At the end of Marx's letter to Kugelmann, he tells of the beginning already made by the International in London in actual political work. "The movement for electoral reform here," he writes, "which our General Council (_quorum magna pars_) created and launched, has assumed dimensions that have kept on growing until now they are irresistible."[31] The General Council threw itself unreservedly into this agitation. An electoral reform conference was held in February, 1867, attended by two hundred delegates from all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Later, gigantic mass meetings were held throughout the country to bring pressure upon the Government. Frederic Harrison and Professor E. S. Beesly, well known for their sympathy with labor, were appealing to the working classes to throw their energies into the fight. "Nothing will compel the ruling classes," wrote Harrison in 1867, "to recognize the rights of the working classes and to pay attention to their just demands until the workers have obtained political power."[32] Professor Beesly, the intimate friend of Marx, was urging the unions to enter politics as an independent force, on the ground that the difference between the Tories and the Liberals was only the difference between the upper and nether millstones. In all this agitation Marx saw, of course, the working out of his own ideas for the upbuilding of a great independent political organization of the working class. All the energies of the General Council of the International were, therefore, devoted to the political struggle of the British workers. However, in all this campaign, emphasis was placed upon the central idea of the association--that political power was wanted, in order, peaceably and legally, to remedy economic wrongs. The wretched condition of the workers in the industrial towns and the even greater misery of the Irish peasants and English farm laborers were the bases of all agitation. While occupied at this time chiefly with the economic and political struggles in Britain, the General Council was also keeping a sharp eye on similar conditions in Europe and America. When Lincoln was chosen President for the second time, a warm address of congratulation was sent to the American people, expressing joy that the sworn enemy of slavery had been again chosen to represent them. More than once the International communicated with Lincoln, and perhaps no words more perfectly express the ideal of the labor movement than those that Lincoln once wrote to a body of workingmen: "_The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds._"[33]