356 THE PEOPLE - THE ARISTOCRACY —AND THE RICH [1865

ern Confederacy, and wishing for its success, they had ended with taking up the cudgels in behalf of the institution of negro slavery. A contrast of these arguments which reflected the sentiment of the best with the resolutions and addresses of the popular meetings will establish the faith of those who believe in government by the people. The people 2 were right; the wealthy, the educated, the refined, were wrong. These saw things as they were; those wilfully threw dust into their own eyes.

Strenuous efforts were made by the Confederates in England to counteract the opinion aroused by this agitation of the slavery question.3 The Index, a weekly journal which was appearing in London, an "organ of Southern interests and opinions," and was sustained partly by money from the Confederate government, exerted itself with vigor to stem the current. "Our Southern newspapers," wrote Bright to

1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 54, 68, 360, 365. Motley wrote Holmes, Nov. 2, 1862: "We are Mudsills beloved of the Radicals; the negro breeders are aristocrats, and, like Mrs. Jarley, the pride of the nobility and gentry." — Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 100.

2 "These lower classes! which one calls the lower, but which in God's eyes are surely the highest!"— Goethe, Lewes, p. 215.

8 April 12, 1862, Secretary Benjamin wrote Mason that he had appointed Edwin de Leon as confidential agent of the State Department," and he has been supplied with twenty-five thousand dollars as a secret service fund to be used by him in the manner he may deem most judicious, both in Great Britain and the Continent, for the special purpose of enlightening public opinion in Europe through the press." Jan. 16, 1863, Benjamin wrote Hotze at London: "You are aware that your position of commercial agent was conferred principally with the view of rendering effective your services in using the press of Great Britain in aid of our cause; and until our recognition all other objects must be made subordinate to that end. . . . Your plan of engaging the services of writers employed in the leading daily papers, and thereby securing not only their co-operation but educating them into such a knowledge of our affairs as will enable them to counteract effectually the misrepresentations of the Northern agents, appears to be judicious and effective; and after consultation with the President he is satisfied that an assignment to the support of your efforts of two thousand pounds per annum out of the appropriation confided to him for secret service will be well spent." - MS. Confed. Dip. Corr., Treas. Dep't, Wash.; see, also, Dayton to Seward, Feb. 13, Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 642.

Slidell wrote Benjamin, Dec. 6, 1863: I had concurred "at Mr. Mason's

CH. XXII.]

ATTACKS ON THE PROCLAMATION

66

857

Sumner, meaning the major part of the London press, are surprised and puzzled at the expression of opinion in favor of the North;" at times they were full of irritation which they vented in virulent attacks on the Proclamation and in sneers at the Exeter Hall meeting.2 Even Earl Russell was influenced more by the sentiment of his order than by his love for liberty; and in a letter to Lord Lyons condemned the Proclamation in harsh words: "It makes slavery at once legal and illegal. There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery. It is a measure of war of a very questionable kind;" and he intimated that its object was not "total and impartial freedom for the slave," but "vengeance on the slave owner."3

suggestion, in a recommendation for the advance of a moderate sum to sustain the MS. Confed. Dip. Corr., Treas. Dep't. I am indebted to Mr. Charles F. Adams for the convenient loan of the volumes of the Index from Oct. 30, 1862, to Dec. 31, 1863.

1 Jan. 30, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. "Our London press is mainly in the hands of certain ruling West End classes; it acts and writes in favor of those classes." Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 222.

2 See Morning Post, Daily Telegraph, Jan. 31, cited by the Index. "But what is said," demanded Bright, "by the writers in this infamous Southern press in this country with regard to that meeting? Who was there? 'A gentleman who had written a novel and two or three dissenting ministers.'" -Feb. 3, Speeches, vol. i. p. 241. The Times said. Jan. 31: "The speakers were a minor novelist and two or three dissenting ministers, who seem to be of the usual intellectual calibre. Not one man whose opinion the country would listen to on any political subject not one statesman, not one person endowed with genius, however self-willed or erratic; no representative of the Peerage, only one of the House of Commons, not one of the Church, of the gentry, or the commercial world was found to stand on that platform and make himself responsible for Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation." Among the speakers were Thomas Hughes, Rev. Newman Hall, and Rev. Baptist Noel. Adams wrote in his diary, Jan. 31: "The newspapers are much exercised by this popular demonstration. The Times. . . intimates that it is stimulated by money from the government through me. Had I been able to effect it in any way, the operation might not have been a feat without something to boast of."

8 Despatch No. 57, Jan. 17, N. A. Papers. This despatch was not printed until somewhat later. Sumner wrote to Bright, March 30, that it was "cold and unsympathizing." Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 130. Adams spoke of it in his diary, May 27: "The most flagrant case of all is the construction

3

It will be instructive to sum up in numbers, as best we may, the popular opinion as evinced by the demonstration in favor of Lincoln's Proclamation. The agitation had little, if any, direct effect on the aristocracy and upper middle classes, who, in the main, still sympathized with the South; but it supported the friends of the North, in the Cabinet, who were bent on maintaining a strict neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, "2 and most members of the House of Commons desired the success of the South, although a majority were willing to follow the lead of the government in its policy of nonintervention. The total number of electors in Great Britain was about a million; but the figures appear to indicate that only four-fifths of those ever voted, while in the general election, in 1859, which chose the existing House of Commons, the whole number of votes registered was under 370,000, the falling off being largely for the reason that

put by Lord Russell on the President's Proclamation of Emancipation. Such is English manliness! Such is English honesty! The Duchess of Argyll wrote Sumner, March 26: "Is it not natural that those unacquainted with American politics should be puzzled by the Proclamation, which leaves the slaves of the loyal in slavery? and worst of all there was hope held out of the continuance of the Fugitive Slave Law. These things are puzzling. . . . There are many who hate slavery very much, who have from the first thought there was more hope of its destruction when separation is accomplished. I have never been able to see any reason for this hope, but I am sure it is honestly entertained by some." She wrote Sumner, May 15: "I do not think you trust Lord Russell as you might. His strictures on the Proclamation may have been a mistake, but it was a friend's hand." Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

1 But Mason's opinion did not prove to be correct. He wrote Benjamin, Jan. 15: "The abolition decree of the first of January is characterized in the Times of this morning . . . as the 'execrable expedient of a servile insurrection;' and this, I think, will be the judgment passed upon it by all except the most ignorant classes of England. It will have an effect exactly opposite to that which was intended, if the object was to conciliate the public opinion of Europe." - MS. Confed. Dip. Corr.

2 Adams to Seward, March 26, Dip. Corr., p. 157.

3 Mason wrote Benjamin, April 27: "It is perfectly understood in the House of Commons that the war professedly waged to restore the Union is hopeless, and the sympathies of four-fifths of its members are with the South."-MS. Confed. Dip. Corr.

CH. XXII.] SYMPATHY OF THE MASSES WITH THE NORTH 359

many members were returned from boroughs and counties. without a contest. There were, according to John Bright, five to six million men who did not possess the franchise.1 Nearly all of these, who had any opinion whatever, sympathized with the North; and their hearty manifestations of friendship came at the most gloomy period of the war, when patriots at home and friends abroad despaired of our ability to conquer the South, and when Englishmen of position and influence were gloating over the prospect of a divided republic. The Great Britain of to-day, which in the general election of 1895 cast 4,280,000 votes, would have been with the

3

1 See Speeches of John Bright, vol. ii. pp. 140, 172, 179, 191, 232; The Platform, Jephson, vol. ii. pp. 344, 355.

...

...

2 John Stuart Mill wrote Motley, Oct. 31, 1862: "We are now beginning to hear what disgusts me more than all the rest, the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American republic should be broken up. Think of us as ill as you may (and we have given you abundant cause), but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. . . . I am deeply conscious and profoundly grieved and mortified that we deserve so ill and are making in consequence so pitiful a figure before the world."-Motley's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 96, 98. John Bright said, in his speech of Dec. 18, 1862: "I have heard that there are members of the aristocracy who are terrified at the shadow of the Great Republic. . . . One of the most eminent statesmen in this country . . . told me twice at an interval of several months, 'I had no idea how much influence the example of that Republic was having upon opinion here until I discovered the universal congratulation that the Republic was likely to be broken up.'"-Speeches of John Bright, vol. i. pp. 218, 222. Charles Darwin, with his transparent truthfulness of soul, wrote Asa Gray, Feb. 23, 1863: "I read Cairnes's excellent lecture (ante, p. 79), which shows so well how your quarrel arose from slavery. It made me for a time wish honestly for the North; but I could never help, though I tried, all the time thinking how we should be bullied and forced into a war by you when you were triumphant. But I do most truly think it dreadful that the South with its accursed slavery should triumph and spread the evil. I think, if I had the power, which, thank God, I have not, I would let you conquer the border States and all west of the Mississippi, and then force you to acknowledge the cotton States. For do you not now begin to doubt whether you can conquer and hold them?"- Life of Darwin, vol. ii. p. 195.

3 This was the vote of England, Wales, and Scotland as computed and estimated by the Times. The whole electorate was 5,595,055. Times, July 31, 1895; the Speaker, Aug. 3, 1895. In 1863 about one person in twenty-three had a vote; in 1895 about one in six.

360

ENGLISH COMMON PEOPLE APPRECIATE LINCOLN [1863 North; and no doubt can exist that if the same wide franchise had obtained in 1863, the House of Commons would have sympathized with the Union, and determined the government to a friendly instead of a grudging neutrality, with the result that there would have been no Florida or Alabama destroying our shipping on the high seas. If there still remain an American Jingo1 who wishes to retaliate, when the bided time comes, for the depredations of the Confederate cruisers, the cynical ill-will of Palmerston, the speech of Gladstone, the leaders in the Times and the Saturday Review, he must remember that the England which arouses his indignation has passed away. In truth, we have reason to thank the English common people for their comprehension, right thinking, and hearty utterance of sympathy, and for their appreciation and admiration, in 1863, of Abraham Lincoln. They received his words gladly; and while trained writers criticised his grammar, his inelegant English, his backwoodsman style of expression, they grasped the ideas for which he stood, and their hearts went out to him. The expressions of the beau monde, preserved by the antiseptic of style, are repeated with their irritating sting, while the prosaic resolves of the masses are not remembered. But it is no longer true, as it was in Voltaire's time, that the beau monde rules the world.3

While the meeting in Exeter Hall was, as the Spectator said, "crowded with scholars and workmen," the sympathies of many of the literary men were not extended to the North. Grote, who loved democracy in Greece, and could palliate its excesses in Athens, criticised, with acrimony, the Northern people, because they insisted that England had violated the neutrality which she had declared, and because they did not

1 Jan. 1899.

2 See the Spectator, Dec. 20, 1862, Jan. 17, 31, Dec. 26, 1863; Saturday Review, Sept. 19, 1863.

3 "Get good society on your side,' Voltaire used to say; 'the beau monde rules the monde.'"' — - James Parton in the Forum, Sept. 1888, p. 61

Jan. 31.