The Daily Dispatch: December 31, 1864., [Electronic resource]

Scarcely a mail arrives from Europe that does not bring a statement from Lord Palmerston or Russell, or both, that England intends to preserve the most rigid neutrality between the American belligerents, and that, in their opinion, the time for intervention has not yet arrived. The war has lasted now nearly four years, and the same stereotyped missive is constantly crossing the Atlantic, until it seems to have become a regular part of the invoice of every steamer. If it should last four hundred years, and the two old earls, who seem to have as many lives as a cat, could live so long, we should have the same message to the end of the chapter. The time for intervention will only arrive when America is destroyed, the Revolution of '76 avenged, and the only commercial rival of Great Britain swept from the face of the earth.

These two old gentlemen seem to be putting themselves to a great deal of unnecessary trouble. At their time of life, they would better employ themselves in settling their own individual affairs for a future state of existence, and give sublunary, and especially trans-Atlantic things, the go-by. We are not so hopelessly thick-headed as not to comprehend the same statement when it is made a hundred times over. They need not be hurrying their gouty old legs to every steamer and sending over their compliments--"rigid neutrality, etc., but not yet time to intervene." They are both very interesting persons; and that intelligence, when they first communicated it, was a very interesting piece of news; but we venture to suggest that the best thing in the world loses by infinite repetition.--Their explication of the position of Great Britain is well understood both here and in the United States, as they themselves also are.

If they expect to keep the United States in good humor by the eternally reiterated declaration of their neutrality, they have adopted a singular mode of effecting their object. It is precisely the recognition of the South as a belligerent which has offended the United States past all atonement. The United States look upon the South as Great Britain does upon Ireland — part and parcel of the empire — and here is England, exalting her rebellious province to the dignity of a belligerent, and constantly declaring that she will not take sides with either.--It was lately urged in the United States Senate, that, but for the recognition of the Confederacy as a belligerent power, Semmes and our other cruisers would have been treated by the whole world as pirates, and, consequently, the commerce of the United States have been safe from harm. The speaker therefore proposed that a demand should be made upon Great Britain for all the losses which Yankee commerce has sustained by Confederate cruisers. The fact that these cruisers are principally British-built and British-manned has led to a prevalent idea in the North that they are neither more nor less than British privateers, fitted out with the knowledge of the British Government to prey upon Yankee commerce. This is a very uncharitable notion, we admit; but it none the less exists, and, should the cause of the Confederacy fail, England will be called upon to make good all damages to Yankee merchantmen in this war, and, what is more, she will have to foot the bill.

For, in the event of its success, the United States will be no longer the same nation that it was when, in the palmy days of that political eunuch, James Buchanan, English gunboats chased and boarded our own vessels on our own coast, and when John Bull twisted the nose and slapped the jaws of brother Jonathan as suited his sovereign convenience. The United States was then like a horse or an ass, that did not know its own strength. The exemplary Buchanan took kindly every affront put upon his nation, and made many polite bows in recognition of the condescension. But even if the war had not disclosed to the United States its own military capacities, the eagerness of England to avoid a conflict with that power would rouse its valor to a dangerous point. Whilst Great Britain has been seeking, by every indirect means, to do it mischief, she has fondled, like a spaniel, upon the Yankee Government, to avoid an open rupture. Such, at least, is the view taken of matters by the Yankee people; and their memory of an injury is remarkably good. Should a consolidated, gigantic military despotism dominate at some future day in this hemisphere, as Russia does in the East, "our cousins" across the Atlantic can reflect at their leisure upon the fruits of British neutrality. "In that event, the British Parliament might as well execute a quit-claim deed to all its possessions on this continent and bid good-bye to its dominion of the seas.