I believe that the dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and that men now before me will live to see an aristocracy established in America[1348]." In all countries and at all times there are men over-eager in early prophecy on current events, but in such utterances as these there is manifest not merely the customary desire to stand in the limelight of assured knowledge and wisdom, but also the happy conviction that events in America were working to the undoing of the Radicals of Great Britain.

If they would not be supine the Radicals must strike back.

On December 4, at Rochdale where, as the _Times_ asserted, he was sure of an audience sympathetic on purely personal grounds, Bright renewed his profession of faith in the American Republic and sang his accustomed praises of its great accomplishments[1349].

The battle, for England, on American democracy, was joined; the challenge issued by aristocratic England, accepted.
But apart from extreme factions at either end of the scale there stood a group holding a middle ground opinion, not yet sure of the historical significance of the American collapse.

To this group belonged Gladstone, as yet uncertain of his political philosophy, and regretful, though vainly, it would appear, of the blow to democracy.