The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1872-06-01
Our Princess Nellie.
The Lady of the Highest Place in Amer
lea Presented to the Queen---Has She
Secret Diplomatic Mission 2

lCa IreS6nbeu TO Gn6 Queen---aas 81
Secret Diplomatic Mission 2
| From the London Times, April 81.
A paragraph in the Court Circula
of yesterday informed the public tha
Miss Grant, the daughter of the Presi
dent OF the United States, was pre-
sented to the Queen at Buckingham
Palace, and the lady of the highes
place in America has thus commenced
her acquaintance with England an(
the English. The event, though Ger.
tainly of special note, is not altogether
so remarkable as it would have beeI
in the last generation, for royal per-
sonages now go freely on their travels
and the Queen's solr himself visited
the United States before any Presi-
dents daughter arrived in England
Travel, in fact, from which We're once
excluded the classes at both extremi-
ties OF the social scale, has now be-
come the resource OF all. Crowned
heads no longer stay at home, and
classes beneath the middle class find
opportunities of going abroad. Never
theless, the arrival of the lady in
our country, and especially at this
cOnjuncture i'll the relations of the two
states, is all occurrence worth of re-
Election. Miss Grant will naturally
enjoy the advantages attached to her
position, and she will be enabled to
carry back with her to America a
more than ordinary amount of that
information in which, it is said, the
people of both countries are, to their
common detriment, SO singularly de-
ticient.
We are told that we know nothing
of the Americans, and the Americans
nothing OF us, and yet the assertion is
surely rather strange. One-half of it
receives IL certain explanation from
the doctrine maintained by the Amer
leans themselves, who are rather fond
of saying that no foreigners did or
ever could understand them. This
would be a sufficient excuse for our
own misconceptions; but as we do
not consider our own national charac-
ter by any means so unfathomable,
how is it that no American should APP
pear to understand us? The ques-
tiOn is well worth asking, and if pos
sible, answering. The citizens of the
United States visit England in great
numbers. They are eminently loco
motive race. As a nation they are
wealthy, their education of high
average order, they are acute and OBJ
servant beyond most people, and yet
it is said, and we fear truly, that they
rarely form any true conception of
ourselves, our temper, our institutions
or our dOings.
The Whole question now pending,
with its accidental complication, be-
tween the two governments, originated
in this kind of understanding, or at
least in feelings to which such Il mis-
understanding give rise. Not only
was the Alabama question never real
ly money question, as the Americans
now freely acknowledge, but it never
was, in truth, even question of sub
stantial injury or damage. The real
abiding otfense was given by the at
titude and public opinion of the coun-
try during the civil war, as inter-
preted and regarded by the belliger-
ents, and those Impressions, where
they were not false, were without
moral or political justification. We
neither said or did anything which
a free people would not be entitled to
say or do. We said, indeed, less than
we might have said, but it became
perfectly clear at the conclusion of the
that the claim which the
believed themselves to
possess on our friendship and favor
were far greater than any we had ever
them to entertain. That
was the true origin of all the ranking
which eliminated in the litigation
now pending We committed, as
jurors have confessed, no
breach of neutrality. We were never
still less malieiously,
in the discharge of any in
ternational duty. We never did or
thought of doing less for the Ameri
cans than we should have done for the
most favored European ally.
All this, however, though really as
much as could be expected of us, fell
short of the expectations actually
formed in the United States. The
people had naturally high
opinion of their own Union and its
policy, and q strong persuasion OF the
special indulgence which we were
bound to extend to them. The mere
spectacle of their institutions in dan
ger ought to have filed us with alarm.
Theirs was the land of freedom, equal
ty and progress, open to all strug-
,lers and sufferers of the old world.
rhe break up of such country was
| very different thing from revolu-
ion in Europe, and we, of all people,
,ught to have recognized the fact. So
or American feeling was natural, and
perhaps not much overstrained; the
misunderstanding occurred from the
conceived of our actual
at the critical moment. 1t
'eally seems as if the Americans had
themselves to be our very
,est friends all through a period when
We were constantly disturbed by their