well preclude interference with the Rams. Bright
accused the Government of a "cold and unfriendly neutrality," and
referred at length to the public meeting of the previous evening:

"If you had last night looked in the faces of three thousand
of the most intelligent of the artisan classes in London, as
I did, and heard their cheers, and seen their sympathy for
that country for which you appear to care so little, you
would imagine that the more forbearing, the more generous,
and the more just the conduct of the Government to the United
States, the more it would recommend itself to the magnanimous
feelings of the people of this country."

This assumption of direct opposition between Parliament and the people
was not likely to win or to convince men, whether pro-Southern or not,
who were opponents of the speaker's long-avowed advocacy of more
democratic institutions in England. It is no wonder then that Laird, who
had been castigated in the speeches of the evening, rising in defence of
the conduct of his firm, should seek applause by declaring, "I would
rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen _Alabamas_
than as a man who applies himself deliberately to set class against
class, and to cry up the institutions of another country which, when
they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduce the
very name of liberty to an utter absurdity." This utterance was greeted
with great cheering--shouted not so much in approval of the _Alabama_ as
in approval of the speaker's defiance of Bright.

[Illustration: WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER (1851)]

In short, the friends of the North, if they sought some immediate pledge
by the Government, had gone the wrong way about to secure it. Vigour in
attack was no way to secure a favourable response from Palmerston.
Always a fighting politician in public it was inevitable that he should
now fight back. Far from making the statement recommended to him by
Russell, he concluded the debate by reasserting the correctness of
governmental procedure in the case of the _Alabama_, and himself with
vigour accused Forster and Bright of speaking in such a way as to
increase rather than allay American irritation. Yet a careful reading of
the speeches of both the Solicitor-General and of Palmerston, shows that
while vindicating the Government's conduct in the past, they were
avoiding _any_ pledge of whatever nature, for the future.

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