tions
at home. The "example" of America was constantly on the horizon in
British politics.

In 1860, the Liberal movement in England was at its lowest ebb since the
high tide of 1832. Palmerston was generally believed to have made a
private agreement with Derby that both Whig and Tory parties would
oppose any movement toward an expansion of the franchise[1328]. Lord
John Russell, in his youth an eager supporter of the Reform Bill of
1832, had now gained the name of "Finality John" by his assertion that
that Reform was final in British institutions. Political reaction was in
full swing much to the discontent of Radicals like Bright and Cobden and
their supporters. When the storm broke in America the personal
characteristics of the two leaders North and South, Lincoln and Davis,
took on, to many British eyes, an altogether extreme importance as if
representative of the political philosophies of the two sections.
Lincoln's "crudity" was democratic; Davis' "culture" was
aristocratic--nor is it to be denied that Davis had "aristocratic" views
on government[1329]. But that this issue had any vital bearing on the
quarrel between the American sections was never generally voiced in
England. Rather, British comment was directed to the lesson, taught to
the world by the American crisis, of the failure of democratic
institutions in _national power._ Bright had long preached to the
unenfranchised of England the prosperity and might of America and these
had long been denied by the aristocratic faction to be a result of
democratic institutions. At first the denial was now repeated, the
_Saturday Review_, February 23, 1861, protesting that there was no
essential connection between the "shipwreck" of American institutions
and the movement in England for an expanded franchise. Even, the article
continued, if an attempt were made to show such a connection it would
convince nobody since "Mr. Bright has succeeded in persuading a great
number of influential persons that the admission of working-men into the
constituencies is chiefly, if not solely, desirable on the ground that
it has succeeded admirably in America and has proved a sovereign panacea
against the war, taxation and confusion which are the curses of old
Governments in Europe." Yet that the denial was not sincere is shown by
the further assertion that "the shallow demagogues of Birmingham and
other kindred platforms must bear the blame of the inference, drawn
nearly universally a