“The nobility as a class are also against us, though there are some very noble exceptions.

“In Parliament, if a vote were taken to-day according to the private thoughts, sympathies, and wishes among its members, I suppose they would vote five to one against the North and in favor of the South. It is believed, too, by those well informed, that at least a portion of the government have been entirely willing to go into a rupture with the North, and that but for the unflinching restraints they would have done so long ago. But it is the impression throughout the realm that the sovereign of Great Britain has been from the first our judicious but our steadfast friend. It is believed, and so represented to me, that her never-rightly-estimated and lamented consort was our fast friend, and that among the last acts of his life were those which erased from documents presented to him sentences that would have inflamed the growing anger. And if you ask me what is the great underlying influence that has been at work upon the upper class of England, I answer thus:

“1. Commercial interest and rivalry therein.

“2. Class-power and the fear of contagion from American ideas.

“3. (I know not how I shall say it so that it shall be the least offensive to our friends on the other side, but neither they nor you have come to the bottom of the conduct of Great Britain until you have touched that delicate and real foundation cause.) We are too large and strong a nation.

“With this state of facts you will ask how it is that the English people have been restrained? How is it that they have not gone into overt belligerency? That is the very question that I propose to answer, and in the statement that the English heart is on our side. The nobility is against us; the government is divided and a part is against us. I think I may say that while the brains that represent progress in Great Britain are in our favor, yet the conservative intelligence of Great Britain is against us, and that all there is on the surface of society, representing its dignities, its power and intelligence, is anti-American. And the question I propose to you is, How, with the papers, magazines, and universities, how with their titled estates opposed to us, that they have been restrained from manifesting this in open hostility? It is because there is a great underlying influence that restrains them—it is the influence of that under-life, and to a very great extent of the non-voting English, which has produced this effect, It is a thing I could not understand at first, and which it is very difficult for us to understand; for wherever in our country there is a majority of the votes there is sure to be a direction of affairs. But it is not so in England. I learned that the men who could not vote, where they were united and determined, had the power to control the men who do vote. I hold in my hand a letter from Richard Cobden. He says: ‘You will carry back an intimate acquaintance with a state of feeling in this country among what, for a better name, I call the ruling class. Their sympathy is undoubtedly strongly for the South, with the instinctive satisfaction at the prospect of the disruption of the great Republic. It is natural enough. But do not forget that we have in this case, for the first time in our history, seen the masses of the British people taking sides for a foreign government against its rebellious citizens. In every other instance, whether in the case of the Poles, Italians, Hungarians and Corsicans, Greeks, or South Americans, the popular sympathy of this country has always leaped to the side of the insurgents the moment the rebellion has broken out. In the present case our masses have an instinctive feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the States—the United States. It is true that they have not a particle of power in the direct form of a vote, but, when millions in this country are led by the religious middle class, they can go and prevent the governing class from pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies.’

“Into such an atmosphere and among such a people I went. And when, unsought, and indeed against my feelings if not against my judgment, I entered upon the labor of the past few weeks of my sojourn in England, I assumed the responsibility, I cannot say with trembling—for I am not accustomed much to tremble—but I assumed the responsibility with the gravest sense of what it was. I have felt the inspiration of nationality often, but I never before was placed between two such great peoples, where I saw them both in prospective, both in their present relations and in their future. I never before felt so much as I felt all the time, waking or dreaming, night or day, what it was to stand and plead for the unity of these two great nations, for the sake of struggling mankind; and it was at once an excitement to me and a support. But, after all, I did not know how my countrymen would regard my efforts. If you had disapproved I should have been sorry that you disapproved, but not sorry for what I had done. I did the best I knew how to do, every time, everywhere disinterestedly, for the love I bear to the cause and to the principles which underlie it. I did not hear from home whether my representations of policy, of fact, of history, and of the tendencies of things would accord with yours, or whether I should not be caught up in the whirl of conflicting parties, my reasonings traversed, and my arguments denied. When I landed in Boston I learned for the first time that my services had been accepted by my countrymen....

“That to a certain extent my speeches produced among the common people beneficial results there can be no doubt; but how far that extended, or whether they had influence upon the thinking classes, others could say better than I. They were certainly greatly aided by the fact that Lee was defeated at Gettysburg and driven back to Virginia, and that at the same time Grant received the surrender of Vicksburg. Those timely victories, together with other causes, held in check the manœuvres and diplomacy of crowned heads and made intervention less certain and more remote; and gave time for Grant’s success at Chattanooga, and his transfer to the Army of the Potomac, and in turn his promotion to general-in-chief of the operations in the field.

“I put no immoderate estimate on my services. I believe I did some good wherever I spoke. But it should be remembered that a single man, a stranger in the community, would be eaten up by vanity if he said or supposed, that he had done all the good that had been accomplished. There must have been preparation. He merely came to touch the train that had already been laid. When, in October, you go to the tree and give it a jar, and the fruit comes down all around you, it is not you that ripens it. A whole summer has been doing that. You merely brought down the fruit prepared. It was my happy fortune to be there to jar the tree. The fruit that fell was not of my ripening.”

A few brief extracts from three of the leading papers in New York, published at the time, are quoted as indications of the popular sentiment as to the value of his work:

“It is plain, from the whole tone of the British press, that Mr. Beecher has been instrumental in starting, or at least hastening, a complete revolution of the popular feeling of the kingdom in favor of our National cause. He is the man who ought to have been sent to England two years ago to enlighten and rouse the people. Had this been done he could have hardly failed of preventing a vast deal of that bitterness which has since, all the while, been fermenting between the two nations.”

“The Administration at Washington have sent abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North and press it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is a person who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere private mission to recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his four or five speeches in England have not done more for us, by their frank and manly exposition of our principles, our purpose, and our hopes, than all the other agencies employed.”

“Every loyal American, whatever his opinions respecting the past words and acts of Henry Ward Beecher, will thank him for his work across the water. It is no exaggeration to affirm that the five speeches he has delivered—in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London—each pursuing its own line of argument and appeal, have done more for our cause in England and Scotland than all that has been before said or written.”

Whatever may have been the causes, it is historical that the English government, which had been trembling upon the very verge of intervention, withdrew from this project and began to entertain much more peaceful and friendly feelings towards the United States—feelings that have grown stronger and deeper with each successive year.