had alluded to the prizes of the Turf at home, and had
referred especially to the Plates run for the various British colonies.
Continuing, he said:

"'... I cannot help calling your attention to the great loss
you yourselves have suffered by ceasing to be a Colonial
Dependency of Great Britain, as I am sure that if you had
continued to be so, the Queen would have had great pleasure
in sending you some Plates too.'

"Of course this was meant for the broadest sort of joke,
calculated to raise a laugh after dinner, but to my
amazement, the company chose to take me literally, and
applauded for about ten minutes--in fact I could not go on
for some time."

Bunch evidently hardly knew what to make of this demonstration. He could
with difficulty believe that South Carolina wished to be re-annexed as a
colony of Great Britain, and comments upon the episode in a somewhat
humorous vein. Nevertheless in concluding his letter, he solemnly
assures Lord Lyons that

"... The Jockey Club is composed of the 'best people' of
South Carolina--rich planters and the like. It represents,
therefore, the 'gentlemanly interest' and not a bit of
universal suffrage."

It would be idle to assume that either in South Carolina or in England
there was, in February, 1860, any serious thought of a resumption of
colonial relations, though W.H. Russell, correspondent of the _Times_,
reported in the spring, 1861, that he frequently heard the same
sentiment in the South[50]. For general official England, as for the
press, the truth is that up to the time of the secession of South
Carolina no one really believed that a final rupture was about to take
place between North and South. When, on December 20, 1860, that State in
solemn convention declared the dissolution "of the Union now existing
between South Carolina and the other States, under the name of the
'United States of America,'" and when it was understood that other
Southern States would soon follow this example, British opinion believed
and hoped that the rupture would be accomplished peaceably. Until it
became clear that war would ensue, the South was still damned by the
press as seeking the preservation of an evil institution. Slavery was
even more vigorously asserted as the ignoble and sole cause. In the
number for April, 1861, the _Edinburgh Review_ attributed the whole
difficulty to slavery, asserted that British sympathy