direct political bearing on internal politics in England it
needed little of doing so. There was not even a profession of
faith in the government of England as at present constituted.
Every hostile allusion to the Aristocracy, the Church, the
opinions of the 'privileged classes,' was received with warm
cheers. Every allusion to the republican institutions of
America, the right of suffrage, the right of self-taxation,
the 'sunlight' of republican influence, was caught up by the
audience with vehement applause. It may therefore be
considered as fairly and authoritatively announced that the
class of skilled workmen in London--that is the leaders of
the pure popular movement in England--have announced by an
act almost without precedent in their history, the principle
that they make common cause with the Americans who are
struggling for the restoration of the Union and that all
their power and influence shall be used on behalf of the
North[1370]."

Bright's words of most scarifying indictment of "Privilege," and his
appeal to workers to join hands with their fellows in America have been
given in a previous chapter[1371]. Evidently that appeal, though
enthusiastically received for its oratorical brilliance, was unneeded.
His was but an eloquent expression of that which was in the minds of his
audience. Upon the American Minister the effect was to cause him to
renew warnings against showing too keen an appreciation of the support
of political radicalism in England. The meeting, he wrote, had at once
stirred anxiety in Parliament and verged:

"... much too closely upon the minatory in the domestic
politics of this Kingdom to make it easy to recognize or
sympathize with by Foreign Governments.... Hence it seems to
me of the greatest consequence that the treatment of all
present questions between the two nations should be regulated
by a provident forecast of what may follow it [the political
struggle in England] hereafter. I am not sure that some
parties here would not now be willing even to take the risk
of a war in order the more effectually to turn the scale
against us, and thus, as they think, to crush the rising
spirit of their own population. That this is only a feeling
at present and has not yet risen to the dignity of a policy
may be true enough; but that does not the less im