His over-zeal had tempted him to prove too much.

The Southern people who had desired to build up a slave empire, and who despised the negro as a freeman, were asked by Mr.Benjamin to surrender this cherished project, and join with him in the ignoble design of founding a confederacy whose corner-stone should rest on hatred of the Northern States, and whose one achievement should be the revival and extension of English commercial power on this continent.

When the end came, Mr.Benjamin did not share the disasters and sacrifices with the sincere and earnest men whom he had done so much to mislead, and to whom he was bound in an especial manner by the tie which unites the victims of a common calamity.

Instead of this magnanimous course which would in part have redeemed his wrong-doing, Mr.Benjamin took quick refuge under the flag to whose allegiance he was born.

He left America with the full consciousness that to the measure of his ability, which was great, he had inflicted injury upon the country which had sheltered and educated him, and which had opened to him the opportunity for that large personal influence which he had used so discreditably to himself and so disastrously to the cause he espoused.
Mr.Benjamin became a resident of London and subsequently won distinction at the English Bar--rising to the eminence of Queen's counsel.