230 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



social stratum below that of Russell and Derby. 

 This new power received its formal recognition 

 in the British system through the Reform Bill 

 of 1867, which gave a wide extension to the 

 suffrage. It is hardly too much to say that 

 the Reform Bill of 1867 was a direct product 

 of the Northern triumph in the American war. 

 Extension of the franchise was forced upon 

 ministerial attention by Bright and the radicals, 

 was undertaken in vain by Gladstone and the 

 Russell government, and was actually enacted 

 by the Derby cabinet, with the cynical Disraeli 

 in the lead. This peculiar record of its genesis 

 shows the wide basis of public opinion on which 

 it was reared, and in this shows the far-reaching 

 influence of the American situation. 



While the end of the war brought little abate 

 ment of the ill feeling in the United States 

 toward the British, there was in England a 

 somewhat pronounced reaction toward amicable 

 sentiments even among those classes whose dis 

 tress at the success of republican ideas was 

 deepest and most sincere. The tragedy of 

 Lincoln s death had much to do with this move 

 ment. The most stolid Tory could not re 

 sist the softening effect of that most pathetic 

 sequence the divinely humane inaugural of 



