Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/79

Rh and would not have deserved or excused a bitter word, if they could only have said frankly that they desired the downfall of institutions opposed to their own, instead of talking about their sympathy for the weak, and their respect for national independence, and their anxiety for the triumph of Free Trade. Equally natural, perhaps, with the conduct of the territorial aristocracy, was that of our commercial aristocracy, who again, with some exceptions, for which the whole order will some day be grateful, ranged themselves on the side of the South. The relations between employer and employed are not yet happily settled; and till, by a better understanding of mutual interests, and the removal of faults on both sides, they are happily settled, a certain division of sympathies is sure to be seen. Perhaps there are other things to be said about a large number of those who have grown suddenly rich, and have not been trained to feel an interest in anything but the security and enjoyment of wealth, which it is not necessary, and would not be agreeable to say, but which if said, would partly account for their conduct in the struggle which is just past. Below all these classes, however, there was a mass of loose and ignorant opinion, which, partly by the skilful manipulation of the slave-owners, who evidently knew the secret of dealing with the press, and the adroit suggestion of a false theory at the critical moment—partly by ignorant prejudices and fancies about American aggressiveness, was turned to the wrong side. The truth is, political principle among ourselves was during those years rather at a low ebb. We were passing through a phase very analagousanalogous [sic] to that which I have described as existing in America under the ascendancy of Slavery, before the great rally of morality at the North. The causes of the phenomenon in both cases were