366 CONCLUSION 



might have had double grievances to settle for. 

 As it was, she settled with more grace than 

 could fairly be anticipated the cost of her 

 errors in respect to the North. Whatever 

 grounds she had for contesting the claims of the 

 United States, her position was almost hope 

 lessly weakened from the outset by the staring 

 fact that the result of the American war was 

 precisely that which highly respected leaders of 

 British opinion had assumed to be impossible. 



The Treaty of Washington of 1871, with the 

 arbitrations that followed, signified the recog 

 nition by the other English-speaking peoples 

 that the American Republic was a new and 

 permanent species of political organism. It 

 signified the acceptance of democracy as a 

 respectable mode of national existence. It 

 marked the transition in British politics from 

 the regime of Whigs and Tories to that of 

 Liberals and Conservatives, from Palmerston 

 and Russell to Gladstone and Bright, from 

 Aberdeen and Derby to Disraeli and Salisbury. 

 Throughout the English-speaking world the 

 democratic spirit was visibly transforming in 

 stitutions. In the United Kingdom it gave 

 the suffrage to a million hitherto excluded men 

 of the working class, made education more 



