When I went to Lancashire in 1864 the terrible effects of the cotton famine were everywhere to be seen. History has done justice to the noble fortitude with which the operatives of Lancashire "clemmed" (starved) in silence during that awful time. Never shall I forget the pale, pinched faces of the men and women as they walked to and from their daily labour. The worst of the struggle was over, but hundreds of great mills were still closed, and those which were open only ran half-time. The working classes in Lancashire, as in most places, were on the side of the North in the American Civil War, and not even the sufferings which that war caused them, made them abate their opposition to the slave-holding South. But in Lancashire, as elsewhere, the upper classes--with the exception of the few who followed the noble leadership of John Bright--were enthusiasts on the side of the South, and, if they had dared, would have urged English intervention on behalf of the Confederate States. There was thus a strong and marked difference of opinion between the upper and the lower classes in Lancashire, as elsewhere. The great question in domestic politics was that of Parliamentary reform. Advanced Liberals believed that if only the franchise was enlarged, and the working-man admitted within the pale, Liberal principles and ideas would henceforward triumph permanently in our national politics, and they were, consequently, eager to bring about this great constitutional change. Tories also believed that this would be the effect of the enlargement of the franchise, and they naturally opposed it vehemently. Neither party foresaw that the elements common to human nature everywhere would influence the course of politics just as fully after the working men had been admitted within the pale of the Constitution as before, and that we should find even amongst the lower orders the same differences between Liberals and Conservatives as prevailed in the middle class.