maintained its naval squadron for the suppression of the African slave
trade, but the British official mind no longer keenly interested itself
either in this effort or in the general question of slavery.

Nevertheless American slavery and slave conditions were still, after
1850, favourite matters for discussion, almost universally critical, by
English writers. Each renewal of the conflict in America, even though
local, not national in character, drew out a flood of comment. In the
public press this blot upon American civilization was a steady subject
for attack, and that attack was naturally directed against the South.
The London _Times_, in particular, lost no opportunity of presenting the
matter to its readers. In 1856, a Mr. Thomas Gladstone visited Kansas
during the height of the border struggles there, and reported his
observations in letters to the _Times_. The writer was wholly on the
side of the Northern settlers in Kansas, though not hopeful that the
Kansas struggle would expand to a national conflict. He constantly
depicted the superior civilization, industry, and social excellence of
the North as compared with the South[26].

Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ excited greater interest in England
than in America itself. The first London edition appeared in May, 1852,
and by the end of the year over one million copies had been sold, as
opposed to one hundred and fifty thousand in the United States. But if
one distinguished writer is to be believed, this great British interest
in the book was due more to English antipathy to America than to
antipathy to slavery[27]. This writer was Nassau W. Senior, who, in
1857, published a reprint of his article on "American Slavery" in the
206th number of the _Edinburgh Review_, reintroducing in his book
extreme language denunciatory of slavery that had been cut out by the
editor of the _Review_[28]. Senior had been stirred to write by the