Another serious mistake made in the preface to the supplement
is the encouragement of that hoary convention which in these columns we have never ceased to protest against, that England took the side of the South during the Civil War, and did her best to break up the Union and support the cause of slavery. " In the Civil War," says the preface, our ruling classes took the side of slavery and disunion, and in the friction of those days we came nearer to the ultimate disaster than at any other time since the Treaty of Ghent." This of course is the view which enemies of England try to preach in the schools of America, but we are glad to see that Lord Charnwood in one of the chapters of his excellent Life of Lincoln, noticed by us elsewhere, shows what a delusion it is to represent our Government as having favoured the South and tried to injure the North. The very most we did was to make a mistake somewhat similar to that made by President Wilson and try to be neutral on a moral issue. Because the Confederates won the initial victories of the war we were exceedingly pessimistic and believed that the South must win, and unwise statesmen like Mr. Gladstone talked in public about Jefferson Davis having made an army and a navy and a nation.
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