The indirect consequences of fatuities are sometimes worse than their immediate effects. It was known over the world that England, France, Turkey, and Italy had combined to endeavour to crush Russia, and had succeeded only in capturing half of a single Russian city. The sepoy army heard of our failures, and the centenary of the battle of Plassy was signalised by the Great Mutiny. The rebellion was splendidly met. It was practically confined to the army itself, and over the largest part of the peninsula the general population remained loyal; but the murder of the officers, the cruelties to the women and children, and the detailed barbarities which were paraded in the newspapers, drove the English people into fury. Carried away by generous but unwise emotion, they clamoured for retaliatory severities, which, if inflicted, would have been fatal to our reputation and eventually perhaps to the Indian Empire. Disraeli's passionless nature was moved to a warmth which was rare with him. Such feelings, he said, were no less than 'heinous.' We boasted that we ruled India in the interests of humanity; were we to stain our name by copying the ferocities of our revolted subjects? [Sidenote: CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA] His influence was no less fortunately exerted at the more dangerous crisis of the American civil war. On all occasions English instinct inclines to take the weaker side, but for many reasons there was in England a particular and wide-spread inclination for the South. There was a general feeling that the American colonies had revolted against ourselves; if they quarrelled, and a minority of them desired independence, the minority had as good a right to shake off the North as the thirteen original States to shake off the mother country. The North in trying to coerce the South was contradicting its own principle. Professional politicians even among the Liberals were of opinion that the transatlantic republic was dangerously strong, that it was disturbing the balance of power, and that a division or dissolution of it would be of general advantage. Those among us who disliked republican institutions, and did not wish them to succeed, rejoiced at their apparent failure, and would willingly have lent their help to make it complete.