CONCLUSION 363 



tion to determine what it meant, followed this 

 development. 



The events on which these two decades of 

 diplomacy turned were replete with incidents 

 that stirred the passions of the peoples and 

 made much bad blood between them. At the 

 same time other events in the national life 

 of all concerned worked clearly for friendship 

 and good feeling. Free trade became the com 

 mercial policy of both Great Britain and the 

 United States. The whole democratic spirit 

 of Cobden and Bright became influential in 

 British politics and won the approval of Amer 

 icans. Palmerston s foreign policy after 1848, 

 whatever its inconsistencies, was at least favor 

 able to the Liberals of the Continent. In this 

 again American opinion was conciliated. The 

 exiled heroes of unsuccessful revolt on the 

 Continent Kossuth, Garibaldi, Schurz found 

 equal welcome in England and the United 

 States; and those who gave the welcome 

 could not but feel drawn to each other. Com 

 mon sympathy with Magyars and Italians and 

 Germans tended somewhat to counteract the 

 effect of the wide divergence of sympathies 

 in respect to the Irish. Canadians and Amer 

 icans, whose antipathies rose high at the be- 



