only; with expenses and bounty paid by
United States recruiting agents--were poured out of British territory
each month.

When France sent her circular to England and Russia, suggesting that
the time had come for mediation, the former summarily rejected the
proposition. Besides, England's treatment of the southern commissioners
was coldly neglectful; and--from the beginning to the end of the
Confederacy, the sole aid she received from England was personal
sympathy in isolated instances. But British contractors and traders had
tacit governmental permission to build ships for the rebels, or to sell
them arms and supplies, at their own risks. And, spite of these
well-known facts, northern buncombe never tired of assailing "the rebel
sympathies" of England!

With somewhat of race sympathy between the two peoples, the French
emperor's movements to feel the pulse of Europe, from time to time, on
the question of mediation, kept up the popular delusion at the South.
This was shared, to a certain extent, even by her government; and Mr.
Slidell's highly-colored despatches would refan the embers of hope into
a glow. But while Napoleon, the Little, may have had the subtlest head
in Europe, he doubtless had the hardest; and the feeble handling by the
southern commissioner, of that edged-tool, diplomacy, could have
aroused only amusement in those subordinate officials, whom alone he
reached.

The real policy of France was doubtless, from the beginning, as fixed
as was that of England; and though she may have hesitated, for a time,
at the tempting bait offered--monopoly of southern cotton and
tobacco--the reasons coercing that policy were too strong to let her
swallow it at last.

For the rest, Russia had always openly sympathized with the North; and
other European nations had very vague notions of the merits of the
struggle; less interest in its termination; and least of all, sympathy
with what to them was mere rebellion.

And this true condition of foreign affairs, the Confederate State
Department did know, in great part; should have known in detail; and
owed it to the people to explain and promulgate. But for some occult
reason, Mr. Benjamin refused to view the European landscape, except
through the Claude Lorrain glass which Mr. Slidell persistently held up
before him. The expose of Mr. Yancey, the few sturdy truths Mr. Mason
later told; and the detailed resume sent by Mr. DeLeon and printed in
the North--all these were ign