inflict vast losses upon manufacturers, if not, as actually occurred, famine upon their workmen. Mr. Gladstone gave expression to a very prevalent feeling, when, in his famous speech at Manchester, he declared that Mr. Jefferson Davis had made an army, had made a navy, and, more than that, had made a nation.

How far Lord Palmerston shared the views of his Chancellor of the Exchequer it is difficult to say with any appoach to certainty. Mr. Ashley tells us that though he admired the American people, the politicians of the United States appeared to him to fail on the score of character; and he certainly would not have committed himself to remarks about the " unfortunate rapid movements" of the Federal troops at the battle of Bull's Run, unless he had anticipated a speedy triumph for the Confederate cause. All the more credit is due to him for having observed a complete neutrality at the outset of the struggle. A letter to Mr. Ellice establishes beyond all doubt the prudence of his motives. He was all for non-intervention until the "wire edge of the craving appetite for conflict had worn off"; and he pointed out that it was impossible to intervene upon any sound basis, except that of separation, the discussion of which would evidently be premature, or without committing ourselves to an acknowledgment of the principle of slavery, and the right to pursue fugitive slaves from State to State. But, it may be said, did not Her Majesty's Government, by the act of proclaiming neutrality, acknowledge the South as a belligerent power, and so virtually play into its hands? The answer is conclusive and complete. Unless the South was acknowledged as a belligerent power, there was obviously no war going on. If there was no war, the English Government could not be expected

to recognise the blockade of the Southern ports. The recognition of the South as a belligerent power was indeed to the advantage of the North, as its advocates discovered when, in the crisis of the English cotton-famine, numerous appeals were made to Ministers in the House of Commons to break the blockade, which was paralyzing the energies and stopping the supplies of the Confederate Government. Fortunately, Lord Palmerston and his colleagues stood firm; and sought relief for the deficiency, not in embroiling themselves in their neighbours' quarrel, but in drawing supplies of cotton from other parts of the world.

The labyrinths of international law had also to be threaded in the two chief causes of dispute between the English and United States Governments, the Trent and the Alabama affairs. In the first, Earl Russell, and, by implication, Lord Palmerston, behaved with the utmost promptitude and spirit. There could be no doubt whatever that Captain Wilkes was entirely in the wrong when he compelled the Trent to lay to, and carried off Mr. Slidell and Mr. Mason, the Confederate envoys, as prisoners on board the San Jacinto. It was a gross violation of the law of nations, an arbitrary assertion of that right of search which had been abandoned by the United States, and against which, when exercised by Lord Palmerston, for the benefit of kidnapped negroes, they had never ceased to protest. There was, besides, an impression abroad, which the Prime Minister at first. shared, that the deed was not the spontaneous act of a hot-headed captain, but that it had been deliberately planned and executed by the United States Government. Under the circumstances Earl Russell was amply justified in sending out a demand for an apology and the liberation of the envoys, and in limiting the answer to

a period of seven days. Nor can any objection be taken to the tone of his despatch to Lord Lyons, after it had been toned down by the advice of the dying Prince Consort; even the American Secretary, Mr. Seward, acknowledged it to be "courteous and friendly-not dictatorial or menacing," and his apology was ample. But why send 8,000 or 10,000 troops to Canada, asked Mr. Cobden, after the United States Minister, Mr. Adams, had told the British Government that the act of Captain Wilkes was not sanctioned by the Washington Cabinet. Lord Palmerston's answer was, as usual, the sound one, that peace is best preserved by showing that you are not afraid of war.

The American Minister did not tell us that the act of Captain Wilkes was disapproved; he did not tell us that it would be disavowed; he did not tell us that the insult to the British flag would be atoned for by the surrender of the persons who were taken from the British ship Trent. Therefore, the communication which Mr. Adams made, and made with the very best intentions, was not a communication upon which we would have been justified in acting, so far as to forego any measure of precaution which in our opinion was necessary. But everybody recollects the ferment which prevailed in the United States, the language held at public meetings, the honours paid to Captain Wilkes at the Theatre, the language held in Congress, and also the letter of the Secretary to the Naval Department, approving the conduct of that officer. Then, I say, we were justified in assuming that that difficulty might not terminate in a satisfactory and amicable manner. That being the case, I hold that we should have been extremely blamable if we had not taken the precautions which we adopted.. We should only have been misleading the American Government into the supposition that after all we might not really be in earnest. And I do believe that the measures we took were most materially conducive to opening their eyes to the consequences of a refusal, thereby enabling their calm judgment to determine upon the course which it was most for their interest that they should adopt.

Lord Lyons, who was not an alarmist, and who had in addition the advantage of being on the spot, was of precisely the same opinion.

Of course the Trent affair left bitter memories behind it, and their workings are to be seen conspicuously in the controversy about the Alabama and the other privateers which were built for the South in English dockyards, and sometimes manned by British crews. If England had the law on her side in the matter of the Trent, America had no less the principle of equity with her in the case of the Alabama. But this Lord Palmerston

and Earl Russell hardly appreciated enough; and when the frigate started on her destroying career from Birkenhead, without the smallest attempt at concealment as to her real character, and in spite of the vigorous protests of Mr. Adams, the Prime Minister based his defence on a textual exposition of the Foreign Enlistment Act. You could not, he said, seize a vessel under the act unless you have evidence on oath confirming a just suspicion.

That evidence was wanting in this case. The American Minister came to my noble friend the Foreign Secretary, and said, "I tell you this, and I tell you that, I'm sure of this, and I'm sure of that"; but when he was asked to produce evidence on oath, which was the only thing on which we could ground any proceedings, he said that the information was furnished him confidentially, that he could not give testimony on oath, but that we ought nevertheless to act on his assertions and suspicions, which he was confident were well founded. What would happen if we were to act in that way? When a vessel is seized unjustly and without just grounds, there is a process of law to come afterwards, and the Government may be condemned in heavy costs and damages. Why are we to undertake an illegal measure which may have had those consequences, simply to please the agent of a foreign Government?

The position was full of difficulties; but it was obvious that breaches of neutrality were being committed, and that it was the duty of the English Government to put a stop to them. The Americans retorted that self-preservation was the first law of nature; and, though Mr.

Adams could not effect the detention of the Alabama, he enforced that of two ironclad rams under threat of war. Even if the dispute ended there, the British Government would have come out of it second best; but, as everyone knows, it dragged on until it was finally settled against England on most points by the Geneva tribunal. Lord Palmerston did not live to see that day; and as the discussion of "might-have-beens " is invariably sterile, it is not very profitable to speculate at length on which of the alternatives, war or arbitration, he would have elected to adopt. One thing is quite certain, that he would not have submitted for a moment to the monstrous Indirect Claims. The management of the Alabama affair by the Palmerston Government was a blunder, but the recognition of the South, to which several of its members were apparently by no means adverse, would have been a worse one, and, on the whole, they may be considered to have come out of an exceedingly trying crisis with a fair amount of credit. It was but natural, as the Prime Minister said, that when we endeavoured to maintain a perfect neutrality between two parties who had quarrelled, we should satisfy neither. At least we had shown by a prompt despatch of troops to Canada, and by the vote for the fortification of Quebec, which was one of the last acts of Lord Palmerston's administration, that we were not to be cowed by any manifestations of spread-eagleism on the part of the American press and people.

Though the Ministry were not to be lured into a recognition of the Southern States of America to oblige the Emperor of the French, they committed themselves to a participation in the Mexican expedition, the arguments for which really, though not ostensibly, rested on the supposition that the South would triumph, and