The reports were of many applications for membership "from all quarters, from persons of rank and gentlemen of standing in their respective counties[1146]." Just here lay the weakness of the Southern Independence Association programme.

It _did_ appeal to "persons of rank and gentlemen of standing," but by the very fact of the flocking to it of these classes it precluded appeal to Radical and working-class England--already largely committed to the cause of the North.

Goldwin Smith, in his "Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence Association," made the point very clear[1147].

In this pamphlet, probably the strongest presentation of the Northern side and the most severe castigation of Southern sympathizers that appeared throughout the whole war, Smith appealed to old Whig ideas of political liberty, attacked the aristocracy and the Church of England, and attempted to make the Radicals of England feel that the Northern cause was their cause.
Printing the constitution and address of the Association, with the list of signers, he characterized the movement as fostered by "men of title and family," with "a good sprinkling of clergymen," and as having for its object the plunging of Great Britain into war with the North[1148].
It is significant, in view of Mason Jones' taunt to the Southern Independence Association at Manchester, that _The Index_, from the end of March to August, 1864, was unable to report a single Southern public meeting.

The London Association, having completed its top-heavy organization, was content with that act and showed no life.