Gladstone’s declaration, at a critical juncture of the American War, that Jefferson Davis had made a nation, gave deep offence to the friends of the North both in the United States and in England. But he atoned for it by frank and honourable repentance. As a statement of fact, it lacked truth only in so far that Davis, instead of making the South a nation, had found it one already made. The schism between the Free and Slave States was inevitable, and the war was from the outset one between nations. That Gladstone subscribed to the Confederate loan was false, nor is there the slightest reason for believing that he was less faithful than any of his colleagues to the policy of strict neutrality, however ready he may have been, in common with the rest, to tender good offices in a contest in which, as it deprived millions of British artisans of the materials of their industry, Great Britain had a manifest and pressing interest. It might be rash to assert that the son of a slave-owner felt the same intense abhorrence of slavery as Wilberforce, or that a High Churchman fully equalled in his zeal for emancipation the Evangelicals whose special heritage it was. But Gladstone’s actuating motives, certainly, were his regard for the bread of the British artisan, and his sympathy with all who were struggling to be free. With a view, probably, to the satisfaction of mortified friends of the North in England, he wrote to me suggesting that, if the North thought fit to let the South go, it might in time be indemnified by the union of Canada with the Northern States. As the letter, on consideration, seemed unlikely to have the desired effect, and not unlikely at some future time to prove embarrassing to the writer, no use was made of it, and it was destroyed. Had it been possible for the son of a Jamaica proprietor to be an ardent emancipationist and a warm friend of the negro, Gladstone could hardly have failed to show his feelings on the occasion of the Jamaica massacre, that most atrocious outpouring of white hatred, rage, and panic on the black peasantry of Jamaica. However, he had the general sentiment of the upper classes and of the clergy upon his side.