Goldwin Smith in a "Letter" to the Southern Independence Association, analysed with clarity the situation.

Answering criticisms of the passionate mob spirit of Northern press and people, he accused the _Times_ of having "...

pandered to the hatred of America among the upper classes of this country during the present war.

Some of us at least had been taught by what we have lately seen not to shrink from an extension of the suffrage, if the only bad consequence of that measure of justice would be a change in government from the passions of the privileged class to the passions of the people....

History will not mistake the meaning of the loud cry of triumph which burst from the hearts of all who openly or secretly hated liberty and progress, at the fall, as they fondly supposed, of the Great Republic." British working men "are for the most part as well aware that the cause of those who are fighting for the right of labour is theirs, as any nobleman in your Association can be that the other cause in his[1387]." The question of democracy as a political philosophy and as an institution for Great Britain was, by 1864, rapidly coming to the front in politics.