eir lofty ideal of liberty or of
culture, appeared to be on the side of the North; and the calm,
unfaltering attitude, free from petulance and invective, of those
operative classes in Lancashire, whom the war ruined for a while, has
often been pointed to as showing that the more informed and intelligent
workingmen were also for the North. They endured a great calamity
without murmuring, because they thought the cause just which had
entailed that calamity upon them. Assuming this to be correct, as I
believe it to be, the question remains, What was the opinion (or perhaps
one should rather say the sentiment) of the class below this,--the great
numerical bulk of the population, who would take sides according as
their sympathies, imaginations, prejudices, or traditional conceptions
of the right might be roused, irrespectively in the main of reasoning as
to any antecedents or consequences? I incline to suppose that the most
powerful impulsion to the feelings of this class must have been that
strong anti-slavery sentiment which had undoubtedly for many years been
bone of the bone of Englishmen,--more powerful even than that sympathy
for an overmatched struggle on behalf of independence which would have
pleaded for the South. If this is a correct view, it may be inferred
that the majority of the poorer classes was for the North; as they,
without refining over the question, would regard the contest as one
between Slavery and Anti-slavery, the latter represented by the North
and the former by the South. Short, however, of some decided majority
for the North in these classes, whose views do not transpire much upon
the surface of English opinion, I fear the majority of the whole nation
would have been found to be with the South; and could I take my own
sphere of society as the criterion, I should be compelled to say that so
it was in overwhelming preponderance. A more diffused connection with
America, through the emigration movement, and through community of
interest and feeling with a democratic nation, may have combined with a
truer instinct of right in the popular heart to rectify the balance; and
in default of evidence to the contrary, I am fain to suppose it did.--A
few words must be added as to one branch of our immediate subject,--the
doubt or disbelief of the sincerity of the North on the question of
Slavery. Had no prejudice or perversity of argument been imported into
the subject, it would, I imagine, have been apparent to