apprehension of the true meaning of the word, they supposed that the southerners came nearer to satisfy the ordinary definition of gentlemen than their northern brethren." Dives perhaps might reply that he was only adopting a saying of Burke, which Pinckney, I think, quoted in congress ; and he would find solace in a northern criticism of Arnold's latest utterance, to the effect that distinction is a correlative of snobbishness, and incompatible with genuine equality. The thing cannot be explained by the suspected thoughts of men too unintelligent to know a gentleman when they see him. Macaulay, at least, was not an aristocrat. He had done more than any writer in the literature of the world for the propagation of the Liberal faith, and he was not only the greatest, but the most representative Englishman then living. Yet Macaulay, in 1856, spoke this remarkable prophecy : that the union would not last ten years ; that it would be dissolved by slavery, and would settle down into several distinct despotisms.
In the three wars which between 1860 and 1870 determined the isolation of England, and generated Jingo, Dr. Bright does all that a few solid sentences can do to make the issues impartially intelligible ; although each contending party might add a rectifying word. He dislikes slavery, but is not far from agreeing with Mr. Oliphant, that a dog with a master is as good as a dog without one. He thinks the abolitionists fanatical, and shares that phase of federal opinion which was expressed by President Buchanan : "The original and conspiring causes of all our future troubles are to be found in the long, active, and persistent hostility of the northern abolitionists, both in and out of congress, against southern slavery, until the final triumph of their cause in the election of President Lincoln." Whilst he barely admits the strength of the pledges which Lincoln gave against abolition, the disinclination to assign grave practical consequences to impalpable dogma leaves a haze on the other side. That the theory which gave to the people of the States the same right of last resort against Washington
