generosity to assist brave men in the defence of their liberties." The question was whether the Italian rising had taken place for good reasons. "Upon this grave matter Her Majesty's Government hold that the people in question are themselves the best judges of their own affairs.... Such having been the causes and concomitant circumstances of the Revolution in Italy, Her Majesty's Government can see no sufficient grounds for the severe censure with which Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia have visited the acts of the King of Sardinia. Her Majesty's Government turn their eyes rather to the gratifying prospect of a people {227} building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe." All the noble temper which had been wasted on Turkey, Poland, and Denmark was concentrated with triumphant success in this dispatch. The despotic Powers held their hands, and the Italian nation was enabled to work out its own destiny. One more controversy arose during the Palmerston era, and it tested English Liberalism as severely as any other. This was the American Civil War, which broke out in 1861 and continued until 1864. It was easy for a Liberal to find a logical reason for taking either side. He might support the North, because it was fighting to suppress slavery. He might support the South, because it was fighting for local independence against a central tyranny. The States were all legally independent except for certain common purposes of defence. It was thus very plausibly argued that it was the duty of a Liberal to support the South in its claim to secede from the Union which interfered with its internal affairs. Though it was not the business of England to go to war with the North, it could easily be squared with the doctrines of men like Canning that she should formally recognize the independence of the South as soon as it appeared to be achieved. When the issues were thus confused, English statesmen were dangerously vague in their language and their conduct. Toryism and the governing class took the side of the South, which in its aristocratic temper differed from the North much as they themselves differed from the Manchester School. Russell and Gladstone took the false Liberal view, and inclined towards recognition. The Manchester men were severely injured by the blockade of the Southern ports and the consequent dearth of cotton, and many of them may have hoped, even against their convictions, that the Government would take such an easy way of ending the war. The situation was highly dangerous. The North were fighting for national unity. They were fighting to keep within the Union people who wanted to secede only to maintain the most infamous of all human institutions save one. The war was not a war between nations. The Southerners were {228} a class, not a people. The war was a war between two civilizations, one based on free labour, the other on slavery. The