ideration 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