THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 247 



the artful and eloquent recital of the old tales 

 of wrong. The effect of Sumner s speech was 

 magnified on both sides of the Atlantic by the 

 fact that he had always been reckoned the 

 chief among the small number of friends of 

 England in American public life. That he 

 should now be hailed in the United States as 

 the leader of the Anglophobes, threw his En 

 glish admirers into consternation that was al 

 most comical in its intensity. His suggestion of 

 claims that would run up into the hundred 

 millions was unsparingly denounced by all or 

 gans of British public opinion, and it proved 

 a serious obstacle to the continuation of diplo 

 matic discussion of the general question. There 

 is little doubt, on the other hand, that the 

 emphasis that he laid on what he called the 

 national claims and on the national sense of 

 injury received, as distinct from individual 

 losses, was an important influence in determin 

 ing the form of the ultimate settlement. 



Sumner s attitude was, in fact, the outcome of 

 a deliberate purpose, for which British radical 

 politics was in some degree responsible. We 

 have seen that for several decades the feeling 

 had been common and unconcealed in high 

 quarters that the colonies were a burden to 



