of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe,
who had accused the paper of unfair treatment in a review of her
pamphlet exhibiting emancipation as the object of the North. Under the
caption, "Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Wounded Feelings," the _Saturday Review_
avowed disbelief in the existence of a "Holy War" in America. "The North
does not proclaim abolition and never pretended to fight for
anti-slavery. The North has not hoisted for its oriflamme the Sacred
Symbol of Justice to the Negro; its _cri de guerre_ is not unconditional
emancipation." "The Governmental course of the British nation ... is not
yet directed by small novelists and their small talk[338]." Thomas
Hughes also came in for sarcastic reference in this article, having
promptly taken up the cudgels for Mrs. Stowe. He returned to the attack
through the columns of the _Spectator_, reasserting slavery as an issue
and calling on Englishmen to put themselves in the place of Americans
and realize the anger aroused by "deliberate imputations of mean
motives," and by the cruel spirit of the utterances. A nation engaged in
a life and death struggle should not be treated in a tone of flippant
and contemptuous serenity. The British press had chosen "to impute the
lowest motives, to cull out and exult over all the meanness, and
bragging, and disorder which the contest has brought out, and while we
sit on the bank, to make no allowances for those who are struggling in
the waves[339]."

Besides the _Spectator_, on the Northern side, stood the _Daily News_,
declaring that the South could not hold out, and adding,
"The Confederate States may be ten millions, but they _are_
wrong--notoriously, flagrantly wrong[340]." The _Daily News_, according
to its "Jubilee" historians, stood almost alone in steadfast advocacy of
the Northern cause[341]. This claim of unique service to the North is
not borne out by an examination of newspaper files, but is true if only
metropolitan dailies of large circulation are considered. The
_Spectator_ was a determined and consistent friend of the North. In its
issue of September 28 a speech made by Bulwer Lytton was summarized and
attacked. The speaker had argued that the dissolution of the Union would
be beneficial to all Europe, which had begun to fear the swollen size
and strength of the young nation across the Atlantic. He hoped that the
final outcome would be not two, but at least four separate nations, and
stated his belief that the friendly emulation of thes