mpt to hold public meetings favourable to the South, in the
early months of 1864. Much talk had been spent on the "British issue"
involved in the war; there was now to be vigorous work to secure
it[1385]. _The Index _plunged into vigorous denunciation of "The
Manchester School, which, for convenience and truth, we had better for
the future call the American School." Even the Government was attacked
for its complacence under the "American danger" and for retaining as a
member Milner-Gibson, who, in a recent speech, had shown that he shared
Bright's views on democracy:

"That gentleman [Bright] could not be asked to enter the
Cabinet in person. The country abhorred him; Parliament
despised him; his inveterate habits of slander and
vituperation, his vulgarity, and his incurable want of
veracity, had made him so hateful to the educated classes
that it would have required no common courage to give him
office; his insolent sneers at royalty would have made his
appointment little less than a personal insult to the Queen;
and his bad temper would have made him an intolerable
colleague in the Council. But Mr. Bright had another self; a
faithful shadow, which had no ideas, no soul, no other
existence but what it borrowed from him, while its previous
life and education had accustomed it to the society of
statesmen and of gentlemen[1386]."

Such expressions gained nothing for the Conservative cause; they were
too evidently the result of alarm at the progress of Radical and
pro-Northern sentiment. Goldwin Smith in a "Letter" to the Southern
Independence Association, analysed with clarity the situation. Answering
criticisms of the passionate mob spirit of Northern press and people, he
accused the _Times_ of having

"... pandered to the hatred of America among the upper
classes of this country during the present war. Some of us at
least had been taught by what we have lately seen not to
shrink from an extension of the suffrage, if the only bad
consequence of that measure of justice would be a change in
government from the passions of the privileged class to the
passions of the people.... History will not mistake the
meaning of the loud cry of triumph which burst from the
hearts of all who openly or secretly hated liberty and
progress, at the fall, as they fondly supposed, of the Great
Republic." British wor