could not have done, had not a temporary diversion been effected by the fleet at Trebizonde, which made it necessary for the Russians to be prudent about leaving their right flank exposed to the advance of fresh troops landed at that port. Thus the expedition which was to be so glorious for our Jingoes, was at a deadlock.
The political grievances of Ireland not having been removed, but rather intensified by the stupid obstinacy of the Bungling Coalition, this troubling of the waters in the East was welcomed by the Nationalist party, now the vast majority of the Irish people. They saw in the thickening difficulties of the British Ministry a chance to extort the independence they could not hope to win by patience and persuasion, and the whole energy of the Irish Americans was thrown into getting up a quarrel, on some pretext or other, between the Governments of the United States and of England. Nor were the men of action in little Ireland itself behindhand with their special industry. Arson—a very difficult thing either to prevent or to prove—and, when practicable, dynamite, were the order of the day, or rather of the night; and those methods of procedure were by no means confined to the congenial climate of the distressful country. There moonlighting, boycotting, and plans of campaign, which had ducked their heads to Coercion Acts for a time, raised them again, and were as rampant as ever, the office having been given from over the ocean by those who wanted to carp at any possible error of the Bungling Coalition. They found this not so difficult as it might have been in another and, for with all their esteem for the old country, and their commercial reasons for keeping on terms, the Yankees could not forget that each 4th of July they celebrated an independence wrung by physical force from this same power from whom the Irish—or at least four-fifths of them—were now seeking in vain a friendly and partial separation.
