our soldiers? And when the great
_reveille_ shall sound, it will muster British soldiers from every clime
and people under the whole heaven." What? "Speak in England on religion
and keep still on slavery, and the North and the South?" When an engine
is full of steam, it is a bad thing to sit on its safety-valve.
Figuratively speaking, the chairman and the hundred and fifty ministers,
who were trying to get Beecher to speak on religion and keep still on
slavery, sat passively and serenely on the safety-valve for about five
minutes, but finally the engine blew up. Mr. Beecher was not the man to
stifle his convictions in the name of peace, for he knew that in an evil
world a good man has no right to dwell at peace with the devil and his
minions. So he declared his hostility, turned his back on England, and
went to the Continent; and thus ended the first chapter in the European
trip.

Looking backward, it is easy to discover the explanation of England's
attitude towards slavery and the Southern leaders. During the early
forties England had herself passed through an industrial revolution.
Because she had little agricultural land, and thirty millions of
people, the cost of living was high. When the cry of the people for
bread became bitter, Cobden, Bright and their associates inaugurated and
carried through the Free Corn Movement. With the incoming of free raw
materials England became the great manufacturing centre. What her
farmers lost through free trade in selling grain they gained in the
lowered price on which they bought. Within ten years after the victory
of free trade England became a hive of industry, filled with clustering
cities, while the whole land resounded with the stroke of engines.
Abundance succeeded to poverty and work trod closely upon the heels of
want. So prosperous had England become that by 1860 she was importing
two million bales of cotton from Southern States. The shipyards of
Glasgow built ships to carry cotton, the bankers in London made loans to
Southern planters, the mill-owners in Manchester bought shares in the
Southern cotton fields. The rich men of the South were constant guests
of the mill-owners in Central England and of the bankers in London.
Little by little England was drawn in through financial channels, and
cast her lot in with the production of cotton,--and slavery.

Then came the Civil War. The planters went to the front with Lee's army;
the slaves freed from overseers would not work