THE KEY-NOTE OF BRITISH ATTITUDE On May 8, 1865, the news was received in London of Johnston's surrender to Sherman.

On that same day there occurred in the Commons the first serious debate in thirty-three years on a proposed expansion of the electoral franchise.

It was a dramatic coincidence and no mere fortuitous one in the minds of thoughtful Englishmen who had seen in the Civil War a struggle as fateful in British domestic policy as in that of America herself.

Throughout all British political agitation from the time of the American revolution in 1776, there had run the thread of the American "example" as argument to some for imitation, to others for warning.

Nearly every British traveller in America, publishing his impressions, felt compelled to report on American governmental and political institutions, and did so from his preconceived notions of what was desirable in his own country[1323].