would be with the
anti-slavery party, yet advanced the theory that the very dissolution of
the Union would hasten the ultimate extinction of slavery since economic
competition with a neighbouring free state, the North, would compel the
South itself to abandon its beloved "domestic institution[51]."

Upon receipt of the news from South Carolina, the _Times_, in a long and
carefully worded editorial, took up one by one the alleged causes of
secession, dismissed them as inadequate, and concluded, "... we cannot
disguise from ourselves that, apart from all political complications,
there is a right and a wrong in this question, and that the right
belongs, with all its advantages, to the States of the North[52]." Three
days later it asserted, "The North is for freedom of discussion, the
South represses freedom of discussion with the tar-brush and the
pine-fagot." And again, on January 10, "The Southern States expected
sympathy for their undertaking from the public opinion of this country.
The tone of the press has already done much to undeceive them...."

In general both the metropolitan and the provincial press expressed
similar sentiments, though there were exceptions. The _Dublin News_
published with approval a long communication addressed to Irishmen at
home and abroad: "... there is no power on earth or in heaven which can
keep in peace this unholy co-partnership.... I hope ... that the North
will quietly permit the South to retire from the confederacy and bear
alone the odium of all mankind[53]...." The _Saturday Review_ thought
that deeper than declared differences lay the ruling social structure of
the South which now visioned a re-opening of the African Slave Trade,
and the occupation by slavery of the whole southern portion of North
America. "A more ignoble basis for a great Confederacy it is impossible
to conceive, nor one in the long run more precarious.... Assuredly it
will be the Northern Confederacy, based on principles of freedom, with a
policy untainted by crime, with a free working-class of white men, that
will be the one to go on and prosper and become the leader of the New
World[54]." The _London Chronicle_ was vigorous in denunciation. "No
country on the globe produces a blackguardism, a cowardice or a
treachery, so consummate as that of the negro-driving States of the new
Southern Confederacy"--a bit of editorial blackguardism in itself[55].
The _London Review_ more moderately stigmatized slavery as the