o see you,
and bids you sit down on his battered bench, without dreaming
of any such apology as an English cotter offers to a Lady
Bountiful when she calls. He has worked out his independence,
and shows it in every easy movement of his body. He tells you
of it unconsciously in every tone of his voice. You will
always find in his cabin some newspaper, some book, some
token of advance in education. When he questions you about
the old country he astonishes you by the extent of his
knowledge. I defy you not to feel that he is superior to the
race from whence he has sprung in England or in Ireland."

* * * * *

"It is always the same story. With us there is no level of
society. Men stand on a long staircase, but the crowd
congregates near the bottom, and the lower steps are very
broad. In America men stand upon a common platform, but the
platform is raised above the ground, though it does not
approach in height the top of our staircase. If we take the
average altitude in the two countries, we shall find that the
American heads are the more elevated of the two[1360]."

A comparison of dates shows that the unanimity of conservative and
aristocratic expression on the failure of American democracy and its
lesson to England was most marked and most open at the moment when the
Government was seriously considering an offer of mediation in the war.
Meanwhile the emancipation proclamation of September, 1862, had
appeared. It did not immediately affect governmental attitude, save
adversely to the North, and it gave a handle for pro-Southern outcry on
the score of a "servile war." Indeed, the radicals were at first
depressed by it; but when months passed with no appearance of a servile
war and when the second emancipation proclamation of January, 1863,
further certified the moral purpose of the North, a great element of
strength was added to the English advocates of democracy. The numerous
"addresses" to Lincoln exhibited both a revived moral enthusiasm for the
cause of anti-slavery and were frequently combined with a laudation of
American political institutions. The great mass-meeting at Exeter Hall,
January 29, 1863, was described by the correspondent of an American
paper as largely deriving its strength from the universal
dissatisfaction of the lower orders of the English people with their
existing conditions