actically deserted his seat in Parliament and devoted himself to
stirring up labour and radical sentiment in favour of the North. In
January, 1862, a mass meeting at New Hall, Edgware Road, denounced the
daily press and was thought of sufficient moment to be reported by
Adams. A motion was carried:

"That in the opinion of this meeting, considering the
ill-disguised efforts of the _Times_ and other misleading
journals to misrepresent public opinion here on all American
questions ... to decry democratic institutions under the
trials to which the Republic is exposed, it is the duty of
the working-men especially as unrepresented in the National
Senate to express their sympathy with the United States in
their gigantic struggle for the preservation of the
Union[1352]...."

The daily press was, in fact, now joining more openly in the
controversy. The _Morning Post_, stating with conviction its belief that
there could be no re-union in America, added:

"... if the Government of the United States should succeed in
reannexing them [the Southern States] to its still extensive
dominions, Democracy will have achieved its grandest triumph
since the world began. It will have demonstrated to the ample
satisfaction of its present and future proselytes that it is
even more puissant in war than in peace; that it can navigate
not only the smooth seas of unendangered prosperity, but can
ride safely through the fiercest tempests that would engulf
every other craft laden with human destinies; that it can
descend to the darkest depths of adversity, and rise from
them all the stronger for the descent.... And who can doubt
that Democracy will be more arrogant, more aggressive, more
levelling and vulgarizing, if that be possible, than it ever
had been before[1353]."

By midsummer, 1862, Adams was more convinced than in 1861 that the
political controversy in England had an important bearing on the
attitude toward America. Even the alleged neutrality of _Fraser's
Magazine_ seemed turning to one-sided presentation of the "lesson" of
America. Mill's defence of the North, appearing in the February number,
was soon followed in July by the first of a series of articles,
"Universal Suffrage in the United States and Its Consequences,"
depicting the war as the result of mob rule and predicting a military
despotism as its inevitable cons