was received with warm cheers.  Every allusion to the republican institutions of America, the right of suffrage, the right of self-taxation, the ‘sunlight’ of republican influence, was caught up by the audience with vehement applause.  It may therefore be considered as fairly and authoritatively announced that the class of skilled workmen in London—­that is the leaders of the pure popular movement in England—­have announced by an act almost without precedent in their history, the principle that they make common cause with the Americans who are struggling for the restoration of the Union and that all their power and influence shall be used on behalf of the North[1370].”

Bright’s words of most scarifying indictment of “Privilege,” and his appeal to workers to join hands with their fellows in America have been given in a previous chapter[1371].  Evidently that appeal, though enthusiastically received for its oratorical brilliance, was unneeded.  His was but an eloquent expression of that which was in the minds of his audience.  Upon the American Minister the effect was to cause him to renew warnings against showing too keen an appreciation of the support of political radicalism in England.  The meeting, he wrote, had at once stirred anxiety in Parliament and verged: 

“... much too closely upon the minatory in the domestic politics of this Kingdom to make it easy to recognize or sympathize with by Foreign Governments....  Hence it seems to me of the greatest consequence that the treatment of all present questions between the two nations should be regulated by a provident forecast of what may follow it [the political struggle in England] hereafter.  I am not sure that some parties here would not now be willing even to take the risk of a war in order the more effectually to turn the scale against us, and thus, as they think, to crush the rising spirit of their own population.  That this is only a feeling at present and has not yet risen to the dignity of a policy may be true enough; but that does not the less impose upon the Government at home a duty so to shape its actions as, if possible, to defeat all such calculations and dissipate such hopes....  We owe this duty not less to the great body of those who in this kingdom are friends to us and our institutions, than to ourselves[1372].”

[Illustration:  JOHN BRIGHT (From a photograph taken of him in the attitude in which he usually spoke) (From Trevelyan’s “Life of John Bright")]

Thus Adams advised his Government to tread lightly in respect to democratic agitation in England.  Over a month later he received a deputation headed by Bright, come to present to him the resolutions passed at the Trades Unions’ meeting.  The deputation expressed fears that a rupture was imminent in the relations of Great Britain and America, and that this would have a disastrous influence on the aspirations of working-class Europe.  Adams replied