“It is in this spirit that Her Majesty’s Government decline to bind themselves, without a clear explanation on their part, to a Convention which, seemingly confined to an adoption of the Declaration of Paris of 1856, might be construed as an engagement to interfere in the unhappy dissensions now prevailing in the United States; an interference which would be contrary to Her Majesty’s public declarations, and would be a reversal of the policy which Her Majesty has deliberately sanctioned[249].”

Thus the negotiation closed.  Seward in declining to accept the proposed declaration gave varying reasons in his instructions to Adams, in London, and to Dayton, in Paris, for an exactly similar declaration had been insisted upon by France, but he did not argue the question save in generalities.  He told Dayton that the supposed possible “intervention” which Great Britain and France seemed to fear they would be called upon to make was exactly the action which the United States desired to forestall, and he notified Adams that he could not consent since the proposed Declaration “would be virtually a new and distinct article incorporated into the projected convention[250].”  The first formal negotiation of the United States during the Civil War, and of the new American Minister in London, had come to an inglorious conclusion.  Diplomats and Foreign Secretaries were, quite naturally, disturbed, and were even suspicious of each others’ motives, but the public, not at the moment informed save on the American offer and the result, paid little attention to these “inner circle” controversies[251].

What then were the hidden purposes, if such existed, of the negotiating powers.  The first answer in historical writing was that offered by Henry Adams[252], in an essay entitled “The Declaration of Paris, 1861,” in the preparation of which the author studied with care all the diplomatic correspondence available in print[253].  His treatment presents Russell as engaged in a policy of deception with the view of obtaining an ultimate advantage to Great Britain in the field of commercial rivalry and maritime supremacy.  Following Henry Adams’ argument Russell, on May 9, brought to the attention of France a proposal for a joint request on the American belligerents to respect the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris, and received an acquiescent reply.  After some further exchanges of proposed terms of instructions to the British and French Ministers at Washington, Russell, on May 18, sent a despatch to Lyons with instructions for his action.  On this same day Russell, in his first interview with Adams, “before these despatches [to Lyons] could have left the Foreign Office,” and replying to Adams’ proposal to negotiate on the Declaration of Paris as a whole—­that is to say, on all four articles—­intimated that instructions had already gone to Lyons, with directions to assent to any modification of the article on privateering that the United States might desire.  Adams understood Russell to prefer that the negotiation (for such Adams thought it was to be) should take place in Washington, and did not press the matter.