Geneva, by way of counter-accusation, the general conduct of the United States during the