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nation, by this strengthening their cause and position materially. More than that! She allowed that recruiting stations were opened all over Great Britain for the Confederacy. She subscribed for immense numbers of the bonds of the Southern States. She smuggled arms, ammunition and all kinds of contraband of war to the Confederates, enabling them to continue the struggle. She permitted her own consuls in the Northern States to act as spies for the South. She established in London a press bureau for the dissemination of false reports, which spread wholesale rumors of rebel victories and pernicious lies about Lincoln and the Union, just as the London press bureaus do to-day about the Kaiser and the successes of the Allies.
Furthermore, England allowed her newspapers to express openly the hope "that the Union, the great snake, might be cut in two by the war and rendered powerless." And last but not least, England not only opened her ports to the southern pirate craft, but violated the neutrality laws by building, equipping and manning a number of southern privateers, among them the "Alabama," "Florida," "Shenandoah," "Tallahasee," "Nashville" and others, which served as commerce destroyers.
Burning and sinking all prizes, these destroyers swept all merchant vessels of the Union from the ocean, during the war, causing a loss of over $17,000,000. They damaged the over-sea trade of the United States so grievously, that, since it has never recovered its former prominence.
But England had to pay for her treacheries. After the war was over the States demanded indemnity for the destruction, committed by these privateers. A court of arbitration, sitting in Geneva, found England guilty of the charges and sentenced it to pay to the States $15,500,000. Any one eager for more information on this subject, may find it by studying the transactions of the "Alabama Claims."—
Numerous acts of more recent date leave us suspicious as to England's true sentiments toward our Union. With France it persuaded the Austrian Archduke Maximilian to the calamitious attempt to establish an empire in Mexico, hoping thereby to kill the Monroe Doctrine and to create for the States a neighbor who might some day become very inconvenient.—
Furthermore England caused the United States endless troubles and cares in the Venezuela controversy, in the questions regarding the Alaskan boundaries and the Bering Sea fisheries; in Mexico, in the present European war and in many other instances.
What future plans England may have in regard to the Pana-
