that appeared throughout the whole war, Smith appealed to old Whig ideas of political liberty, attacked the aristocracy and the Church of England, and attempted to make the Radicals of England feel that the Northern cause was their cause.  Printing the constitution and address of the Association, with the list of signers, he characterized the movement as fostered by “men of title and family,” with “a good sprinkling of clergymen,” and as having for its object the plunging of Great Britain into war with the North[1148].

It is significant, in view of Mason Jones’ taunt to the Southern Independence Association at Manchester, that The Index, from the end of March to August, 1864, was unable to report a single Southern public meeting.  The London Association, having completed its top-heavy organization, was content with that act and showed no life.  The first move by the Association was planned to be made in connection with the Alexandra case when, as was expected, the Exchequer Court should render a decision against the Government’s right to detain her.  On January 8, 1864, Lindsay wrote to Mason that he had arranged for the public launching of the Association “next week,” that he had again seen the Chief Baron who assured him the Court would decide “that the Government is entirely wrong”: 

“I told him that if the judgment was clear, and if the Government persisted in proceeding further, that our Association (which he was pleased to learn had been formed) would take up the matter in Parliament and out of it, for if we had no right to seize these ships, it was most unjust that we should detain them by raising legal quibbles for the purpose of keeping them here till the time arrived when the South might not require them.  I think public opinion will go with us on this point, for John Bull—­with all his failings—­loves fair play[1149].”

It is apparent from the language used by Lindsay that he was thinking of the Laird Rams and other ships fully as much as of the Alexandra[1150], and hoped much from an attack on the Government’s policy in detaining Southern vessels.  Earl Russell was to be made to bear the brunt of this attack on the reassembling of Parliament.  In an Index editorial, Adams was pictured as having driven Russell into a corner by “threats which would not have been endured for an hour by a Pitt or a Canning”; the Foreign Secretary as invariably yielding to the “acknowledged mastery of the Yankee Minister”: 

“Mr. Adams’ pretensions are extravagant, his logic is blundering, his threats laughable; but he has hit his mark.  We can trace his influence in the detention of the Alexandra and the protracted judicial proceedings which have arisen out of it; in the sudden raid upon the rams at Birkenhead; in the announced intention of the Government to alter the Foreign Enlistment Act of this country in accordance with the views of the United States Cabinet.  When one knows