" Seward politely asked.

"Seeing that it could have no effect in really freeing the slaves until
the South is conquered it appeared to be merely an attempt to excite a
servile insurrection."

The Secretary lifted his eyebrows, took another dip of snuff, and softly
inquired:

"And may I ask of your lordship whether this would not have been even
more true in the earlier days of the war than now?"

"Undoubtedly."

"And yet I understand that her Gracious Majesty's Government was cold
toward us because we had failed to take such high moral grounds at once
in the beginning of the war?"

His lordship lifted his hands in polite admission of the facts.

"The trouble you see is," he went on softly, "Europe begins to feel that
the division of sentiment in the North will prove a fatal weakness to
the administration in so grave a crisis. Unfortunately, from our point
of view, of course, your Government is a democracy, the sport of every
whim of the demagogue of the hour----"

Seward lifted his eyes with a quick look at his lordship and smiled:

"Allow me to reassure her Gracious Majesty's Government on that point
immediately. The administration will find means of preserving the
sovereign power the people have entrusted to it. For example, my lord, I
can touch the little bell on my right hand and order the arrest without
warrant of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the little bell on my left
hand and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power
on earth except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen
of Great Britain do as much?"

His lordship left apparently reassured.

The tinkle of the little bell on the desk of the Secretary of State
which had begun to fill the jails of the North with her leading
Democratic citizens did not have the same soothing effect on American
lawmakers, however. These arrests were made without warrant and the
victim held without charges, the right to bail or trial.

The President had dared to suspend the great _writ of habeas corpus_
which guaranteed to every freeman the right to meet his accuser in open
court and answer the charge against him.

The attitude of the bold aggressive opposition was voiced on the floor
of the House of Representatives in Washington in no uncertain language
by Daniel Voorhees of Indiana, in a speech whose passionate eloquence
was only equalled by its reckless daring.

"The present Executive of the Government," he declared, "has usurpe