The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-05
Continued from N, sir,h Pace

stood. Every room but her own, and the little
parlor into which she with Woods help had
carried me, was full of soldiers. Wood had
been taken away to work at repairing the rail.
road, and Lucy had run off from fright; but
the cook had stopped at her post, and served
up supper and opened the cellar for the SOL
diers' use she did not understand what they
said, and they were rough and boorish, but
not uncivil. L should now go, she said, when
my wounds were dressed, to look after nv
own home, where 1 might be wanted; for
herself, she wished only to be allowed to re-
main there-pointing to the room where lay
the bodies of her husband and child-wheresh
would not be molested. l felt that her advice
was good. | could be of no use as protection,
and l had an anxious longing to know what
had become of my sick mother and sister;
besides, some arrangement must be made for
the burial l therefore limped away. There
was no need to express thanks on either side,
and the grief was too deep to be reached by
any outward show of sympathy. Our handful
OF regular troops was sacrificed almost to
man in vain conflict with numbers; our vol
unteers and militia, with officers who did not
know their work, without ammunition or
equipment, or staff to superintend, starving
IN the midst of plenty, we had soon become a
helpless mob, fighting desperately here and
there, but with whom, as q manuuvrinp army.
the disciplined invaders did Just what they
pleased. Happy those whose bones whitened
the fields of Surrey; they at least were spared
the disgrace we lived to endure. Even you,
who have never known what it ia to live
otherwise than on sufferance, even your
cheeks burn when we talk of these days;
think, then, what those endured who, like
your grandfather, had been citizens of the
proudest nation on earth, which had never
known disgrace or defeat, and whose boast it
used to be that they bore flag on which the
sun never set We had heard of generosity
In war; we found none; the war was made
by us, it was said, and we must take the con-
sequences. London and our only arsenal
captured we were at the mercy of our cap
tors, and right heavily did they tread on our
necks Need l tell you the rest ?-of the
ransom we had to pay, and the taxes raised to
cover 1t, which keeps us paupers to this day.
the brutal frankness that announced we must
give place to new naval power, and be made
harmless for revenge ?-the victorious troops
living at free quarters, the yoke they put on
us made the more CALLING that their requisi-
tions had semblance of method and leealitvp
Better have been robbed at first hand by the
soldlery themselves, than through our own
magistrates made the instruments for extor
ton. How we lived through the degradation
we daily and hourly underwent, hardly even
now understand. And what was there left To
us to live for? Stripped of our colonies;
Canada andt the West Indies gone to America;
Australia forced to separate; India lost for
ever, after the English there had all been
destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country
when cut off from aid by their countrymen;
Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval
power; Ireland independent and in perpetual
anarchy and revolution. When look at nv
country as it is now-its trade gone, its fac
tories silent, its harbors empty, a prey to
pauperism and decay-when see all this, and
think what Great Britain was in my youth, ! ask
myself whether have really heart or any
sense OF patriotism that should have witnessed
such degradation and still care to live
France was different. There, too, they had
to eat the bread of tribulation under the yoke
Of the copqueror; their fall was hardly more
sudden or violent than ours but war could
not take away their rich soil: they had no
colonies to lose; their broad lands, which
made their wealth, renamed to them; and
they rose sgain from the blow. But our
people could not be got to see how artificial
our prosperity was-that it all rested on
foreign trade and financial credit; that the
course of trade once turned away from u.s.
even for time, it might never return; and
that our credit once shaken might never be
restored. To hear men talk in those days you
would have thought that Providence had or
dalned that our government should
always borrow at three per cent,
and that trade came to us because
We lived in a foggy little island set in
boisterous sea- They could not be got to see
that the wealth heaped up on every side was
not created in the country, but in India and
China, and other parts of the world; and that
it would be quite possible for the people who
made money by buying and selling the natural
treasures OF the earth, to go and live in other
places, and take their profits with them. Nor
would men believe that there could ever be an
end to our coal and iron, or that they would
get to be so much dearer than the coal and
iron of America that it would no longer be
worth while to work them, and that therefore
we ought to insure against the loss of our arti-
fetal position as the great centre of trade, by
making ourselves secure and strong andAre-
spected. We thought we were living in q
commercial millennium, which must last for
a thousand years at least. After all, the bit
terest part of our reflection is, that all this
misery and decay might have been so easily
prevented, and that we brought it about our
selves by our own shortsighted recklessness.
There, across the narrow straits, was the
writing on the wall, but we would not choose
to read it. The warnings of the few were
drowned in the voice on the multitude.
Power was then passing away from the class
which had been used to rule aud to face
political dangers, and which had brought the
nation with honor unsullied through former
struggles, into the hands of the lower
classes, uneducated, unframed to the use
of political rights, and swayed by dema-
gogues; and the few who were wise in their
generation were denounced as alarmists or as
aristocrats who sought their own aggrandise-
ment by wasting public money on bloated
ornaments. The rich were idle and luKuri-
ous; the poor grudged the cost of defense.
Politics had become a mere bidding for radi-
cal votes, and those who should have led the
nation stopped rather TO pander to she selfish