The interview with Adams, so Palmerston wrote to Delane on the same day, November 12, was reassuring: 

     “MY DEAR DELANE,

“I have seen Adams to-day, and he assures me that the American paddle-wheel was sent to intercept the Nashville if found in these seas, but not to meddle with any ship under a foreign flag.  He said he had seen the commander, and had advised him to go straight home; and he believed the steamer to be now on her way back to the United States.  This is a very satisfactory explanation.

     Yours sincerely,

     PALMERSTON[408].”

In fact, neither Adams’ diary nor his report to Seward recorded quite the same statement as that here attributed to him by Palmerston, and this became later, but fortunately after the question of the Trent had passed off the stage, a matter of minor dispute.  Adams’ own statement was that he had told Palmerston the James Adger was seeking to intercept the Nashville and “had no instruction” to interfere with a British Packet—­which is not the same as saying that she already had instructions “not to meddle with any ship under a foreign flag[409].”  But in any case, it would appear that the British Government had been warned by its legal advisers that if that which actually happened in the case of the Trent should occur, English practice, if followed, would compel acquiescence in it[410].  This is not to say that a first legal advice thus given on a problematical case necessarily bound the Government to a fixed line of action, but that the opinion of the Government was one of “no help for it” if the case should actually arise is shown by the instructions to Lyons and by his reaction.  On November 16, Hammond wrote to Lyons stating the opinion of the Law Officers that “we could do nothing to save the Packet being interfered with outside our three miles; so Lord Palmerston sent for Adams, who assured him that the American [the James Adger] had no instructions to meddle with any ship under English colours ... that her orders were not to endeavour to take Mason and Slidell out of any ship under foreign colours[411].”  On receipt of this letter subsequent to the actual seizure of the envoys, Lyons hardly knew what to expect.  He reported Hammond’s account to Admiral Milne, writing that the legal opinion was that “Nothing could be done to save the Packet’s being interfered with outside of the Marine league from the British Coast”; but he added, “I am not informed that the Law Officers decided that Mason and Slidell might be taken out of the Packet, but only that we could not prevent the Packet’s being interfered with,” thus previsioning that shift in British legal opinion which was to come after the event.  Meanwhile Lyons was so uncertain as to what his instructions would be that he thought he “ought to maintain the greatest reserve here on the matter of the Trent[412].”