A lesson from history.
The real or affected incredulity of the Yankee journalists and orators that the South can ever be separated from the North is not greater than that which was entertained by the English people in regard to the separation of the American colonies from the mother country. Said the Rev. Sidney Smith, in one of his productions, published we believe about twenty-five years ago, "It is very difficult to make the mass of mankind believe that the state of things is ever to be otherwise than they have been accustomed to see it. I have very often heard old persons describe the impossibility of making any one believe that the American colonies could ever be separated from this country. It was always considered as an idle dream of discontented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party, considered to be within the limits of possibility. There was a period when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans; but all the world was in heroics; one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and another at the Lion; blood and treasure men, breathing war and vengeance and contempt; and in eight years afterwards an awkward looking gentleman, in plain cloth, walked up to the drawing room of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as the Ambassador from the United States of America."Let the Yankee blood and thunder men meditate upon that lesson from the past.--It may prepare their minds for the future.
