When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed, but my feelings were altered.  I seemed to acknowledge to myself that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary that I should regard the question as it existed between England and the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South.  I had always felt that as regarded the action of our government we had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the justice of the case—­promising to abstain from all interference and keeping that promise faithfully.  It had been quite clear to me that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for special favor on their side.  Everything that England did was wrong.  If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of rifles to some Southern port, that act to Northern eyes was an act of English interference—­of favor shown to the South by England as a nation; but twenty shiploads of rifles sent from England to the North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit.  The “James Adger,” a Northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton as a matter of course.  There was no blame to England for that.  But the Nashville, belonging to the Confederates, should not have been allowed into English waters.  It was useless to speak of neutrality.  No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have any mutual right.  The South had no claim in his eyes as a belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war between him and his enemy the South.  The North was learning to hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to espouse the cause of my own country.  Then Slidell and Mason were arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the country.  “There is no danger.  We are quite right,” the lawyers said.  “There are Vattel, and Puffendorff, and Stowell, and Phillimore, and Wheaton,” said the ladies.  “Ambassadors are contraband all the world over—­more so than gunpowder; and if taken in a neutral bottom,” etc.  I wonder why ships are always called bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality?  But neither the lawyers nor the ladies convinced me.  I know that there are matters which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in accordance with the bias of the reader’s mind.  Such laws are made to be strained any way.  I knew how it would be.  All the legal acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to be right.  The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove it to be wrong out of Yattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and Wheaton.