OLD-TIME ORATORY 185 
A few weeks later, John Bright—carrying on in Parliament 
despite the death of his colleague Cobden—wrote him in 
England about the same difficulty. His letter follows: 
Rochdale, March 8, 1868. 
My dear Mr. Field,—I have only just received your kind invi- 
tation. Unluckily Tuesday is fixed for the Irish debate, and I can- 
not be away from the House on that evening. 
I regret this very much, for it would give me much pleasure to 
spend an evening with you. I must call upon you, and have a talk 
with you on the new crisis which has arisen in your country. 
Some of your statesmen are in favor of repudiation, and you 
are dethroning your President, and yet your stocks are not sen- 
sibly shaken by all this in the English market. There is more 
faith in you than there was three or four years ago! 
But I hope your people will not repudiate. 
Always sincerely yours, 
John Bright. 
I expect to be in town in the course of to-morrow. 
The “kind invitation” mentioned in Bright’s letter was for 
a dinner given by Field at the Buckingham Palace Hotel on 
the fourteenth anniversary of the organization of the New 
York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company in his 
Gramercy Park home. Dinners to mark anniversaries of this 
kind were frequent at that period, and Field’s amiable hos- 
pitality made him a well-liked host. Social affairs bringing to- 
gether leading Englishmen and Americans improved the dip- 
lomatic relations between the two nations and were a distinct 
benefit during the strained relations of the post-war period. 
At that time there was a sharp dispute between the United 
States and England over the damages inflicted on Northern 
shipping during the Civil War by Confederate vessels built 
and equipped at British ports. These losses had been serious 
and humiliating to the Northern cause, but England’s tradi- 
tional pride in carrying things with a high hand “where 
Britannia rules the waves’ had hindered a fair settlement. 
The American protest—called the “Alabama claims” from 
