on the American question.  Yet this was indubitably the case and became increasingly evident as time passed.  Russell’s despatch to Lyons of February 14 appears rather to be evidence of the effect of the debates in Parliament when its sessions were resumed on February 5, for in both Lords and Commons there was given a hearty and nearly unanimous support of the Government’s decision to make no overture for a cessation of the conflict in America.  Derby clearly outlined the two possible conditions of mediation; first, when efforts by the North to subdue the South had practically ceased; and second, if humane interests required action by neutral states, in which case the intervening parties must be fully prepared to use force.  Neither condition had arrived and strict neutrality was the wise course.  Disraeli also approved strict neutrality but caustically referred to Gladstone’s Newcastle speech and sharply attacked the Cabinet’s uncertain and changeable policy—­merely a party speech.  Russell upheld the Government’s decision but went out of his way to assert that the entire subjugation of the South would be a calamity to the United States itself, since it would require an unending use of force to hold the South in submission[853].  Later, when news of the French offer at Washington had been received, the Government was attacked in the Lords by an undaunted friend of the South, Lord Campbell, on the ground of a British divergence from close relations with France.  Russell, in a brief reply, reasserted old arguments that the time had “not yet” come, but now declared that events seemed to show the possibility of a complete Northern victory and added with emphasis that recognition of the South could justly be regarded by the North as an “unfriendly act[854].”

Thus Parliament and Cabinet were united against meddling in America, basing this attitude on neutral duty and national interests, and with barely a reference to the new policy of the North toward slavery, declared in the emancipation proclamations of September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863, Had these great documents then no favourable influence on British opinion and action?  Was the Northern determination to root out the institution of slavery, now clearly announced, of no effect in winning the favour of a people and Government long committed to a world policy against that institution?  It is here necessary to review early British opinion, the facts preceding the first emancipation proclamation, and to examine its purpose in the mind of Lincoln.

Before the opening of actual military operations, while there was still hope of some peaceful solution, British opinion had been with the North on the alleged ground of sympathy with a free as against a slave-owning society.  But war once begun the disturbance to British trade interests and Lincoln’s repeated declarations that the North had no intention of destroying slavery combined to offer an excuse and a reason for an almost complete shift of British opinion.