Page:Anglo-American relations during the Spanish-American war (IA abz5883.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/31

Rh William E. Gladstone and Lord Palmerston spoke for the upper middle classes and the titled aristocracy, and John Bright and Richard Cobden spoke for the lower middle and working classes, the friendship of the latter with the North and the former with the South represented alliances between people of common political ideals in both eases.

The victory of the federal government in the United States and the Liberals in Great Britain represented a common victory for democracy. "As a matter of fact, a, fundamental influence in fixing the sympathies of the Britons was the more or less unconscious perception of a relation between the American problem and their own. The liberalizing and democratizing spirit was disintegrating both the old political parties. Those who welcomed this spirit longed for the preservation intact of the American union as the model of a great and prosperous democracy. Those who dreaded the approach of democracy were quick to see in the American war a proof of its weakness and futility."

With the great English middle class in control of British polities, as it was after the great reform bills of 1867 and 1885 were passed, the two countries drew rapidly together as a result of their common democratic ideals. Speaking of this latter-day British regard for American democracy, Mr. James Bryce said, "Rather than being dreaded as a fountain of democratic propaganda, America is looked upon as the champion of