one in support of the North held throughout the whole course of the war, and it was also the most notable one as indicating the rising tide of popular demand for more democratic institutions.  That it irritated the Government and gave a handle to Southern sympathizers in the parliamentary debate of March 27 is unquestioned.  In addition, if that debate was intended to secure from the Government an intimation of future policy against Southern shipbuilding it was conducted on wrong lines for immediate effect—­though friends of the North may have thought the method used was wise for future effect.  This method was vigorous attack.  Forster, leading in the debate[1001], called on Ministers to explain the “flagrant” violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act, and to offer some pledge for the future; he asserted that the Government should have been active on its own initiative in seeking evidence instead of waiting to be urged to enforce the law, and he even hinted at a certain degree of complicity in the escape of the Alabama.  The Solicitor-General answered in a legal defence of the Government, complained of the offence of America in arousing its citizens against Great Britain upon unjustifiable grounds, but did not make so vigorous a reply as might, perhaps, have been expected.  Still he stood firmly on the ground that the Government could not act without evidence to convict—­in itself a statement that might well preclude interference with the Rams.  Bright accused the Government of a “cold and unfriendly neutrality,” and referred at length to the public meeting of the previous evening: 

“If you had last night looked in the faces of three thousand of the most intelligent of the artisan classes in London, as I did, and heard their cheers, and seen their sympathy for that country for which you appear to care so little, you would imagine that the more forbearing, the more generous, and the more just the conduct of the Government to the United States, the more it would recommend itself to the magnanimous feelings of the people of this country.”

This assumption of direct opposition between Parliament and the people was not likely to win or to convince men, whether pro-Southern or not, who were opponents of the speaker’s long-avowed advocacy of more democratic institutions in England.  It is no wonder then that Laird, who had been castigated in the speeches of the evening, rising in defence of the conduct of his firm, should seek applause by declaring, “I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas than as a man who applies himself deliberately to set class against class, and to cry up the institutions of another country which, when they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduce the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity.”  This utterance was greeted with great cheering—­shouted not so much in approval of the Alabama as in approval of the speaker’s defiance of Bright.