The firm of Laird, with
a certain dignity, claimed to be champion of England's navy; and
public opinion, in the summer of 1863, still inclined towards
them.
Never was there a moment when eccentricity, if it were a force,
should have had more value to the rebel interest; and the
managers must have thought so, for they adopted or accepted as
their champion an eccentric of eccentrics; a type of 1820; a sort
of Brougham of Sheffield, notorious for poor judgment and worse
temper. Mr. Roebuck had been a tribune of the people, and, like
tribunes of most other peoples, in growing old, had grown
fatuous. He was regarded by the friends of the Union as rather a
comical personage -- a favorite subject for Punch to laugh at --
with a bitter tongue and a mind enfeebled even more than common
by the political epidemic of egotism. In all England they could
have found no opponent better fitted to give away his own case.
No American man of business would have paid him attention; yet.
the Lairds, who certainly knew their own affairs best, let
Roebuck represent them and take charge of their interests.
With Roebuck's doings, the private secretary had no concern
except that the Minister sent him down to the House of Commons on
June 30, 1863, to report the result of Roebuck's motion to
recognize the Southern Confederacy.
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