It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show
best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy
than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a
violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body
and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all
previous cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
reparation which the American Government has so amply made; not so
much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leave
still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the manner
and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most of
us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were
made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that
it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
retaining the prisoners at all hazards.
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