The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-21
SPIRIT OF THE rRzss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
Upon Current TOpiss-Compilcd Every
Day for the Evening telegraph.
SENTIMENTAL GRIEVANCES.

SENTIMENTAL GRIEVANCES.
From the N. Y. tribune.
Prince Arthur promises to appear among
us in time to join in the tribute which Ameri-
pans will pay TO the memory of Mr.. Peabody.
This act would be meritorious, however pre-
determined. 1t would complete the homage
which royalty, as a subject, has rendered to
benevolence in its character OF sovereign. A
Prince on this side of the Atlantic would echo
the good feeling manifested by aQueen on
the other. He would be entitled to special
welcome as mourner. Though the Ameri-
can people will unavoidably reflect that
prince, as compared with live citizen, is a
pood-natured fiction, whose public aspect is
more or less the puppet of policy, yet the
policy which honors good man ought to find
hospitality, even among those who may have
reason not to delight in royalty.
We hope our British brethren will not now
take us to task on the score of sentimentality.
Yet we may err through weakness In thus
Offering hand of melancholy friendship to
our Young visitor. Perhaps we are wrong in
exhibiting an indulgent super-sensitivenes
in respect to princes and lords, who are but
the breath of kings. We may yield to a mis-
taken sentimentality in honoring the Prince
because his mother honored Mr.. Peabody.
Why indeed, should we mourn with princes?
There is no authority for it in Wheaton.
Why should the Queen grieve over foreign
benefactor? 1t is not according to Vattel.
In short, the exhibition of national sympathy
and sensibility is at war with Grotius and
Putfendorf.
Really, if we have to own some ''senti-
mental grievances, it must be admitted that
our British friends have taken an equally sem
timental way of satisfying them. We have
lamented the premature recognition of the
South, we have deplored the Alabama dam
ages, it is true; but, on the other hand, what
business had the Queen to mourn over MIR.
Peabody? We suppose some room will have
to be allowed in our national calculations for
this odd quantity of sentiment; some provision
made for what one of the English papers calls
tlacerated feelings" Whether we speak of
our Alabama claims, or are provoked to con-
slider our Peabody claims, the press of England
can more than match us with sentiment. Do
we not speak the same language? Have we not
the same traditions Is not blood thicker
than water Thicker than our diluted claims
by the way. Will our English friends be
good enough to remember that we have the
same laws and literature; that we have o con-
sanguinity, as it were, of institutions and
society; that we are co-heirs of immortality,
enjoying the same great pacific mission for
the development Of mankind? More such
sentiment might be extracted from the genial
utterances OF our contemporaries over the
sea. We might place against it Mr.. Fish's
eloquent showing that our commerce has
been scared, and SCARED, and lacerated in the
most unsentimental manner possible, and
that we would like to have indemnity. But
would it quite suffice
Lord Clarendon has made an exceedingly
practical defense of the causes and results of
the Alabama wrong. What he says on this
point is cogent enough, we doubt not, to
make many of his countrymen believe that he
has stripped the question of every vestige OF
sentimentality. Let it be ever so practical,
however, it will not escape the sentimentality
of SO calculating an authority as Richard Cob
den, who, in letter to Mr.. Frederick Mines
Edge, wrote:-''But 1 confess l think the
money amount of the captures the smallest
part of the future penalty we shall have to
pay. 1t is the loss of productive value in.
hicted on the whole of the United States
mercantile marine which is the most preg
nant fact; for it shows what half dozen
swift steamers would do to our mer
chantmen. And with whatever maritime
power we may be at war, we may be assured
the Americans will pay us in our own coin.
With such a prospect hardly see how we car
60 to war with even Brazil" The same prac
tical gentleman sentimentally exclaimed il
the House of Commons:-''You have beer
carrying on war from these shores against the
United States, and have been inficting al
amount of damage on that country greater
. than would have been produced by many
ordinary wars" 1t is little curious that thu
very Englishmen who afford us our choicest
arguments for the Alabama claims, represent
in themselves almost the only kind of argu
ment afforded us for making those claims al
moderate as considerate. Moreover, it is
sentimental one.