The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-23

the natural result Is not expected To tOllOW
from them. They do not picture to themselves
and 1t is Just TO add, We have never
given them the means OF picturing TO them
selves-tbe exact contingency in which Great
Britain would turn against the foot which
spurns 1t. So far as their experience reaches,
there is no abusive language of which this
country can be brought to take notice-not
even the raving of Senator Sumner when
acting in an executive capacity as member of
8 body which shares tue treaty making power.
There is no trivial pretext violently insisted
upon which will not he cvilly discussed.
There is no concession, deliberately intended
on one side to he bumiliatiug, to which Brl-
tIsh statesmen may not falrly be expected
to reconcile themselves IN time. 1t IL
exactly here that the danger lies. AFRO
gance unprecedented in diplomacy has
not hitherto borne the natural fruit of
arrogant diplomacy. Our habitual attitude
towards the Americans, aud their habitual
attitude to us, have produced in them a sin
pular inception of our national charac-
ter. Though they are boue of our bone and
flesh of our flesh, they have come to think of
us az If we had somehow lost that deep re-
serve of national pride and susceptibility
which they are conscious Of in themselves. The
danger, therefore, is not that they will declare
war against us: it is even improbable that
they would do so under the supreme tempta-
tion of finding us engaged in a European
struggle. What Is far more likely is that
some day-without looking for consequences
more than usually serious-for the sake of
satisfying some local cry or gaining some
domestic political advantage-they will put
upon us some intolerable insult which will
call forth an eruption of indignation from
John o Groat's to the Lands End. Then
will occur in England what Napoleon III as
serted to have happenedin in France at the be-
ginning of the present war. The country
will have escaped from the hand of its tenn
poTiZing statesmen, and war will be all but
inevitable. Such an event will perhaps sur
prise and disconcert the Americans; but the
most tremendous struggle of modern times
will not the less be on the point of beginning
The sovereign security against this great
danger does not consist in any sudden change
of diplomatic policy. There is paipable fool
ishness i'll the postponement of auy American
difficulty which can be honoraby settled; but
there is no reason for abandoning that con-
side1ateDess towards the United States which
English statesmen have sometimes carried to
the verge of submissiveness. The first step
is to convince ourselves OF the rooted un-
triendliness of the American people towards
this country so far as they are represented by
their national organs; the next is to place
ourselves in such position that, however we
may regret it, we may defy the worst
possibilities with which it is preg-
nant The true moral of the
American lesson Is the same with the
moral of that European lesson which we are
slowly learning. When the British navy be-
sides cumbrous ironclads, contains sufficient
number of heavily y-armed but light footed
cruisers to make privateeriug hot work In
every corner of the globe-wheu we ale in a
position to throw close upon 100, 900 regular
troops into Canada without danger to our own
shores-we shall find that the Americans are
neither cowed nor insulted; but we shall fiud
that their statesmen, and even their dema-
gogues, will think twice before they deal with
this country in any different spirit from that
which presides over their relations with Rus
sia or with the North German Confederation.
EARLY MARRIAGES.
From the N. Y. Tribune
All England is stirred to its foundations
just now by a step which the directors of
the London Union Bank have seen tit to take
for the prevention of too early, and therefore
lmprudent, marriages among their clerks
Any employe of tie establishment venturing
to treat himself to a wife upon salary of
| less than G150 year is to be summarily dis
missed. The clerks seem willing to submit
meekly enough; but tue edict has reused the
indignation of the British public from one
end of the island o the other, and has
dragged open the whole vexed question of
marriage. The directors are warned by all
kinds OF remonstrances, speers, and menaces,
! that their action is cruel and illegal;
| that the free-born Briton has
hight to a wife and unlimited children,
and a right to starve them too upon
whatever salary, or lack of ii, he sees fit
| One of the gravest leading journals, in the
! froth and fury of its Vehemence, ironically
| advises the maternal directors" to take in
charge still further the interest of their clerks
and take care that they marry only good
| cooks and women whose tastes run in the
direction of bombazne and drab ribbons.
| mo Iadesman or factory hand" it tells u.s.
| would submit for day to such unparalleled
| tyranny" But the clerks of the Union Bank.
| being gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen,
! belong to that educated middle class which,
we are surprised to learn, sis always ready, in
| England, to basely submit to any yoke for
the sake of q salary" Marriage, it goes on
to say, is a mystically sacred union, with
which neither Bank Presidents nor Govern
ments have anything to do.
| Now, all this is very Independent, and
| worthy of the freest British Hotspur But
the service of the Union Bank was certainly
not compulsory, and the half-dozen respect
! able old gentlemen who have raised all this
| pother concern themselves, it is most likely
very little with either my stically sacred bonds
! or Blalthusian schemes. Their object is most
! probably, the business of their bank and to
provide themselves with the most efficient
workmen to transact it. If experience has
taught them that the unmarried clerk is less
! likely to be tempted by the pleasures open to
| young men to neglect his work and defraud
| his employers than one with wife, the sus-
picion of blame falls, it appears to us, more
upon the extravagant wife than the directors
| This point would be stronger, we acknow-
ledge, if the salary were triae higher