Taken by itself, we do not believe that this European war is more threat ening or more important to us than was the lafco American war. It is in the recollection of all of us, that the commencement of that great conflict led to the most serious disturbance of the cotton trade of England, and to an eitent of consequent distress among the working classes, which though only temporary in its duration, required no small amount of charitable relief. The distress in Lancashire was unexampled since the potato famine of Ireland in 1848. What added to the anxieties of that period was, that the war between the Northern and Southern American States suddenly cut down, to an almost insignificant value, the British exports to the best customer that Britain had. There was not merely the loss of the raw material for our cotton manufac turers, but there was the closing of the best market for manufac tured goods. It was in these circumstances that the principles of Free Trade and the enlightened and energetic policy of Mr. Gladstone ac complished, perhaps, their greatest triumphs. Eor Mr. Gladstone the triumph was almost sufficient for a life time to accomplish, and the credit such as of itself to secure him a place among the foremost of those statesmen whom history remembers. Before the Ameri can war was over, France had become a far better customer for English goods, than the United States had ever been; while there were at least two other for midable competitors for the next places in the rank of the principal commercial friends of England. Never did a coun try advance so rapidly in the career of prosperity as did England in the time of what was thought to be her greatest trial. All the sneers about the helpless dependency of a free-trade country upon the goodwill of other nations were silenced and confuted.
