[From the London Daily Telegraph, April 28, 1865.]
Last night in both houses of the legislature the representatives of the English government announced that on Monday next our senate would give expression to the feeling of indignation which had been occasioned in this country by the murder of President Lincoln. The course, taken is undoubtedly the best. Even on the most important night of the parliamentary year there would have been no lack of generous eloquence upon such a theme; but it was more especially desirable that the sympathy of the whole people should be formally expressed by the Queen and her responsible advisers. Had the matter been left to the feelings of individual members, no delay need have occurred; but then the words of condolence would have represented merely the personal opinions of the speakers. In this case it was essential that not only the leaders of party and the chieftains of debate should rise to denounce the infamous atrocity, but that the voice of the British empire itself should be heard in solemn reprobation of a most hideous crime. Nor are there many grander things in history than such an expression of a whole nation’s mind. Doubtless from every court upon the continent messages of sympathy and regret will be forthcoming; but it behooved the one people of the Old World that is absolutely free to rise to the height of so great and terrible an occasion, and to speak in tones which would be remembered centuries hence. So, not disregarding ancient rule and order, but adapting them with a wise liberality to the actual necessities of the day, lords and commons will desire her Majesty to speak for them as well as for herself. Whatever may be the faults of our Parliament, it is in all cases involving national reputation or national sentiment substantial at one with the people. We never look to it in vain when there is an outrage to be resented or a generous action to be performed; we can trust it safely with our honor—confide to it without misgiving the keeping of our conscience. France, Russia, Austria, young Italy, and the states of Europe may vie with each other in their expressions of regret; but, unless the civil war has strangely altered the nature of Americans, the first inquiry across the Atlantic must be, “What will they think of this at home?” Nor will they be left long in suspense. Were the little, throbbing, eloquent, electric wire now working at the bottom of the ocean, there would have been flashed hours ago a message [Page 400] from Windsor Castle to Washington—a message from Queen Victoria to Andrew Johnson, which would have been practically a message from one great people to another. The petty jealousies, the small bickerings, that may have been engendered in a time of war, must end in presence of so stern and horrible a fact. Be it ours, as a nation, to show that whatever we may have thought of the contest while it lasted, we sympathize with the affliction of a kindred race—that we loathe, we men of the old mother-land, the dastardly crime which has been committed—that we honestly wish our cousins good speed through a sad time of trial. Party, as we have said, has nothing to do with this simple question. If anywhere abroad there is a notion that upon the American war we are split into two hostile factions of aristocrats and democrats, we may as well nail that base coin to the counter at once, before it passes, any further, and clear the good name, the honest repute of England in the eyes of the whole land. From the leader of the conservatives—the fourteenth Earl of Derby, the Stanley whose ancestors influenced our history before Christopher Columbus set sail for the “unknown world”—there will come as eloquent and as honest an expression of manly sympathy as from any radical member of the House of Commons. Our peers, our squires, the representatives of past glories, and the tribunes of modern wants, can have but one thought just now; and that thought will find its highest and most constitutional expression in the letter of the Queen herself.
The people of England, however, who were not bound over to silence, and who had no considerations of parliamentary etiquette to guide or to restrain them, have already expressed in a hundred ways their abomination of the crime, and their sympathy for its victim. No man who walked in the streets of London at noon on Wednesday will readily forget the scene as the news spread throughout the great city. There was one vast, universal sense of horror and dismay; for the act, in truth, seemed an outrage upon humanity itself—an outbreak of devilish passion which menaced all society. That sense of abhorrence was not confined to London. We could only assume yesterday what we can assert to-day—that from one end of the land to the other there has been a cry of rage at this most foul assassination. The men of Liverpool have, on the whole, been southern in their sympathies, but when the news reached them they grieved as earnestly as the moat fervid abolitionist of Massachusetts. A creature, indeed, there was—and we wish we could pillory the offender by his name—who cried “Hurrah,” but a southerner seized him, and helped to kick him from the room. National, indeed, was the sorrow and the anger. Southampton heard the news, and instantly a meeting for condolence was resolved upon; far away in the north Newcastle heard it, and the dwellers by the Tyne gave vent to their wrath with unmistakable Northumbrian emphasis; Dublin learnt the horrid tidings, and the warm-hearted Irish people at once grew eloquent in their indignation; at Manchester, at Birmingham, everywhere throughout the land—from the great centres of industry to the quiet little country towns—there was but the same expression of opinion. The London press, always unanimous on such a point, had already spoken out, and its words of sympathy may have done more to restore an absolutely friendly feeling between the two great sections of the Anglo-Saxon race than a host of diplomatic despatches. The corporation of London—interesting whenever it becomes a spokesman for the whole metropolis—postponed all business until it had placed upon official record its “detestation of the atrocious crime.” The demonstrations of feeling were not, of course, confined to Englishmen. The Americans in London assembled, under the chairmanship of a gentleman who was among the late President’s political opponents, and although the meeting was adjourned, there can be no doubt that citizens of both sections of the States will join in expressing on Monday night their condemnations and their regrets. Meanwhile, the Germans in London had also gathered together, and helped to swell the general shout of human indignation—a shout which is now echoed from the other side of the channel by the journalists of France.
[Page 401]Little enough that is new has yet reached us from America; to-day we have only a summary that is but five hours later than the telegrams we published yes terday morning, but in this intelligence there are some items of importance. Chief of these is the statement that hopes were still entertained of Mr. Seward’s recovery, and that, at any rate, he was still living. We cannot profess to feel very sanguine on this point; the Secretary of State is growing old, and his recent accident was almost enough to kill a stronger man, without the foul supplementary violence of the assassin. As he threw himself from his carriage before, so he seems, when the murderer’s knife had gashed his face, to have thrown himself from his bed, and thus to have escaped the last deadly thrust; but it is difficult for a man of his age to survive such an accumulation of physical calamities. His son, who was reported to be dead, survives; but his condition is most critical, and the many Englishmen who knew Frederick Seward well must wait with a painful anxiety for the next telegrams. The last item in the news is the saddest; the assassins are still at large, and in such a time of general confusion they may possibly contrive to make their escape. If they go south and reach any part of the country which is still under confederate authority, their summary arrest and subsequent surrender to their pursuers may be reckoned as certain. Wherever they go, the curse of Cain is perhaps more markedly upon these men than on any other political murderers in the world’s history.