I recollect speaking on this subject, within the last two years, to a
man whose name I have already mentioned, Sir James Graham, in the House
of Commons. He was a Minister at the time of that war. He was reminding
me of a severe onslaught which I had made upon him and Lord Palmerston
for attending a dinner at the Reform Club when Sir Charles Napier was
appointed to the command of the Baltic fleet; and he remarked, 'What a
severe thrashing' I had given them in the House of Commons! I said, 'Sir
James, tell me candidly, did you not deserve it?' He said, 'Well, you
were entirely right about that war; we were entirely wrong, and we never
should have gone into it.' And this is exactly what everybody will say,
if you go into a war about this business, when it is over. When your
sailors and soldiers, so many of them as may be slaughtered, are gone to
their last account; when your taxes are increased, your business
permanently--it may be--injured; and when embittered feelings for
generations have been created between America and England--then your
statesmen will tell you that f we ought not to have gone into the war.'
But they will very likely say, as many of them tell me, 'What could we
do in the frenzy of the public mind?' Let them not add to the frenzy,
and let us be careful that nobody drives us into that frenzy.
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