CYRUS FIELD CARRIES ON 99 
and efforts. You have proved what wanted no proof—your spirit, 
hardihood, immense powers, and rapidity and variety of re- 
sources. You have spent as much money, and have armed and 
perhaps have destroyed as many men, taking the two sides to- 
gether, as all Europe spent in the first years of the Revolutionary 
war. Is not this enough? Why have you not more faith in the 
future of a nation which should lead for ages to come the Ameri- 
can continent, which in five or ten years will make up its appar- 
ent loss or first loss of strength and numbers, and which, with a 
career unencumbered by the terrible calamity and curse of slav- 
ery, will even from the first be liberated from a position morally 
and incurably false, and will from the first enjoy a permanent 
gain in credit and character such as will much more than com- 
pensate for its temporary material losses? I am, in short, a fol- 
lower of General Scott. With him I say, “Wayward sisters, go in 
peace.’ Immortal fame be to him for his wise and courageous 
advice, amounting to a prophecy. 
Finally, you have done what men could do; you have failed be- 
cause you resolved to do what men could not do. 
Laws stronger than human will are on the side of earnest self- 
defence; and the aim at the impossible, which in other things 
may be folly only, when the path of search is dark with misery 
and red with blood, is not folly only, but guilt to boot. I should 
not have used so largely in this letter the privileges of free utter- 
ance had I not been conscious that I vie with yourselves in my 
admiration of the founders of your republic, and that I have no 
lurking sentiment either of hostility or of indifference to Amer- 
ica; nor I may add, even then had I not believed that you are 
lovers of sincerity, and that you can bear even the rudeness of its 
tongue. 
I remain, dear sir, very faithfully yours, 
W. E. Gladstone. 
Cyrus Field, Esq. 
In answer to this long letter, Field sent some documents on 
conditions in America and a small book called Among the 
Pines. He felt a conscientious duty to acquaint the leaders of 
British thought with the exact situation in America, so that 
they could draw correct conclusions. Gladstone read the 
book “with great interest” and gave permission for a copy of 
