press, had caused a British press resentment at this “wilful misrepresentation and misjudgment” of British attitude.  “We do believe the secession of the Slave States to be a fait accompli—­a completed and irreversible transaction.  We believe it to be impossible now for the North to lure back the South into the Union by any compromise, or to compel them back by any force.”  “If this is an offence it cannot be helped[320].”

The majority of the London papers, though not all, passed through the same shifts of opinion and expression as the Economist; first upbraiding the South, next appealing to the North not to wage a useless war, finally committing themselves to the theory of an accomplished break-up of the Union and berating the North for continuing, through pride alone, a bloody conflict doomed to failure.  Meanwhile in midsummer attention was diverted from the ethical causes at issue by the publication in the Times of Motley’s letter analysing the nature of the American constitution and defending the legal position of the North in its resistance to secession.  Motley wrote in protest against the general British press attitude:  “There is, perhaps, a readiness in England to prejudge the case; a disposition not to exult in our downfall, but to accept the fact[321]....”

He argued the right and the duty of the North to force the South into subjection.  “The right of revolution is indisputable.  It is written on the record of our race.  British and American history is made up of rebellion and revolution....  There can be nothing plainer, then, than the American right of revolution.  But, then, it should be called revolution.”  “It is strange that Englishmen should find difficulty in understanding that the United States Government is a nation among the nations of the earth; a constituted authority, which may be overthrown by violence, as may be the fate of any state, whether kingdom or republic, but which is false to the people if it does not its best to preserve them from the horrors of anarchy, even at the cost of blood.”

Motley denied any right of peaceful secession, and his constitutional argument presented adequately the Northern view.  But he was compelled also to refer to slavery and did so in the sense of Lincoln’s inaugural, asserting that the North had no purpose of emancipating the slaves.  “It was no question at all that slavery within a state was sacred from all interference by the general government, or by the free states, or by individuals in those states; and the Chicago Convention [which nominated Lincoln] strenuously asserted that doctrine.”  Coming at the moment when the British press and public were seeking ground for a shift from earlier pro-Northern expressions of sympathy to some justification for the South, it may be doubted whether Motley’s letter did not do more harm than good to the Northern cause.  His denial of a Northern anti-slavery purpose gave excuse for a, professedly, more calm