“.... it was deserving of grave consideration whether great caution was not to be used in adopting any course that might, even in the most indirect way, have an effect to encourage the hopes of the disaffected in America....  It was in this view that I must be permitted to express the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the Queen’s proclamation, which at once raised the insurgents to the level of a belligerent State, and still more the language used in regard to it by Her Majesty’s ministers in both houses of Parliament before and since.  Whatever might be the design, there could be no shadow of doubt that the effect of these events had been to encourage the friends of the disaffected here.  The tone of the press and of private opinion indicated it strongly.”

Russell’s answer was that Adams was placing more stress on recent events than they deserved.  The Government had taken the advice of the Law Officers and as a result had concluded that “as a question merely of fact, a war existed....  Under such circumstances

it seemed scarcely possible to avoid speaking of this in the technical sense as justum bellum, that is, a war of two sides, without in any way implying an opinion of its justice, as well as to withhold an endeavour, so far as possible, to bring the management of it within the rules of modern civilized warfare.  This was all that was contemplated by the Queen’s proclamation.  It was designed to show the purport of existing laws, and to explain to British subjects their liabilities in case they should engage in the war.”

To this Adams answered “... that under other circumstances

I should be very ready to give my cheerful assent to this view of his lordship’s.  But I must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed, at least to my mind, a little more rapid than was absolutely called for by the occasion....  And furthermore, it pronounced the insurgents to be a belligerent State before they had ever shown their capacity to maintain any kind of warfare whatever, except within one of their own harbours, and under every possible advantage.  It considered them a marine power before they had ever exhibited a single privateer on the ocean....  The rule was very clear, that whenever it became apparent that any organized form of society had advanced so far as to prove its power to defend and protect itself against the assaults of enemies, and at the same time to manifest a capacity to maintain binding relations with foreign nations, then a measure of recognition could not be justly objected to on any side.  The case was very different when such an interference should take place, prior to the establishment of the proof required, as to bring about a result which would not probably have happened but for that external agency.”

This representation by the American Minister, thus early made, contains the whole argument advanced against