conservative and aristocratic expression on the failure of American democracy and its lesson to England was most marked and most open at the moment when the Government was seriously considering an offer of mediation in the war.  Meanwhile the emancipation proclamation of September, 1862, had appeared.  It did not immediately affect governmental attitude, save adversely to the North, and it gave a handle for pro-Southern outcry on the score of a “servile war.”  Indeed, the radicals were at first depressed by it; but when months passed with no appearance of a servile war and when the second emancipation proclamation of January, 1863, further certified the moral purpose of the North, a great element of strength was added to the English advocates of democracy.  The numerous “addresses” to Lincoln exhibited both a revived moral enthusiasm for the cause of anti-slavery and were frequently combined with a laudation of American political institutions.  The great mass-meeting at Exeter Hall, January 29, 1863, was described by the correspondent of an American paper as largely deriving its strength from the universal dissatisfaction of the lower orders of the English people with their existing conditions under the Crown: 

“The descendants of the Roundhead commoners, chafing under the limitations of the franchise, burdensome taxation, the contempt with which they are regarded by the lords of the soil, the grievous effects of the laws of entail and primogeniture, whereby they are kept poor and rendered liable to starvation and pauperism—­these have looked to America as the model democracy which proves the poor man’s capacity for self-government.”  The meeting was called for seven o’clock but at half after five the hall was filled, and at six crowded.  A second hall was filled and outdoor meetings of two thousand people organized in Exeter Street.  “All working-class England was up in arms, not so much against slavery as against British oligarchy[1361].”

The correspondent further reported rumours that this meeting had caused anxious consideration to the managers of the Times, and the decision to step more warily.  No doubt this was exaggeration of the political character and effect of the meeting, but certain it is that the political element was present joining hands with anti-slavery enthusiasm.  Also it is noteworthy that the last confident and vigorous expression of the “failure” of democracy, from sources professedly neutral, appeared immediately after the St. James’ Hall meeting, but was necessarily written before that meeting took place. Blackwood’s, in its issue of February, 1863, declared, as before:  “Every sensible man in this country now acknowledges ... that we have already gone as far toward democracy as is safe to go....  This is the great moral benefit which we have derived from the events in America.”  John Blackwood was an intimate friend of Delane, editor of the Times, holding similar views on political