“That the American difficulties have materially contributed to this result cannot be doubted.  The fact that many of the leading Liberals are the declared friends of the United States is a decided disadvantage in the contest now going on.  The predominating passion here is the desire for the ultimate subdivision of America into many separate States which will neutralize each other.  This is most visible among the conservative class of the Aristocracy who dread the growth of liberal opinions and who habitually regard America as the nursery of them[1354].”

From all this controversy Government leaders kept carefully aloof at least in public expression of opinion.  Privately, Russell commented to Palmerston, “I have been reading a book on Jefferson by De Witt, which is both interesting and instructive.  It shows how the Great Republic of Washington degenerated into the Democracy of Jefferson.  They are now reaping the fruit[1355].”  Was it mere coincidence or was there significance in an editorial in Palmerston’s alleged “organ,” the Morning Post: 

“That any Englishman has looked forward with pleasure to the calamities of America is notoriously and demonstrably false.  But we have no hesitation in admitting that many thoughtful Englishmen who have watched, in the policy of the United States during the last twenty years, the foreshadowing of a democratic tyranny compared with which the most corrupt despotisms of the Old World appear realms of idyllic happiness and peace, have gratefully recognized the finger of Providence in the strife by which they have been so frightfully rent asunder[1356]....”

In October the heavy artillery of the Conservatives was again brought into action and this time with more explicit diagnosis than heretofore.  “For a great number of years,” said the Quarterly, “a certain party among us, great admirers of America ... have chosen to fight their English battles upon American soil.”  Now the American Government “has disgracefully and ignominiously failed” at all points.  It is evident that “political equality is not merely a folly, it is a chimera[1357].”  At last, in November, the Times openly took the position which its accusers declared to have been the basis of its editorial utterances almost from the beginning of the Civil War.

“These are the consequences of a cheap and simple form of government, having a rural attorney for Sovereign and a city attorney for Prime Minister.  We have already said that if such a terrible exposure of incapacity had happened in England we should at the earliest moment possible have sent the incapables about their business, and put ourselves in the hands of better men....”

“This Republic has been so often proposed to us as a model for imitation that we should be unpardonable not to mark how it works now, when for the first time it has some work to do.  We believe that if the English system