As soon as I observed the trend of British opinion, I went into public halls and spoke in favor of the Union, and tried to show that right and might were both on the side of the North, and that, no matter how many successes the South might win in the beginning of the war, it would inevitably be crushed beneath the weight of the rest of the country. I did not confine myself to speeches of this sort. I attacked the men who were trading on the war by sending blockade runners into Southern ports in violation of the rules of war. And so I was in some relation with Lord John Russell on the one hand and Emperor Louis Napoleon on the other, in the critical days of the Mason-Slidell affair and the discussion of "belligerent rights" of the South. Before taking part in this desperate effort to stem the tide of British opinion, and to defeat the efforts of British traders to make money by selling merchandise to the South contraband of war, I placed my wife and children on board a steamer for New York, in order to remove them from troubled scenes. This fight was to cost me the opportunity of making a fortune of perhaps $5,000,000, by upsetting my street-railway projects. I may mention here that in '58, during the Italian war, I bought the London Morning Chronicle for the French Emperor, paying $10,000 for it, and putting Thornton Hunt, son of Leigh Hunt, in editorial charge, at a salary of $2,000 a year. It was a daily paper; and as the Emperor wanted a weekly also, I arranged for him the purchase of the London Spectator at the same price, and put in Townsend (I think that was the name) as editor, at a salary of $2,000 a year. When the war was over, these papers of course passed out of our hands, and the Chronicle made a most savage attack on me in the tramway discussion, taking the part of the omnibus drivers. It again attacked me for my exposure of blockade running from British ports. I had given the names of the men interested, the marks of the cargoes, and the destination of the shipments, in a letter that I wrote to the New York Herald. These men thought they had assassinated the United States Republic.