believed that a second Southern victory like Bull Run, if coming soon, would “so disgust and dishearten the shouters for the Union that the contest will be abandoned on the instant....  Some day, with scarcely any notice, we may receive tidings that an armistice has been agreed upon and preliminaries of peace have been signed[331].”  John Bright’s paper, the Morning Star, argued long and feverishly that Englishmen must not lose sight of the fact that slavery was an issue, and made appeal for expressions, badly needed at the moment, of pro-Northern sympathy[332].  To this John Bull retorted: 

“Nothing can be clearer than this, that black slavery has nothing whatever to do with this Civil War in America....  The people of America have erected a political idol.  The Northerners have talked and written and boasted so much about their Republic that they have now become perfectly furious to find that their idol can be overthrown, and that the false principles upon which the American Republic is built should be exhibited to the world, that their vaunted democracy should be exposed as a mere bubble or a piece of rotten timber, an abominable and worthless tyranny of the sovereign mob[333].”

Here was an early hint of the future of democracy as at issue[334]. John Bull, the “country squire’s paper,” might venture to voice the thought, but more important papers were still cautious in expressing it.  W.H.  Russell, privately, wrote to Delane:  “It is quite obvious, I think, that the North will succeed in reducing the South[335].”  But Delane permitted no such positive prophecy to appear in the Times.  Darwin is good testimony of the all-prevalent British feeling:  “I hope to God we English are utterly wrong in doubting whether the North can conquer the South.”  “How curious it is that you seem to think that you can conquer the South; and I never meet a soul, even those who would most wish it, who think it possible—­that is, to conquer and retain it[336].”

In September, after the first interest in Bull Run had waned, there appeared several books and articles on the American question which gave opportunity for renewal of newspaper comment and controversy.  A Dr. Lempriere, “of the Inner Temple, law fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford,” published a work, The American Crisis Considered, chiefly declamatory, upholding the right of Southern secession, stating that no one “who has the slightest acquaintance with the political action of history would term the present movement rebellion.”  With this the Spectator begged leave to differ[337].  The Saturday Review acknowledged that a prolonged war might force slavery and emancipation to the front, but denied them as vital at present, and offered this view as a defence against the recrimination of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had accused the paper of unfair treatment in a review of her pamphlet exhibiting emancipation as the object of the North.  Under