of Parliamentary action had existed in America, the war could not have occurred, but we are quite sure that such Ministers would have long since been changed[1358].”

In addition to a Conservative ringing the changes upon the failure of democracy, the open friends of the South dilated also upon the “gentlemanly” characteristics of Southern leaders and society.  This was the frequent burden of articles in The Index in the early weeks of its publication.  To this was soon added a picture of Northern democracy as composed of and controlled by the “immigrant element” which was the source of “the enormous increase of population in the last thirty years” from revolutionary areas in Europe.  “Germans, Hungarians, Irish carried with them more than their strong arms, they imported also their theories of equality....  The revolutionary party which represents them is at this moment master in the States of the North, where it is indulging in all its customary licence[1359].”  This fact, complained The Index, was not sufficiently brought out in the English press.  Very different was the picture painted by Anthony Trollope after a tour of the Western states: 

“... this man has his romance, his high poetic feeling, and above all his manly dignity.  Visit him, and you will find him without coat or waistcoat, unshorn, in ragged blue trousers and old flannel shirt, too often bearing on his lantern jaws the signs of ague and sickness; but he will stand upright before you and speak to you with all the ease of a lettered gentleman in his own library.  All the odious incivility of the republican servant has been banished.  He is his own master, standing on his own threshold, and finds no need to assert his equality by rudeness.  He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered bench, without dreaming of any such apology as an English cotter offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls.  He has worked out his independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body.  He tells you of it unconsciously in every tone of his voice.  You will always find in his cabin some newspaper, some book, some token of advance in education.  When he questions you about the old country he astonishes you by the extent of his knowledge.  I defy you not to feel that he is superior to the race from whence he has sprung in England or in Ireland.”

* * * * *

“It is always the same story.  With us there is no level of society.  Men stand on a long staircase, but the crowd congregates near the bottom, and the lower steps are very broad.  In America men stand upon a common platform, but the platform is raised above the ground, though it does not approach in height the top of our staircase.  If we take the average altitude in the two countries, we shall find that the American heads are the more elevated of the two[1360].”

A comparison of dates shows that the unanimity of