Events entirely failed to justify these truculent words. A year later the cotton famine was at its height, and an appeal for funds is headed "Welly Clamming," with the explanation, "Everywhere we hear this, the Lancashire Doric for 'nearly starving.'" _Punch_ applauds the zeal of the Quakers in relieving the distress caused by famine, fever and frost, and simultaneously reproduces this extraordinary advertisement from the _Manchester Guardian_:-- _Travel_: A gentleman, whose son, aged 17, is thrown out of occupation by the Cotton Famine, would be glad to meet with one or two other young gentlemen to accompany his son on a Tour, for five or six months, in the Mediterranean or elsewhere. Address F. 127 at the Printers. The advertiser, according to _Punch_, appears to be "one of those distressed millionaires who, because their mills have ceased working, declare themselves destitute mill-owners, and devolve on the squires and farmers and the British public the duty of rescuing their unemployed workpeople from starvation." [Illustration: "A STILL BIGGER CLAIMANT"] When a ship was sent to Liverpool bearing the contributions of the United States to the relief of Lancashire in February, 1863, _Punch_ welcomed the gift without reserve, as linking the two worlds anew by the chain of fraternal goodwill. But a very different spirit is shown in his acid comments on the debate in the House of Commons initiated by W. E. Forster, who attacked the Government for not interfering to prevent ships of war being supplied by our builders to the Confederates, and said that we incurred great danger of war. The facts and the sequel fully justified Forster's protest, but _Punch_ was not content with backing up Palmerston's defence of the Government, and treated with contempt and ridicule Bright's insistence on the sympathy of the working classes with the North:--