that the Bill would not be made operative.  Indeed on July 24 Russell told Lyons that no final instruction of protest would be sent him until the President actually issued a proclamation[519].  Yet in spite of being fairly well assured that there was no danger in the “Southern Ports Bill,” Russell did send the instruction of August 8, still distinctly “vigorous” in tone, though with no threat of “reprisals.”  His reason for doing so is difficult to understand.  Certainly he was hardly serious in arguing to Thouvenel that a stiff instruction would strengthen the hands of the “moderate section” of the American Cabinet[520], or else he strangely misjudged American temperament.  Probably a greater reason was his wish to be able to print a Parliamentary Paper indicating the watchful care he was exercising in guarding British interests.

Before Russell’s instruction could reach America Seward had voluntarily reassured Lyons as to American intentions.  Lyons reported this, privately, on July 20[521], but on the same day also reported, officially, that two days earlier, that is on the eighteenth, he and Mercier had discussed the “Southern Ports” Bill and that as a result Mercier had then gone, that same day, to Seward to state that France must regard such a measure as merely a paper blockade[522].  “We were not very sanguine of success,” wrote Lyons, but Seward “had listened to him [Mercier] with calmness,” and personally seemed disinclined to issue the required Proclamation.  This despatch, making it appear that England and France were in close harmony and that Lyons and Mercier were having a difficult time at Washington was printed, later, in the Parliamentary Papers.  It was received by Russell on August 5, and in spite of the reassurances of Lyons’ private letter (naturally not for printing) presumably received in the same mail with the official despatch, it furnished the basis of his “strong” instruction of August 8.

At Washington also there were indications of an effort to prepare a good case for the British public and Parliament.  July 23, so Lyons wrote privately, Seward had prevented the issue of the “Southern Ports” Proclamation[523], and on the next day he was shown by Seward, confidentially, an instruction to Adams and other Ministers abroad in which was maintained the right to close the ports by proclamation, but stating the Government’s decision not to exercise the right.  Lyons believed this was the end of the matter[524].  Yet on August 12, he presented himself formally at the Department of State and stated that he had instructions to declare that “Her Majesty’s Government would consider a decree closing the ports of the South actually in possession of the insurgent or Confederate States as null and void, and that they would not submit to measures taken on the high seas in pursuance of such decree."...  “Mr. Seward thanked me for the consideration I had shown; and begged me to confine myself for the present to the verbal announcement I had just made.  He said it would be difficult for me to draw up a written communication which would not have the air of a threat.”  To this Lyons agreed[525].