be opened to them here; and hands now folded helplessly in English
poor-houses may joyfully reap the harvests of Iowa and Wisconsin.
Assuredly, they bear you no ill-will. If they could comprehend the
meaning of this struggle, their hearts as well as their interests would
be upon your side. But it is not in them, it is in the working-men of
our cities, that the intelligence of the class resides. And the sympathy
of the working-men of our cities, from the moment when the great issue
between Free Labor and Slavery was fairly set before them, has been
shown in no doubtful form. They have followed your wavering fortunes
with eyes almost as keen and hearts almost as anxious as your own. They
have thronged the meetings held by the Union and Emancipation Societies
of London and Manchester to protest before the nation in favor of your
cause. Early in the contest they filled to overflowing Exeter Hall, the
largest place of meeting in London. I was present at another immense
meeting of them, held by their Trades Unions in London, where they were
addressed by Mr. Bright; and had you witnessed the intelligence and
enthusiasm with which they followed the exposition of your case by their
great orator, you would have known that you were not without sympathy in
England,--not without sympathy such as those who look rather to the
worth of a friend than to his rank may most dearly prize. Again I was
present at a great meeting called in the Free-Trade Hall at Manchester
to protest against the attacks upon your commerce, and saw the same
enthusiasm displayed by the working-men of the North. But Mr. Ward
Beecher must have brought back with him abundant assurance of the
feelings of our working-men. Our opponents have tried to rival us in
these demonstrations. They have tried with great resources of personal
influence and wealth. But, in spite of their personal influence and the
distress caused by the cotton famine, they have on the whole signally
failed. Their consolation has been to call the friends of the Federal
cause obscurities and nobodies. And true it is that the friends of the
Federal cause are obscurities and nobodies. They are the untitled and
undistinguished mass of the English people.

The leaders of our working-men, the popular chiefs of the day, the men
who represent the feelings and interests of the masses, and whose names
are received with ringing cheers wherever the masses are assembled, are
Cobden and Bright. And Cobden and