“Now apart altogether from you seeing Lord Palmerston, I must earnestly entreat you to come here.  Unless you are much wanted in Paris, your visit here, as a private gentleman, can do no harm, and may, at the present moment, be of great service to your country[1180].”

Palmerston’s willingness to listen to suggestions of what would have amounted to a complete face-about of British policy on America, his “gratification” that Lindsay intended to postpone the parliamentary motion, his friendly courtesy to a man whom he had but recently rebuked for a meddlesome “amateur diplomacy,” can be interpreted in no other light than an evidence of a desire to prevent Southern friends from joining in the attack, daily becoming more dangerous, on the Government’s Danish policy.  How much of this Lindsay understood is not clear; on the face of his letters to Mason he would seem to have been hoodwinked, but the more reasonable supposition is, perhaps, that much was hoped from the governmental necessity of not alienating supporters.  The Danish situation was to be used, but without an open threat.  In addition the tone of the public press, for some time gloomy over Southern prospects, was now restored to the point of confidence and in this the Times was again leading[1181].  The Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America quickly issued another circular letter inviting Members of Parliament to join in a deputation to call on Palmerston to urge action on the lines of Lindsay’s first overture.  Such a deputation would represent “more than 5,000 members and the feeling of probably more than twenty millions of people.”  It should not be a deputation “of parties” but representative of all groups in Parliament: 

“The Society has reason to believe that the Premier is disposed to look favourably upon the attempt here contemplated and that the weight of an influential deputation would strengthen his hands[1182].”

This proposal from the Society was now lagging behind Lindsay’s later objective—­namely, direct recognition.  That this was felt to be unfortunate is shown by a letter from Tremlett, Honorary Secretary of the Society, to Mason.  He wrote that the Southern Independence Association, finally stirred by Lindsay’s insistence, had agreed to join the Society in a representation to Palmerston but had favoured some specific statement on recognition.  Palmerston had sent word that he favoured the Society’s resolution but not that of the Association, and as a result the joint letter of the two organizations would be on the mild lines of Lindsay’s original motion: