He said, that perhaps, as I was of opinion that the crisis was at hand, it might be better to wait until it had arrived.  I told him that my opinion was that the crisis had passed, at least so far as that the war of invasion would end with the campaign[1190].”

Reporting the interview to Slidell in much the same language, Mason wrote: 

“My own impressions derived from the whole interview are, that [while] P. is as well satisfied as I am, that the separation of the States is final and the independence of the South an accomplished fact, the Ministry fears to move under the menaces of the North[1191].”

Slidell’s comment was bitter: 

“I am very much obliged for your account of your interview with Lord Palmerston.  It resulted very much as I had anticipated excepting that his Lordship appears to have said even less than I had supposed he would.  However, the time has now arrived when it is comparatively of very little importance what Queen or Emperor may say or think about us.  A plague, I say, on both your Houses[1192].”

Slidell’s opinion from this time on was, indeed, that the South had nothing to expect from Europe until the North itself should acknowledge the independence of the Confederacy.  July 21, The Index expressed much the same view and was equally bitter.  It quoted an item in the Morning Herald of July 16, to the effect that Mason had secured an interview with Palmerston and that “the meeting was satisfactory to all parties”: 

“The withdrawal of Mr. Lindsay’s motion was, it is said, the result of that interview, the Premier having given a sort of implied promise to support it at a more opportune moment; that is to say, when Grant and Sherman have been defeated, and the Confederacy stand in no need of recognition.”

In the same issue The Index described a deputation of clergymen, noblemen, Members of Parliament “and other distinguished and influential gentlemen” who had waited upon Palmerston to urge mediation toward a cessation of hostilities in America.  Thus at last the joint project of the Southern Independence Association and of the Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America had been put in execution after the political storm had passed and not before—­when the deputation might have had some influence.  But the fact was that no deputation, unless a purely party one, could have been collected before the conclusion of the Danish crisis.  When finally assembled it “had no party complexion,” and the smiling readiness with which it received Palmerston’s jocular reply indicating that Britain’s safest policy was to keep strictly to neutrality is evidence that even the deputation itself though harassed by Lindsay and others into making this demonstration, was quite content to let well enough alone.  Not so The Index which sneered at the childishness of Palmerston: