“No treachery has been at work to produce the disruption, and the principles avowed are such as to command the sympathies of every free and enlightened people.  Such are the widely different auspices under which the two rival Republics start into existence.  But mankind will not ultimately judge these things by sympathies and antipathies; they will be greatly swayed by their own interest, and the two Republics must be weighed, not by their professions or their previous history, but by the conduct they pursue and the position they maintain among the Powers of the earth.  Their internal institutions are their own affair; their financial and political arrangements are emphatically ours.  Brazil is a slave-holding Empire, but by its good faith and good conduct it has contrived to establish for itself a place in the hierarchy of nations far superior to that of many Powers which are free from this domestic contamination.  If the Northern Confederacy of America evinces a determination to act in a narrow, exclusive, and unsocial spirit, while its Southern competitor extends the hand of good fellowship to all mankind, with the exception of its own bondsmen, we must not be surprised to see the North, in spite of the goodness of its cause and the great negative merit of the absence of Slavery, sink into a secondary position, and lose the sympathy and regard of mankind.”

This to Northern view, was a sad relapse from that high moral tone earlier addressed to the South notifying slave-holders that England would not “stultify the policy of half a century for the sake of an extended cotton trade[79].”

The Economist, with more consistency, still reported the violence and recklessness of the South, yet in logical argument proved to its own satisfaction the impossibility of Northern reconquest, and urged a peaceful separation[80].  The Spectator, even though pro-Northern, had at first small hope of reunion by force, and offered consolation in the thought that there would still remain a United States of America “strong, powerful and free; all the stronger for the loss of the Black South[81].”  In short from all quarters the public press, whatever its sympathy, united in decrying war as a useless effort doomed to failure if undertaken in the hope of restoring the Union.  Such public opinion, however, was not necessarily governmental opinion.  The latter was indeed more slow to make up its mind and more considerate in expressing itself.  When it became clear that in all probability the North would fight, there was still no conception, any more than in the United States itself, of the duration and intensity of the conflict.  Indeed, Russell yet hoped, as late as the end of January, that no protracted war would occur.  Nevertheless he was compelled to face the situation in its relation to British commerce.