in general terms of appreciation for the sympathies expressed by the meeting but carefully avoided specific comment on its democratic purpose.  “He was too prudent,” said the Times in reporting the deputation, “to appraise the importance of the particular demonstration to which his notice was invited ...” and his reply was given favourable comment[1373].  This reply, wrote Adams, “appears to have had a sedative effect[1374].”  Meanwhile, Bright continued his preachment to the English people though modifying his tone of fierce accusation against “privilege,” and confining himself to declaring the interest of the unenfranchised in the American conflict.  In a speech before the Union and Emancipation Society of London, on June 16, he asserted for the “twenty millions of people in this country” as yet without representation in Parliament, “I say that these have an interest, almost as great and direct as though they were living in Massachusetts or New York, in the tremendous struggle for freedom which is now shaking the whole North American Continent[1375].”  Like utterances were repeated at further public meetings and so insistent were they as to require reply by the conservative faction, even if, as was supposed, the effect of the Trades’ Union attitude had been to give a halt to the vehemence of those who had been sounding the “lesson” of American failure in democracy.  Bright became the centre of attack.  The Times led.

“His is a political fanaticism.  He used to idolize the Constitution of the United States as the one great dominant Democracy of the world.  He believes in it still, and, if it must go, he is ready to idolize its memory.  For this he gives up all his most cherished notions and all his less absorbing principles....”

“Yet Mr. Bright is consistent.  He has one master passion and his breast, capacious as it is, can hold no more.  That master passion is the love of that great dominant Democracy.  He worshipped it while rising to its culminating point, and he is obliged to turn right round to worship it while setting.  He did not himself know, until tested by this great trial, how entirely his opinions as to war and peace, and slavery and freedom, and lust of conquest and hatred of oppression, were all the mere accidents which hung loosely upon him, and were capable of being detached at once in the interest of the ruling passion of his soul for that great dominant Democracy.  Nor need we wonder; for if that great Democracy has been a failure, then men will say that the life of Mr. John Bright up to this time has been but a foolish dream[1376].”

Evidently Bright’s speeches were causing anxiety and bitterness; but an “if” had crept into the estimate of the future of American democracy, caused less by the progress of the war than by the rising excitement of democratic England.  The Times editorial just quoted appeared when the faith was generally professed that Lee was about to