290 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



Should she, contrary, I believe, to the national sentiment 

 at home, obtain a firm establishment in Mexico, it would 

 not be long before she would revive her old claim to Texas 

 and Louisiana, and if she should sustain the Southern Con 

 federacy, the two powers may then agree on the division 

 of the old Gallic Territory in the Southwest. 



England favors the enormous piracy on our commerce 

 by permitting any number of piratical ships to be built in 

 Britain, and to be equipped for piracy, and to sail without 

 hindrance, while her merchants are permitted to send out 

 to Charleston and other ports of the Confederacy an im 

 mense amount of warlike stores and clothing, medicines, 

 arms, great and small, and every appliance of actual war. 

 Several of these ships, it is true, have been captured by 

 our blockading squadrons ; but so many of them succeed 

 in running the blockade, that the rebels are bountifully 

 supplied with all they need, except provisions. In the 

 mean time our ships, in great number, and in the aggre 

 gate of immense value, are robbed and burned on the seas, 

 in distant as well as proximate regions. We are now 

 submitting to travel, to transport our property, in English 

 bottoms, and thus, in both ways, our commerce is crippled. 

 The English government look on with pleasure, and antici 

 pate the time, they imagine not remote, when the United 

 States will be divided into an empire on the Gulf, another 

 on the Pacific, and perhaps a fourth in the Northwest. The 

 influence of the dying counsels of Prince Albert, and that 

 of his good Queen, have hitherto operated as a restraining 

 power, now supported by the outspoken honest sentiments 

 of the masses in England, which, when fully expressed, no 

 English ministry would ever dare to disregard. There is 

 also great meanness in taking advantage of this atrocious 

 Rebellion, to insult and cripple us when we have on our 

 hands a war which demands all our energy and resources. 

 But the time may come when these accounts will be settled 

 in Quebec. 



