Any avowed agent of the United States government had great difficulty in acquiring information of a compromising character. Public opinion in England among the wealthy and influential was strongly in favor of the South. For this there were two reasons--one political, the other commercial. People of rank and those of considerable worldly possessions saw with growing apprehension the rising tide of democracy, not only in England but throughout the world. The feeling of disdain with which the idle rich had so long looked upon those who were "in trade" was beginning to lose its sting, and something like an answering scorn of those who never contributed anything toward the struggle for human subsistence began to be felt. The existence side by side of vast wealth and degrading poverty were more often referred to, and the innate perfection of institutions hoary with antiquity was more often called in question. The dread of an uprising of the "lower classes," peaceful or otherwise, was strong. The success of Napoleon III. in overturning the second republic of France was greeted with delight and construed to mean the triumph of the privileged classes. And at last had come that long-deferred failure of republican institutions, which aristocracy and aristocracy's ancestors had been so confidently predicting--the breaking up of the American republic. The refusal of President Lincoln and the people of the North to acquiesce in the dismemberment of the Union was received at first with surprise and then with indignation. British commerce was seriously interfered with by the blockade. Spindles were idle all through the manufacturing districts in the west of England. And all because a blind and headstrong people persisted in an utterly hopeless war of conquest. Abhorrence of chattel slavery was well nigh universal among the English people of all classes. Indeed, the existence of that institution in America was one of the principal indictments which aristocracy had been fond of bringing against her. The assertion that the North was waging a war for the extinguishment of slavery was laughed to scorn. Aristocracy pointed to the assertion of Lincoln in his inaugural address, that he had no intention or lawful right to interfere with slavery where it already existed and to similar statements of Republican leaders. The general opinion among the well-to-do classes was that the war was being fought on the part of the North for territory--for empire--or from motives of pride.