Unfortunately, a written reply was not given.  Lord Clarendon was too apprehensive of the mischief which might possibly arise from a protracted discussion, leading, perhaps, to an angry controversy; and under the influence of this feeling contented himself, when the despatch was presented, with giving the ambassador a verbal answer, that “no consideration on earth would induce Parliament to pass a measure for the extradition of foreign political refugees; that our asylum could not be infringed, and that we adhered to certain principles on that subject which were so old and so sacred that they could not be touched;"[308] adding, however, at the same time an assurance that the Attorney-general was already, at his request, examining our law of conspiracy, to see whether it was sufficiently comprehensive or stringent.  The purport of this answer was all that could have been desired; but there was a very general impression that the omission to reply by a written despatch was a sacrifice of the national dignity, if not an unworthy submission to scarcely disguised menace; though at the same time there was also a feeling among both parties in Parliament that our laws with respect to the conduct of foreigners residing among us were, perhaps, susceptible of improvement.  On the very first night of the session, in allusion to the attack on the French Emperor, Lord Derby had said that “he could wish to hear the opinion of the ministers whether the existing laws of this country were adequate to afford security for the lives of foreign princes against plots contrived in this country; and, if they were not, whether they might not be amended, so as to meet the case of such crimes as had recently been perpetrated, which were so heinous and revolting to every feeling of humanity.”  And even before that speech the ministers had applied themselves to frame a measure to amend the law, which in the second week of February the Prime-minister himself introduced to the House of Commons.

It was read a first time, though not without some opposition; but before it arrived at the second reading, though only a week afterward, the feeling of the country, reflected in this instance by the House, had become so inflamed, that the measure was not discussed on its own merits, but on the point whether, since no other answer had been given to the French despatch, this must not be regarded as the ministerial answer, and therefore whether it were such an answer as it befitted England to send.  Had it been examined on its own merits solely, it could hardly have provoked much adverse criticism.  It was entitled, “A bill to amend the law with relation to the crime of conspiracy to commit murder,” and it merely proposed to establish in England a law which had long existed in Ireland.  Hitherto, as Lord Palmerston explained the matter, England had treated conspiracy to murder as a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment.  In Ireland it had long been a capital crime; and, though he did not propose to assimilate the English to the Irish statute in all its severity, he proposed to enact that conspiracy to murder should be a felony, punishable with penal servitude, by whomsoever the conspiracy might be concocted, or wherever the crime might be designed to be committed.