brutal attack upon Charles Sumner in the United States Senate after his
speech of May 19-20, 1856, evidence, again, that each incident of the
slavery quarrel in America excited British attention.

Senior, like Thomas Gladstone, painted the North as all anti-slavery,
the South as all pro-slavery. Similar impressions of British
understanding (or misunderstanding) are received from the citations of
the British provincial press, so favoured by Garrison in his
_Liberator_[29]. Yet for intellectual Britain, at least--that Britain
which was vocal and whose opinion can be ascertained in spite of this
constant interest in American slavery, there was generally a fixed
belief that slavery in the United States was so firmly established that
it could not be overthrown. Of what use, then, the further expenditure
of British sympathy or effort in a lost cause? Senior himself, at the
conclusion of his fierce attack on the Southern States, expressed the
pessimism of British abolitionists. He wrote, "We do not venture to hope
that we, or our sons, or our grandsons, will see American slavery
extirpated, or even materially mitigated[30]."


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: State Department, Eng., Vol. LXXIX, No. 135, March 27,
1862.]

[Footnote 2: Walpole, _Russell_, Vol. II, p. 367.]

[Footnote 3: _Life of Lady John Russell_, p. 197.]

[Footnote 4: There was a revival of this fear at the end of the American