But literary Britain was slow to express itself save in the Reviews.

These, representing varying shades of British upper-class opinion and presenting articles presumably more profound than the newspaper editorials, frequently offered more recondite origins of the American crisis.

The _Quarterly Review_, organ of extreme Conservatism, in its first article, dwelt upon the failure of democratic institutions, a topic not here treated at length since it will be dealt with in a separate chapter as deserving special study.

The _Quarterly_ is also the first to advance the argument that the protective tariff, advocated by the North, was a real cause for Southern secession[59]; an idea made much of later, by the elements unfriendly to the North, but not hitherto advanced.

In these first issues of the Reviews for 1861, there was frequently put forth the "Southern gentlemen" theory.
"At a distance of three thousand miles, the Southern planters did, indeed, bear a resemblance to the English country gentleman which led to a feeling of kinship and sympathy with him on the part of those in England who represented the old traditions of landed gentility.