When such an issue comes to be presented to the people of Great Britain, stripped of all the disguises which have been thrown over it, it is not difficult to predict at least which side it will not consent to take[1351].

April, 1861, saw the beginning of the aristocratic challenge on American democracy and December its acceptance by Bright.  Throughout 1862 he practically deserted his seat in Parliament and devoted himself to stirring up labour and radical sentiment in favour of the North.  In January, 1862, a mass meeting at New Hall, Edgware Road, denounced the daily press and was thought of sufficient moment to be reported by Adams.  A motion was carried: 

“That in the opinion of this meeting, considering the ill-disguised efforts of the Times and other misleading journals to misrepresent public opinion here on all American questions ... to decry democratic institutions under the trials to which the Republic is exposed, it is the duty of the working-men especially as unrepresented in the National Senate to express their sympathy with the United States in their gigantic struggle for the preservation of the Union[1352]....”

The daily press was, in fact, now joining more openly in the controversy.  The Morning Post, stating with conviction its belief that there could be no re-union in America, added: 

“... if the Government of the United States should succeed in reannexing them [the Southern States] to its still extensive dominions, Democracy will have achieved its grandest triumph since the world began.  It will have demonstrated to the ample satisfaction of its present and future proselytes that it is even more puissant in war than in peace; that it can navigate not only the smooth seas of unendangered prosperity, but can ride safely through the fiercest tempests that would engulf every other craft laden with human destinies; that it can descend to the darkest depths of adversity, and rise from them all the stronger for the descent....  And who can doubt that Democracy will be more arrogant, more aggressive, more levelling and vulgarizing, if that be possible, than it ever had been before[1353].”

By midsummer, 1862, Adams was more convinced than in 1861 that the political controversy in England had an important bearing on the attitude toward America.  Even the alleged neutrality of Fraser’s Magazine seemed turning to one-sided presentation of the “lesson” of America.  Mill’s defence of the North, appearing in the February number, was soon followed in July by the first of a series of articles, “Universal Suffrage in the United States and Its Consequences,” depicting the war as the result of mob rule and predicting a military despotism as its inevitable consequence.  The Liberals were losing strength, wrote Adams: