The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-05-15 00:00:00

A COMMON-SENSE VIEW OF THE QUESTION.

The following appeared in The Times on Wednes-
day :
Von have repeatedly done me the favour to publish letters
in which I have sought to correct misstatements or remove
misapprehensions as to matters affecting the friendly rela-
tions between our two countries.

I trust that you will not deny me the opportunity of saying
a few words at the present crisis.

than, walled in the hope that among my countrymen in
Engloo:d some voice of far more authority than edtre might
Is, raised to protest against the acceptance (lay Englishmen)
of a mere individual utterance as an expression of official
opinion or of popular feelit g.
lint the comments of certain journals upon Mr. Sumner's
speech, anol the singularly ill-advised letter of Mr. Goldwin
Smith , published by you this morning , render urgent the
need that some American should say to the Engli--11 public
that which I am stare great tountbers of my countrymen feel.
Nothing can be more obvious than that even if Mr. Gold-
win Smith's reddence in America had been sufficiently pro-
longed bt enable hint either to influence public opinion there,
or to form any accurate judgment of the state of public
opinion throughout that vast country, nothing that he could
devise would be so well calculated as his present letter to
produce the state of feeling which he professes too deprecate;
while the would-he prophetic character of his declarations is
strangely discredited by their manifest inconsistency, inas-
much as his warning is based upon the assumed probability
of a state of things which he explicitly says he does not con-
sider as likely to occur. And if it did occur—if anything an
mutually suicidal as a war between England and the United
States should arise—is it probable that the citizens of the
one country would or could, be compelled to "remove " from
the other?

Mr. Smith is fond of statistics. Bas be ever "tried the
figures," and satistled himself of the physical possibility of
such an international exodus—to be performed not over land
like that of the Israelites. but by lea? Has he ever calcu-
lated, or even estimated, the number of citizens of each
country to be found within the territories of the other, or
what enormous means of transport would be requi.ite to
convey this multitude across the broad Atlantic, in opposite
directions and at the same moment?
" .

--(37;;;Side'r-Zio-lirWl;rge a proportion of these denizens of
our respective countries are not mere transient visitors—are
not merely " encamped " upon the land, having only to strike
their tents and march, but have formed permanent ties, and
become literally,,, wells, in feeling, " attached to the soil,"
and who, therefore, to be removed must be uprooted. Anti
Is not this very fact one of the strongest evidences of the
moral? (might I not almost say the physical, impossibility of
a war
Itti easy to " talk "of war but should it ever really seem
to be imminent it w,•nld become necessary to consider what
to do arid how to do It; what would be the process anti
what its results; anti the most belligerent of politicians
would recoil before the actual apparition of the horrors he
had invoked.