Thompson, writes of one of the public meetings: "... I addressed a
crowded assembly of unemployed operatives in the town of Heywood, near
Manchester, and spoke to them for two hours about the Slaveholders'
Rebellion. They were united and vociferous in the expression of their
willingness to suffer all hardships consequent upon a want of cotton, if
thereby the liberty of the victims of Southern despotism might be
promoted. All honor to the half million of our working population in
Lancashire, Cheshire, and elsewhere, who are bearing with heroic
fortitude the privation which your war has entailed upon them!... Their
sublime resignation, their self-forgetfulness, their observance of law,
their whole-souled love of the cause of human freedom, their quick and
clear perception of the merits of the question between the North and the
South... are extorting the admiration of all classes of the community
..."

How much of all this do you ever hear from the people who remember the
Alabama?

Strictly in accord with Beecher's vivid summary of the true England in
our Civil War, are some passages of a letter from Mr. John Bigelow, who
was at that time our Consul-General at Paris, and whose impressions,
written to our Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, on February 6, 1863, are
interesting to compare with what Beecher says in that letter, from which
I have already given extracts.

"The anti-slavery meetings in England are having their effect upon the
Government already... The Paris correspondent of the London Post also
came to my house on Wednesday evening... He says... that there are
about a dozen persons who by their position and influence over the organs
of public opinion have produced all the bad feeling and treacherous con-