Orth. 2d. That which believed i

S; but its central strength was in that backbone of English philanthropic effort, the more plebeian section of the well-to-do middle class,--that section which gravitates towards Dissent, in religion, towards Radicalism in politics, towards Bible Societies, Temperance Movements, "Bands of Hope," and Exeter Hall. If this section of the British community had not remained true to anti-slavery ideas, the country would indeed have been turned "the seamy side without." That we were spared, in the severer crises of the war, the last uglinesses of tergiversation, is owing mainly to people of this class, the cheapest subjects for well-bred sneers and intellectual superiority in ordinary times. 4th. The party which believed in the right and the probable eventual success of the South was obviously, during the greater part of the war, a numerous one. In the earlier stages of Secession, when the chief question before one's thoughts was that of right, I think that comparatively few people sided with the South, though very many were lukewarm or frigid, or actually inimical towards the North. At that time party-spirit still respected the old-fashioned notions, that a self-governing nation must be ruled by its own majority, not minority; that a minority which cried out before it was hurt, and "cut the connection" rather than the balance in its own favor, was likely to be a factious and misguided minority; and that a new commonwealth, whose _raison d'etre_ was Slavery, had little claim to the sympathies of Englishmen or of civilization. Others laid greater stress from the first on the argument, that the States of the Union were all sovereign states, which had respectively entered into a voluntary bond, and could voluntaril