When some one shouted that he was harsh and unfair, he answered, What if some exquisite dancing master should stand on the edge of a battle-field where a hero lifted his battle-axe, and criticize him by saying that "his gestures and postures violated the proprieties of polite life!" He added, "When dandies fight they think how they look; when men fight, they think only of deeds." He said that what the North desired was not material aid, but simply that England should keep hands off, and that France should keep hands off. He affirmed that even if they both interfered, the North would fight on, that slavery must be destroyed, and that liberty must be established on the American continent; that the victory of democracy and liberty in the North would mean their victory over the North and South American continent, and that if the day ever should come when the old flag should wave again over every state in the South, and the atrocious crime of slavery should be destroyed, there should be liberty for the press, and liberty for the poor in the schoolhouse; if plantations should be broken up and distributed among the poor farmers, and the privileges of civil liberty be won, that it would be worth all the blood and tears and woe. When he said that Great Britain had frowned upon the North, but hastened to fling her arms around the neck of the imperious South, one Englishman waved his arms and shouted: "She doesn't!" and the six thousand people began to cheer the disclaimer of England's being Romeo. To which Beecher answered: "I have only to say that she has been caught in very suspicious circumstances." Beecher's unshakable good humour, his witty, lightning-like answers to their questions and contradictions, his solid sense and--when he got the chance--his flaming eloquence, finally quelled and captured them. Then he traversed the entire history of slavery in its relation to the Colonies, the States, and the different forms of legislation up to the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. When he concluded his speech, and the sentiment of the audience was called for, to the astonishment of his friends, men lifted up their voices with a sound like the sound of many waters, and lined up for the North and liberty. The enthusiasm was overwhelming. Within three hours January's frost had turned to the bloom of June, and the moment was radiant with hope. The London _Times_ contained four columns of this speech, and the address became the topic of the hour in every club in England. And either of these facts in those days meant that Henry Ward Beecher was famous in England.