been informed that a blockade of Southern ports
would not be recognized unless effective, and whether there would be
acquiescence in the belligerent right of the South to issue letters of
marque and reprisal[156]. Russell replied that Lincoln had _not_ been
informed that a blockade must be effective to be respected since the
Washington Government did not need to be told of an international rule
which it had itself long proclaimed. As to the second point, he now
announced what heretofore had not been clearly stated, that Southern
privateers could not be regarded by Great Britain as pirates, for if so
regarded Britain would herself have to treat them as pirates and would
thus be unneutral. This was in fact, in spite of Northern bitter
accusations that Britain was exhibiting governmental sympathy with the
South by her tolerance of the plan of Southern privateering, an
inescapable conclusion. Russell added, however, that the matter of
privateering involved some new questions under the Declaration of Paris
upon which the Government had not yet decided what stand to take[157].
It was on this same day, in fact, that Russell had instructed Cowley to
take up with France the question of the Declaration of Paris[158],
Privateering and blockade, declared in America months before there was
any possibility of putting them into effect, and months before there
were any military operations in the field, forced this rapid European
action, especially the action of Great Britain, which, more than any
other European nation, feared belligerent interference with her carrying
and export trade. How was the British Government to know that Davis
would not bend every energy in sending out privateers, and Lincoln to
establish a blockade? The respective declarations of Davis and Lincoln
were the _first_ evidences offered of belligerent status. It was
reasonable to assume that here would come the first energetic efforts of
the belligerents. Nor was British governmental intelligence sufficiently
informed to be aware that Davis, in fact, controlled few ships that
could be fitted out as privateers, or that two-thirds of the Northern
navy was at the moment widely scattered in foreign seas, making
impossible a prompt blockade.

To the British view the immediate danger to its commercial interests lay
in this announced maritime war, and it felt the necessity of defining
its neutral position with speed. The underlying fact of the fixity of
Southern determin