is difficult to estimate such
matters. Certainly it is not uninteresting that these books coincided in
point of time with a British governmental attitude of opposition, though
on peaceful lines, to the development of American power, and to the
adoption to the point of faith, by British commercial classes, of free
trade as opposed to the American protective system. But governing
classes were not the British public, and to the great unenfranchised
mass, finding voice through the writings of a few leaders, the
prosperity of America made a powerful appeal. Radical democracy was
again beginning to make its plea in Britain. In 1849 there was published
a study of the United States, more careful and exact than any previous
to Bryce's great work, and lauding American political institutions. This
was Mackay's "Western World," and that there was a public eager for such
estimate is evidenced by the fact that the book went through four
British editions in 1850[24]. At the end of the decade, then, there
appeared once more a vigorous champion of the cause of British
democracy, comparing the results of "government by the wise" with
alleged mob rule. Mackay wrote:

"Society in America started from the point to which society
in Europe is only yet finding. The equality of men is, to
this moment, its corner-stone ... that which develops itself
as the sympathy of class, becomes in America the general
sentiment of society.... We present an imposing front to the
world; but let us tear the picture and look at the canvas.
One out of every seven of us is a pauper. Every six
Englishmen have, in addition to their other enormous burdens,
to support a seventh between them, whose life is spent in
consuming, but in adding nothing to the source of their
common subsistence."

British governing classes then, forgoing after 1850 opposition to the
advance of American power, found themselves involved again, as before
1832, in the problem of the possible influence of a prosperous American
democracy upon an unenfranchised public opinion at home. Also, for all
Englishmen, of whatever class, in spite of rivalry in power, of opposing
theories of trade, of divergent political institutions, there existed a
vague, though influential, pride in the advance of a people of similar
race, sprung from British loins[25]. And there remained for all
Englishmen also one puzzling and discreditable American institution,