They (the American people) know that when this rebellion began the aristocrats of England took advantage of the chance to destroy us, and joined heart and hand with the slaveholding rebels. They know that this rebellion was born in Exeter Hall, nurtured by the English aristocracy, armed from English arsenals, and supported by English sympathy and assistance. _Punch_, though no lover of Exeter Hall, could not refrain from ironically vindicating its innocence, and makes for the rest some good debating points against the _Herald_. But there is little "neutrality" in his statement that Southern loyalty was as staunch as that of the North, "though not so truculent or atrocious"; and when he falls foul of the Yankees--a word invariably used in a disparaging sense--for calling the confederates "rebels," he did not know that the magnanimous Lincoln would never allow them to be called by that name in his presence. He is made to do so, however, in _Punch's_ parody of one of Lincoln's speeches--a truly lamentable performance, in which the President claims dictatorial powers, calls for whipcord to whip the rebels, abuses the "rotten old world," talks with the utmost cynicism of the blacks, and in general behaves like a vulgar buffoon. The true Lincoln is to be found in the immortal Second Inaugural delivered on March 4, 1865. As for the British working men, though _Punch_ had undoubtedly endeavoured to discount the strength of the tide of feeling which continued to run strongly against the slave power, in spite of the terrible suffering brought about by the blockade, he quoted with approval Lord Palmerston's formidable and damaging indictment of the manufacturers in the House of Commons on July 30:-- "We know," he said, "that in the county most fortunes have been made by the manufacturers. I do not agree with the Hon. Member for Stockport that it has all been invested in the mills. On the contrary they have accumulated much more than their mills could have cost. There are enormous capitalists in the county, some of whom, I am sorry to say, though they have starving populations at their gates, and anticipate worse distress as coming, have actually, for the sake of profit, sold and sent out of the country the cotton which they ought to have used for the employment of the people. I say, why are these people to be exempt, and not to be made to contribute to the distress which they see around them?"