The Hon. Caleb Cushing, who, if we remember rightly, was
Mr. Pierce's Attorney-General, and made himself parti- cularly unpleasant to Mr. Crampton in the discussion concern- ing English enlistments during the Crimean war, is coming to England on a "mission" from Mr. Seward, supposed to be con- nected with the Alabama claims. If he is the man we mean, he is by no means the kind of man we could wish to have had sent in such a matter, for it will require both sense and temper. The pub- lic opinion in America was indignant at Lord Russell's absolute rejection of these claims, and though in no respect noisy and threatening, was on that account only the more dangerous. The Daily News correspondent, who knows the Northern States better than any literary Englishman and as well as most Americans, expresses his belief that if Mr. Seward insists on satisfaction for these claims, the public opinion of America, irritated at the
English cruse throughout the war, will support him even with enthusias:a. Neither nation wishes to go to war, but either would probably g ) to war on what it thought a point of honour, and this looks dangerously like one to both nations. No war couldhe more disastrous, or to our minds more unhappy in its origin. In defending our right of negligence in the Alabama care, we should. defend a right far more likely to injure our own naval and maritime greatness in future, than to benefit either ourselves or any one else.
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