On the opposing side were other writers.  Tremenheere argued the inapplicability of American institutions to Great Britain[1326].  The theoretical bases of those institutions were in some respects admirable but in actual practice they had resulted in the rule of the mob and had debased the nation in the estimation of the world; bribery in elections, the low order of men in politics and in Congress, were proofs of the evils of democracy; those in England who clamoured for a “numerical” rather than a class representation should take warning from the American experiment.  Occasionally, though rarely, there appeared the impressions of some British traveller who had no political axe to grind[1327], but from 1850 to 1860, as in every previous decade, British writing on America was coloured by the author’s attitude on political institutions at home.  The “example” of America was constantly on the horizon in British politics.

In 1860, the Liberal movement in England was at its lowest ebb since the high tide of 1832.  Palmerston was generally believed to have made a private agreement with Derby that both Whig and Tory parties would oppose any movement toward an expansion of the franchise[1328].  Lord John Russell, in his youth an eager supporter of the Reform Bill of 1832, had now gained the name of “Finality John” by his assertion that that Reform was final in British institutions.  Political reaction was in full swing much to the discontent of Radicals like Bright and Cobden and their supporters.  When the storm broke in America the personal characteristics of the two leaders North and South, Lincoln and Davis, took on, to many British eyes, an altogether extreme importance as if representative of the political philosophies of the two sections.  Lincoln’s “crudity” was democratic; Davis’ “culture” was aristocratic—­nor is it to be denied that Davis had “aristocratic” views on government[1329].  But that this issue had any vital bearing on the quarrel between the American sections was never generally voiced in England.  Rather, British comment was directed to the lesson, taught to the world by the American crisis, of the failure of democratic institutions in national power. Bright had long preached to the unenfranchised of England the prosperity and might of America and these had long been denied by the aristocratic faction to be a result of democratic institutions.  At first the denial was now repeated, the Saturday Review, February 23, 1861, protesting that there was no essential connection between the “shipwreck” of American institutions and the movement in England for an expanded franchise.  Even, the article continued, if an attempt were made to show such a connection it would convince nobody since “Mr. Bright has succeeded in persuading a great number of influential persons that the admission of working-men into the constituencies is chiefly, if not solely, desirable