nant. 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 earlier 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 the balance in its own favor, was likely to be a
factious and misguided minority; and that a new commonwealth, whose
_raison d'etre_ 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 respect