to secure a British withdrawal of belligerent rights to the South, to be followed by a bold Northern defiance to France if she objected[1156].  Adams did discuss the project with Russell but easily agreed to postpone consideration of it and in this Seward quietly acquiesced[1157].  Apparently this was less a matured plan than a “feeler,” put out to sound British attitude and to learn, if possible, whether the tie previously binding England and France in their joint policy toward America was still strong.  Certainly at this same time Seward was making it plain to Lyons that while opposed to current Congressional expressions of antagonism to Napoleon’s Mexican policy, he was himself in favour, once the Civil War was ended, of helping the republican Juarez drive the French from Mexico[1158].

For nearly three years Russell, like nearly all Englishmen, had held a firm belief that the South could not be conquered and that ultimately the North must accept the bitter pill of Southern independence.  Now he began to doubt, yet still held to the theory that even if conquered the South would never yield peaceful obedience to the Federal Government.  As a reasoning and reasonable statesman he wished that the North could be made to see this.

“...  It is a pity,” he wrote to Lyons, “the Federals think it worth their while to go on with the war.  The obedience they are ever likely to obtain from the South will not be quiet or lasting, and they must spend much money and blood to get it.  If they can obtain the right bank of the Mississippi, and New Orleans, they might as well leave to the Confederates Charleston and Savannah[1159].”

This was but private speculation with no intention of urging it upon the United States.  Yet it indicated a change in the view held as to the warlike power of the North.  Similarly the Quarterly Review, long confident of Southern success and still prophesying it, was acknowledging that “the unholy [Northern] dream of universal empire” must first have passed[1160].  Throughout these spring months of 1864, Lyons continued to dwell upon the now thoroughly developed readiness of the United States for a foreign war and urged the sending of a military expert to report on American preparations[1161].  He was disturbed by the arrogance manifested by various members of Lincoln’s Cabinet, especially by Welles, Secretary of the Navy, with whom Seward, so Lyons wrote, often had difficulty in demonstrating the unfortunate diplomatic bearing of the acts of naval officers.  Seward was as anxious as was Lyons to avoid irritating incidents, “but he is not as much listened to as he ought to be by his colleagues in the War and Navy Departments[1162].”