en though official instructions
were not sent Lyons until the 6th.]

[Footnote 159: F.O., Am., Vol. 780, No. 50. Bunch to Russell, April 19,
1861.]

[Footnote 160: F.O., Am., 789, Monson to Alston, received May 21.]

[Footnote 161: F.O., Am., 763, No. 197, Lyons to Russell, received May
26. The full statement is:

"To an Englishman, sincerely interested in the welfare of
this country, the present state of things is peculiarly
painful. Abhorrence of slavery, respect for law, more
complete community of race and language, enlist his
sympathies on the side of the North. On the other hand, he
cannot but reflect that any encouragement to the predominant
war feeling in the North cannot but be injurious to both
sections of the country. The prosecution of the war can lead
only to the exhaustion of the North by an expenditure of life
and money on an enterprise in which success and failure would
be alike disastrous. It must tend to the utter devastation of
the South. It would at all events occasion a suspension of
Southern cultivation which would be calamitous even more to
England than to the Northern States themselves."

[Footnote 162: Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXII, p. 1763.]

[Footnote 163: _Ibid._, pp. 1830-34. In the general discussion in the
Lords there appeared disagreement as to the status of privateering.
Granville, Derby, and Brougham, spoke of it as piracy. Earl Hardwicke
thought privateering justifiable. The general tone of the debate, though
only on this matter of international practice, was favourable to
the North.]

[Footnote 164: For example see Hertslet, _Map of Europe by Treaty_, Vol.
I, p. 698, for the Proclamation issued in 1813 during the
Spanish-American colonial revolutions.]

[Footnote 165: Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXII, pp. 2077-2088.]

[Footnote 166: _Parliamentary Papers_, 1862, _Lords_, Vol. XXV,
"Correspondence on Civil War in the United States." No. 35. Russell to
Lyons, May 15, 1861. Another reason for Lyons' precaution was that while
his French colleague, Mercier, had been instructed to support the
British Proclamation, no official French Proclamation was issued until
June 10, and Lyons, while he trusted Mercier, felt that this French
delay needed some explanation. Mercier told Seward, unofficially, of his
instructions and even left a copy of them, but at Seward's request made
no official communication. Lyons, later, followed t