at dominant
Democracy of the world. He believes in it still, and, if it
must go, he is ready to idolize its memory. For this he gives
up all his most cherished notions and all his less absorbing
principles...."

"Yet Mr. Bright is consistent. He has one master passion and
his breast, capacious as it is, can hold no more. That master
passion is the love of that great dominant Democracy. He
worshipped it while rising to its culminating point, and he
is obliged to turn right round to worship it while setting.
He did not himself know, until tested by this great trial,
how entirely his opinions as to war and peace, and slavery
and freedom, and lust of conquest and hatred of oppression,
were all the mere accidents which hung loosely upon him, and
were capable of being detached at once in the interest of the
ruling passion of his soul for that great dominant Democracy.
Nor need we wonder; for if that great Democracy has been a
failure, then men will say that the life of Mr. John Bright
up to this time has been but a foolish dream[1376]."

Evidently Bright's speeches were causing anxiety and bitterness; but an
"if" had crept into the estimate of the future of American democracy,
caused less by the progress of the war than by the rising excitement of
democratic England. The _Times_ editorial just quoted appeared when the
faith was generally professed that Lee was about to end the war through
the invasion of Pennsylvania. In the reaction created by the arrival of
the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Adams still again warned his
Government against either a belligerent or interfering attitude toward
Great Britain, but stated plainly that Northern victory was of supreme
importance in Europe itself. "We have a mission to fulfill. It is to
show, by our example to the people of England in particular, and to all
nations in general, the value of republican institutions." There was
still a general belief in the incompetency of those institutions. "The
greatest triumph of all would be to prove these calculations vain. In
comparison with this, what would be the gain to be derived from any
collision with the powers of Europe[1377]?"

It is strange that with so clearly-expressed a division of English
opinion on American democracy few in America itself appreciated the
significance of the British controversy. J. M. Forbes, who had been on a
special mi