Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1868 — Our Minister to England. [ARTICLE]

Our Minister to England.

- When Hon. Rkvsbdy Jonxsox. of Maryland, was appointed Minister of the United States to the Court of St. James, the people of this nation everywhere looked upon the'act with unfeigned gratification, and the newspaper press throughout tbo country, without regard to political prediiiction, hailed his selection as the wisest act of the present Administration. Mr. Joiixsox had been long in public life, was a statesman of acknowledged ability, and his course during the years of civil war marked him as one of the few Southern men whose patriotism triumphed over the prejudices of a short-sighted, narrowminded, sectional education. It is true that‘Mr. Jouxsox mantained a Bort of noncommittal, conservative position during the war, neither heartily co-operating in all the measures of Mr. Lixcolx’s administration nor yet actively opposing it, and by retaining his seat in Congress lie succeeded in forming the impression pf his opposition to the rebellious acts of his Bouthemeom.ah.rft • 1 WT ■' • ■ - , - peers and indicated' a sympathy with loyalty, which the magnanimous people of the North, in their eagerness to disavow all ungener* Otis and selfish motives, readily accepted a* sincere. When Mr. Jouxsox sailed for Europe bis constituents rejoiced in the hope that a speedy and equitable adjustment of our disputes with the British Government; arising from the Alabama out rages, would be at'once accorapliakedupon a basis equally ftrir to all parties. But instead of this the first aet of Mr. Jouxsox is so .shameful add humiliating that the 'leading men and jejuna la- of the

Kingdom cried out with surprise and disgust Almost the first breath of Mr. Johnson after sotting foot in Eng-, land was prostituted by the desire of a personal introduction to Mr. Roebuck, and Lord Wharnclifpe, two of the bitterest enemies' of the United States in that country during the war, and to Mr. Laird, the infamously famous builder of the pirate ships of the Southern Confederacy which preyed upon our peaceful, unarmed merchantmen. That the representative of a mighty Republic, standing among the ranking nations of tho earth in civilization, education, wealth, military prowess, and all that constitutes national greatness, should so far forget the dignity of his position as to stoop to the social level of the cowardly seconds of a wicked rebellion, the prime jhaovers in which were still writhing with the punishment they received, is humiliating in tho extreme. But when the chosen ambassador of a free people deliberately casts away the mantle of Democratic nobleness with M'hich ho is distinguished and in abject prostration, tohdys and fawns air the feet of insolent, detested and contemptablo aristocracy, the blush of shame gives place to the pallor of indignation. And neither the dotage of age nor the errors of education can shield that individual from the censure liis unmanly weakness deserves. Let Mr. Johnson bo at once recalled.