He wrote his thought to Brougham, no doubt hoping to influence the view-point of the _Edinburgh_.
"This has without doubt been a deplorable year for poor 'Democracy' and never has the old woman been at a heavier discount since 1793.

I see no discredit to the founders of the American constitution in the main fact of the rupture.
On the contrary it was a great achievement to strike off by the will and wit of man a constitution for two millions of men scattered along a seaboard, which has lasted until they have become more than thirty millions and have covered a whole continent.

But the freaks, pranks, and follies, not to say worse, with which the rupture has been met in the Northern States, down to Mr.Chase's financial (not exposition but) exposure have really given as I have said the old lady in question such a heavy blow and great discouragement that I hope you will in the first vigour of your action be a little merciful and human lest you murder her outright[1350]." On this middle group of Englishmen and their moral conceptions the American Minister, Adams, at first pinned his faith, not believing in 1861 that the issues of democracy or of trade advantage would lead Great Britain from just rules of conduct.

Even in the crisis of the _Trent_ affair he was firm in this opinion: "Much as the commercial and manufacturing interests may be disposed to view the tariff as the source of all our evils, and much as the aristocratic classes may endeavour to make democracy responsible for them, the inexorable logic of events is contradicting each and every assertion based on these notions, and proving that the American struggle is, after all, the ever-recurring one in human affairs between right and wrong, between labour and capital, between liberty and absolutism.

When such an issue comes to be presented to the people of Great Britain, stripped of all the disguises which have been thrown over it, it is not difficult to predict at least which side it will _not_ consent to take[1351].
April, 1861, saw the beginning of the aristocratic challenge on American democracy and December its acceptance by Bright.