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.
[Illustration: WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER (1851)] In short, the friends of the North, if they sought some immediate pledge by the Government, had gone the wrong way about to secure it.

Vigour in attack was no way to secure a favourable response from Palmerston.
Always a fighting politician in public it was inevitable that he should now fight back.

Far from making the statement recommended to him by Russell, he concluded the debate by reasserting the correctness of governmental procedure in the case of the _Alabama_, and himself with vigour accused Forster and Bright of speaking in such a way as to increase rather than allay American irritation.