Bright’s speech was probably intended for American consumption with the purpose of easing American ill-will, by showing that even in Parliament there were those who disapproved of that show of force to which America so much objected.  He foresaw that this would long be the basis of American bitterness.  But Palmerston was undoubtedly correct in characterizing Bright’s opinion as a “solitary one.”  And looked at from a distance of time it would seem that a British Government, impressed as it was with a sense of Seward’s unfriendliness, which had not prepared for war when making so strong a demand for reparation, would have merited the heaviest condemnation.  If Mill was right in stating that the demand for reparation was a necessity, then so also were the military preparations.

Upon the Government the Trent acted to bring to a head and make more clear the British relation to the Civil War in America.  By November, 1861, the policy of strict neutrality adopted in May, had begun to be weakened for various reasons already recited—­weakened not to the point of any Cabinet member’s advocacy of change, but in a restlessness at the slow development of a solution in America.  Russell was beginning to think, at least, of recognition of the Confederacy.  This was clear to Lyons who, though against such recognition, had understood the drift, if Schleiden is to be trusted, of Ministerial opinion.  Schleiden reported on December 31 that Lyons had expressed to him much pleasure at the peaceful conclusion of the Trent affair, and had added, “England will be too generous not to postpone the recognition of the independence of the South as long as possible after this experience[498].”  But the Trent operated like a thunder-storm to clear the atmosphere.  It brought out plainly the practical difficulties and dangers, at least as regards Canada, of a war with America; it resulted in a weakening of the conviction that Seward was unfriendly; it produced from the British public an even greater expression of relief, when the incident was closed, than of anger when it occurred; and it created in a section of that public a fixed belief, shared by at least one member of the Cabinet, that the issue in America was that of slavery, in support of which England could not possibly take a stand.

This did not mean that the British Government, nor any large section of the public, believed the North could conquer the South.  But it did indicate a renewed vigour for the policy of neutrality and a determination not to get into war with America.  Adams wrote to Seward, “I am inclined to believe that the happening of the affair of the Trent just when it did, with just the issue that it had, was rather opportune than otherwise[499].”  Hotze, the confidential agent of the Confederacy in London, stated, “the Trent affair has done us incalculable injury,” Russell is now “an avowed enemy of our nationality[500].”  Hotze was over-gloomy, but Russell himself declared to Lyons:  “At all events I am heart and soul a neutral ... what a fuss we have had about these two men[501].”