American Republic by the establishment of
a Southern or secession state was an accomplished fact. Strange to
say, this declaration, most unwarrantable to be made by a minister
of the crown with no authority other than his own, was not due to
any feeling of partizanship for the South or hostility to the
North. The fortunes of the South were at their zenith. Many who
wished well to the Northern cause despaired of its success. The
friends of the North in England were beginning to advise that it
should give way, for the avoidance of further bloodshed and
greater calamity. I weakly supposed that the time had come when
respectful suggestions of this kind, founded on the necessity of
the case, were required by a spirit of that friendship which, in
so many contingencies of life, has to offer sound recommendations
with a knowledge that they will not be popular. Not only was this
a misjudgment of the case, but even if it had been otherwise, I
was not the person to make the declaration. I really, though most
strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all
America to recognise that the struggle was virtually at an end. I
was not one of those who on the ground of British interests
desired a division of the American Union. My view was distinctly
opposite. I thought that while the Union continued it never could
exercise any dangerous pressure upon Canada to estrange it from
the empire--our honour, as I thought, rather than our interest
forbidding its surrender. But were the Union split, the North, no
longer checked by the jealousies of slave-power, would seek a
partial compensation for its loss in annexing, or trying to annex,
British North America. Lord Palmerston desired the severance as a
diminution of a dangerous power, but prudently held his tongue.

That my opinion was founded upon a false estimate of the facts was
the very least part of my fault. I did not perceive the gross
impropriety of such an utterance from a cabinet minister, of a
power allied in blood and language, and bound to loyal neutrality;
the case being further exaggerated by the fact that we were
already, so to speak, under indictment before the world for not
(as was alleged) having strictly enforced the laws of neutrality
in the matter of the cruisers. My offence was indeed only a
mistake, but one of incre