Other editions, complete or abridged, appeared in London.1 The correspondent of the ‘Boston Atlas,’ from that city, wrote in June, 1846, to the editor: ‘Mr. Sumner's oration—The true grandeur of nations—has been published here in five or six different forms. Three large editions of the shilling forms have been disposed of, and the other day I saw a man near the Royal Exchange, with what he declared to be “Sumner's speech agin war with England,” and his cheap edition sold off rapidly at a half-penny each.’
Sumner's English, like his American, friends varied in their expressions of approval. Mr. Ingham wrote, Dec. 19, 1845:—
I adopt the character of your oration which that body gave who requested you to print it,— “ able and eloquent.” I cannot see a clear way to all your conclusions. You admit the necessity of a coercive police against malefactors within your country; and, on principle, I cannot distinguish the right to such a police from the right to military protection against an invading enemy. Perhaps you may think this a cavil, rather than an argument; for the true answer is that no wars are purely defensive. But surely we are justified in strengthening our coasts when we are within an hour's steaming of the French, who are actually wild for a descent on England, after Thiers's romance of the camp at Boulogne, in his last volume. I know that Dr. Wayland holds it better to submit to invasion than to incur the guilt of war. But guilt rests in the motive; and if the motive is protection, not annoyance, does it contravene the precepts of the Gospel? . . . The last report I had of your doings was the account of the Anti-Texas meeting.2 I am really proud, my good friend, of the prominence of your exertions on every occasion in behalf of justice and mercy against any odds of unpopularity.
Sir Charles R. Vaughan wrote from Oxford, Dec. 28:—
‘You are a bold man,—considering the party that is now in the ascendancy,--to have discoursed, on the Fourth of July, upon the duty and necessity of preserving peace; and I send you a paragraph cut out of the “ Examiner,” 3—a weekly newspaper, edited by a clever Whig, Mr. Fonblanque,—to show you that your venturesome task is duly appreciated here. . . . I hope you will soon pay us another visit; when I will take care to have rooms ready for you at All Souls, where I am now enjoying my Christmas holidays.’
