When presenting a cause in Parliament its advocates should agree on a line of argument.  The whole theory of this movement on the blockade was that it was wise to minimize the question of recognition, and Gregory had laboured to prove that this was not related to a refusal longer to recognize the blockade.  But Bentinck, the second speaker for the motion, promptly undid him for he unhappily admitted that recognition and blockade questions were so closely interwoven that they could not be considered separately.  This was promptly seized upon by Forster, who led in opposition.  Forster’s main argument, however, was a very able tearing to pieces of Gregory’s figures, showing that nearly all the alleged blockade runners were in reality merely small coasting steamers, which, by use of shallow inner channels, could creep along the shore and then make a dash for the West Indies.  The effectiveness of the blockade of main ports for ocean-going vessels carrying bulky cargoes was proved, he declared, by the price of raw cotton in England, where it was 100 per cent. greater than in the South, and of salt in Charleston, where the importer could make a profit of 1,000 per cent.  To raise the blockade, he argued, would be a direct violation by Britain of her neutrality.  The real reason for this motion was not the ineffectiveness of the blockade, but the effectiveness, and the real object an English object, not a Southern one.  Gregory was taunted for changing a motion to recognize the Confederacy into the present one because he knew the former would fail while the present motion was deceitfully intended to secure the same end.  Forster strongly approved the conduct of the Government in preserving strict neutrality, alleging that any other conduct would have meant “a war in which she [England] would have had to fight for slavery against her kinsmen.”

Gregory’s speech was cautious and attempted to preserve a judicial tone of argument on fact.  Forster’s reads like that of one who knows his cause already won.  Gregory’s had no fire in it and was characterized by Henry Adams, an interested auditor, as “listened to as you would listen to a funeral eulogy."...  “The blockade is now universally acknowledged to be unobjectionable[573].”  This estimate is borne out by the speech for the Government by the Solicitor-General, who maintained the effectiveness of the blockade and who answered Gregory’s argument that recognition was not in question by stating that to refuse longer to recognize the blockade would result in a situation of “armed neutrality”—­that is of “unproclaimed war.”  He pictured the disgust of Europe if England should enter upon such a war in alliance “with a country ... which is still one of the last strongholds of slavery”—­an admission made in the fervour of debate that was dangerous as tending to tie the Government’s hands in the future, but which was, no doubt, merely a personal and carelessly ventured view, not a governmentally