Throughout 1861, the comment was relatively mild.

In July, _Blackwood's_ declared: "It is precisely because we do not share the admiration of America for her own institutions and political tendencies that we do not now see in the impending change an event altogether to be deplored.

In those institutions and tendencies we saw what our own might be if the most dangerous elements of our Constitution should become dominant.

We saw democracy rampant, with no restriction upon its caprices.

We saw a policy which received its impulses always from below ...