and San Francisco, the rumour had become a conviction and the silence of Russian naval officers when banqueted and toasted was regarded as discreet confirmation.  There was no truth in the rumour, but already in March curious surmises were being made even in England, as to Russian intentions, though there is no evidence that the Government was at all concerned.  The truth was that the Russian fleet had been ordered to sea as a precaution against easy destruction in Baltic waters, in case the difficulties developing in relation to Poland should lead to war with France and England[991].

In England, among the people rather than in governmental England, a feeling was beginning to manifest itself that the Ministry had been lax in regard to the Alabama, and as news of her successes was received this feeling was given voice.  Liverpool, at first almost wholly on the side of the Lairds and of Southern ship-building, became doubtful by the very ease with which the Alabama destroyed Northern ships.  Liverpool merchants looked ahead and saw that their interests might, after all, be directly opposed to those of the ship-builders.  Meetings were held and the matter discussed.  In February, 1863, such a meeting at Plaistow, attended by the gentry of the neighbourhood, but chiefly by working men, especially by dock labourers and by men from the ship-building yards at Blackwall, resolved that “the Chairman be requested to write to the Prime Minister of our Queen, earnestly entreating him to put in force, with utmost vigilance, the law of England against such ships as the Alabama[992].”  Such expressions were not as yet widespread, nor did the leading papers, up to April, indulge in much discussion, but British doubt was developing[993].

Unquestionably, Russell himself was experiencing a renewed doubt as to Britain’s neutral duty.  On March 23, he made a speech in Parliament which Adams reported as “the most satisfactory of all the speeches he has made since I have been at this post[994].”  On March 26, came the presentation by Adams of Seward’s instruction of which Russell wrote to Lyons as made in no unfriendly tone and as a result of which Adams wrote:  “The conclusion which I draw ... is, that the Government is really better disposed to exertion, and feels itself better sustained for action by the popular sentiment than ever before[995].”  Russell told Adams that he had received a note from Palmerston “expressing his approbation of every word” of his speech three days before.  In a portion of the despatch to Seward, not printed in the Diplomatic Correspondence, Adams advised against the issue of privateers, writing, “In the present favourable state of popular mind, it scarcely seems advisable to run the risk of changing the current in Great Britain by the presentation of a new issue which might rally all national pride against us as was done in the Trent case[996].”  That Russell was indeed thinking of definite action is foreshadowed by the advice he gave to Palmerston on March 27, as to the latter’s language in the debate scheduled for that day on the Foreign Enlistment Act.  Russell wrote, referring to the interview with Adams: