to think that the march of Slavery, and the domineering tone
which its advocates were beginning to assume over Freedom,
has been at length arrested and silenced. We rejoice that a
vast community of our own race has at length given an
authoritative expression to sentiments which are entertained
by everyone in this country. We trust to see the American
Government employed in tasks more worthy of a State founded
on the doctrines of liberty and equality than the invention
of shifts and devices to perpetuate servitude; and we hear in
this great protest of American freedom the tardy echo of
those humane doctrines to which England has so long become a
convert."

Other leading journals, though with less of patronizing
self-complacency, struck the same note as the _Times_. The _Economist_
attributed Lincoln's election to a shift in the sympathies of the "lower
orders" in the electorate who had now deserted their former leaders, the
slave-owning aristocracy of the South, and allied themselves with the
refined and wise leaders of the North. Lincoln, it argued, was not an
extremist in any sense. His plan of action lay within the limits of
statesmanlike moderation[36]. The _Saturday Review_ was less sure that
England should rejoice with the North. British self-esteem had suffered
some hard blows at the hands of the Democratic party in America, but at
least England knew where Democrats stood, and could count on no more
discourtesy or injustice than that inflicted in the past. The Republican
party, however, had no policy, except that of its leader, Seward, and
from him might be expected extreme insolence[37]. This was a very early
judgment of Seward, and one upon which the _Saturday Review_ preened
itself later, as wholly justified. The _Spectator_, the only one of the
four journals thus far considered which ultimately remained constant in