difficult, to make free men slaves, or slaves free[960]?” But by the end of January the popular approval of emancipation was in full swing.  On the evening of the twenty-ninth there took place in London at Exeter Hall, a great mass meeting unprecedented in attendance and enthusiasm.  The meeting had been advertised for seven o’clock, but long before the hour arrived the hall was jammed and the corridors filled.  A second meeting was promptly organized for the lower hall, but even so the people seeking admission crowded Exeter Street and seriously impeded traffic in the Strand.  Outdoor meetings listened to reports of what was going on in the Hall and cheered the speakers.  The main address was made by the Rev. Newman Hall, of Surrey Chapel.  A few Southern sympathizers who attempted to heckle the speakers were quickly shouted down[961].

The “carnival of cant,” as the Saturday Review termed it, was truly a popular demonstration, stirred by anti-slavery leaders, but supported by the working and non-enfranchised classes.  Its first effect was to restore courage and confidence to Northern supporters in the upper classes.  Bright had welcomed emancipation, yet with some misgivings.  He now joined in the movement and in a speech at Rochdale, February 3, on “Slavery and Secession,” gave full approval of Lincoln’s efforts.

In 1862, shortly after the appearance of Spence’s American Union, which had been greeted with great interest in England and had influenced largely upper-class attitude in favour of the South, Cairnes had published his pamphlet, “Slave Power.”  This was a reasoned analysis of the basis of slavery and a direct challenge to the thesis of Spence[962].  England’s “unnatural infatuation” for a slave power, Cairnes prophesied, would be short-lived.  His pamphlet began to be read with more conviction by that class which until now had been coldly neutral and which wished a more reassured faith in the Northern cause than that stirred by the emotional reception given the emancipation proclamation.  Yet at bottom it was emancipation that brought this reasoning public to seek in such works as that of Cairnes a logical basis for a change of heart.  Even in official circles, utterances previously made in private correspondence, or in governmental conversations only, were now ventured in public by friends of the North.  On April 1, 1863, at a banquet given to Palmerston in Edinburgh, the Duke of Argyll ventured to answer a reference made by Palmerston in a speech of the evening previous in which had been depicted the horrors of Civil War, by asking if Scotland were historically in a position to object to civil wars having high moral purpose.  “I, for one,” Argyll said, “have not learned to be ashamed of that ancient combination of the Bible and the sword.  Let it be enough for us to pray and hope that the contest, whenever it may be brought to an end, shall bring with it that great blessing to the white race which shall consist in the final freedom of the black[963].”