The Express.
London, England, 1862-08-15 00:00:00

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY.

(From the New York Timex.)
Two events have occurred recently in England
which are nvificant of the state of public feeling toward
America. CM the annual commemoration day of the
founders of Oxford, the students are in the habit, le,"
the usual address is delivered, of cheering and hieing the
different names of popular or odious public men as they
are proposed. The name of Garibaldi had been cheered, and
that of Napoleon both cheered and biased, when some one
shouted out the name of "Jefferson Davis ;" it was re.
mitred with tumultuous and unanimous applause. " Pred.
dent Lincoln" was proposed, and it was greeted with hew
and groans.
The other incident to which we allude was the public
meeting, already described in our columns, of the operatives
in Manchester—the hard-working, pinched, hungry masses
of men in the cotton and other manufactures of that city.
They were called together to hear a proposal from a mem-
ber of parliament, that the English government should in-
tervene in the American civil war—nominally for
the aka al pesos, but really to establish the Southern
cepredemey, These men had been the great sufferers
from our war ; their wives and children were crying
vainly at home for breed to feed them, while all their
aristocratic teachers assured them they had but to acknow-
ledge the South, and cotton would pour in its stream of
labour sod wealth to them. They had heard continually
from the higher chases that the only objects of the North
were power and territory, and that the South were but
orating the rights of the declaration of independence, and
struggling for liberty. With these fallacies before them,
with hunger and want behind them. the operatives of Man-
chester reversed the whole object of the meeting, rejected
the proposition of Mr. Hopwood, pained a motion, with im.
manse applause, in favour of presernng the American Union
and supporting the policy of President Lincoln.
We would not exaggerate the importance of either of
these events--certainly not of the first. Still they may be

masidered m names ce the mem at English- opinion.
The kabinet at prams of the people his struck through to
the esnetial character of our civil war. The sons of the
'&l=w—those whose fathers and animators have become
rich and powerful, either by burdens laid on the people or
by wealth taken from them ; who dread, beyond ell things,
the equal elevation of the mane* with theme's," ..1;
hate the very name of democracy—these naturally 61 for
the so-called aristocrats of Amines—the nobility of the
slave-pen and the plantation. They feel uncomciously,
or they have heard it at home, that the same
struggle is raging on American soil which has couvubed
Europe, and will convulse it spin—the struggle between
those who would raise up the lowest classes to the rights
and privileges of humanity, and those who would dente
them for their own base purposes.
They see well that the stupendous conflict which u deco.
biting a continent is no causeless and unmeaning struggle,
but is indeed the clashing of principle; ; that this, even as
the first French revolution, is eseentially a war of demo.
many against privilege ; for the rights of man spinet the
immunities of a class. The triumph of the North
would be the triumph of democracy, and they
dread it (very ressombly) almost as they mould a
revolution of the British masses themselvee. The success
of the South would be the ruin of the American republican
experiment, and would throw back the popular party in
Europe for a century ; therefore they pray for it and cheer
its rebellions leader. They are perfectly right and mine-
able. The victory of the North would give a shock to aris-
tocratic privileges in England. from which they would never
recover. Reform, popular aufrorlthe abolition of a state
church, the elevation of the wor claims, would be, in
the future, the possible English rem ta of our MOON& No
wonder that the boys of the universities shout for a slave-
holding confederacy and the treat repudiator.
On the other hand, • portion of the working classes—
those who think for themselves—feel at once that the
rational cause in America and the popular cause in England
are one Though temporarily we deprive them of breed,
with • noble instinct they feel that we are really striking
for them and the rights of mankind against mete and
power. As Mr. Lincoln mid in his menage, "they know
that the destruction of the American Republic, whatever
else it may mean —means no pod to the common people."
While an army of the miMe classes are hoodwinked
by the aristocracy, or are blioded by national jea-
lousy and sellehnees, not looking under the surface
of events here, and seeing the real struggle of great ideas
beneath party cries and official proclamations, the heart of
the English masses disoorn the truth as by instinct. They
see in the Southern leaders not merely °proems of the
negro, but oppeasaotl of mankind. The victory of our
government is to them the victory of universal suffrage, of
republicanism, liberty and justioe to the poor ; all for which
the people have struggled so long in Europe. The triumph
of the South is, to their clear vision, the triumph of a
privileged few—the basest aristocracy ever formed, conspi-
mons for ferocity, cruelty, and meannein—grown rich on
the sale of human bodies, and fattened by the blood of the
poor.