They are now reaping the fruit[1355]." Was it mere coincidence or was there significance in an editorial in Palmerston's alleged "organ," the _Morning Post_: "That any Englishman has looked forward with pleasure to the calamities of America is notoriously and demonstrably false.
But we have no hesitation in admitting that many thoughtful Englishmen who have watched, in the policy of the United States during the last twenty years, the foreshadowing of a democratic tyranny compared with which the most corrupt despotisms of the Old World appear realms of idyllic happiness and peace, have gratefully recognized the finger of Providence in the strife by which they have been so frightfully rent asunder[1356]...." In October the heavy artillery of the Conservatives was again brought into action and this time with more explicit diagnosis than heretofore.
"For a great number of years," said the _Quarterly_, "a certain party among us, great admirers of America ...

have chosen to fight their English battles upon American soil." Now the American Government "has disgracefully and ignominiously failed" at all points.

It is evident that "political equality is not merely a folly, it is a chimera[1357]." At last, in November, the _Times_ openly took the position which its accusers declared to have been the basis of its editorial utterances almost from the beginning of the Civil War.
"These are the consequences of a cheap and simple form of government, having a rural attorney for Sovereign and a city attorney for Prime Minister.

We have already said that if such a terrible exposure of incapacity had happened in England we should at the earliest moment possible have sent the incapables about their business, and put ourselves in the hands of better men...." "This Republic has been so often proposed to us as a model for imitation that we should be unpardonable not to mark how it works now, when for the first time it has some work to do.
We believe that if the English system of Parliamentary action had existed in America, the war could not have occurred, but we are quite sure that such Ministers would have long since been changed[1358]." In addition to a Conservative ringing the changes upon the failure of democracy, the open friends of the South dilated also upon the "gentlemanly" characteristics of Southern leaders and society.

This was the frequent burden of articles in _The Index_ in the early weeks of its publication.