New York were fastened upon that very war-party against which they had been levelled. Systematic misrepresentations of this nature, invidious glosses and plausible misconstructions, did undoubtedly conspire with the really complicated conditions of the case and the undisputed fact of certain antipathies of race (predicable as truly of the Northern States as of any other part of the world) to persuade very many Englishmen that the North was not sincerely hostile to slavery, but used the Anti-slavery or the Abolition cry as a mere feint to disguise the lust of domination. Those who liked to be persuaded of this were persuaded with the utmost ease; and even among men who considered the subject without bias, many were confused and shaken.
3d. The party which cared only for the anti-slavery aspect of the contest was large. Their attitude is to a certain extent indicated in what has just been said. One and not an insignificant section of them would have sided frankly with the North, if satisfied that the Northern triumph would be an anti-slavery triumph; but, talked as they were, or talking themselves, into the belief that slavery had little more to fear from the North than from the South, they remained, at least during the earlier part of the war, indifferent or indignant. Others, of course the great majority, watched eagerly every symptom and every step which proved the North to be in earnest in the work of abolition; they thrilled to the sounds which “proclaimed liberty to the captive,”—the tones of Northern manifestoes and legislation, the tread of Northern legions, and the volleys fired by negro soldiers. They got to feel a genuine veneration and even enthusiasm for President Lincoln, and formed probably the only section of men or women in this country who could speak of General Butler without bringing “railing accusations.” The party was diffused over the length and breadth of the land. It numbered, I suppose, some adherents even in the aristocratic and governing classes,—thousands, no doubt, among the working and laboring millions; but its central strength was in that backbone of English philanthropic effort, the more plebeian section of the well-to-do middle class,—that section which gravitates towards Dissent in religion, towards Radicalism in politics, towards Bible Societies, Temperance Movements, “Bands of Hope,” and Exeter Hall. If this section of the British community had not remained true to anti-slavery ideas, the country would indeed have been turned “the seamy side without.” That we were spared, in the severer crises of the war, the last uglinesses of tergiversation, is owing mainly to people of this class, the cheapest subjects for well-bred sneers and intellectual superiority in ordinary times.
4th. The party which believed in the right and the probable eventual success of the South was obviously, during the greater part of the war, a numerous one. In the early stages of Secession, when the chief question before one‘s thoughts was that of right, I think that comparatively few people sided with the South, though very many were lukewarm or frigid, or actually inimical towards the North. At that time party-spirit still respected the old-fashioned notions, that a self-governing nation must be ruled by its own majority, not minority; that a minority which cried out before it was hurt, and "cut the connection" rather than strive by constitutional means to turn the balance in its own favor, was likely to be a fictious and misguided minority; and that a new commonwealth, whose raison d'être was Slavery, had little claim to the sympathies of Englishmen or of civilization. Others laid greater stress from the first on the argument, that the States of the Union were all sovereign states, which had respectively entered into a voluntary bond, and could voluntarily withdraw from it without gainsaying; and that this ground of right on the side of the South remained unaffected by any accessory considerations. This view rapidly gained over the willing convictions of Southern sympathizers, when the impulse and determination, the cour-
