s stating the opinion of the Law Officers that
"we could do nothing to save the Packet being interfered with outside
our three miles; so Lord Palmerston sent for Adams, who assured him that
the American [the _James Adger_] had no instructions to meddle with any
ship under English colours ... that her orders were not to endeavour to
take Mason and Slidell out of any ship under foreign colours[411]." On
receipt of this letter subsequent to the actual seizure of the envoys,
Lyons hardly knew what to expect. He reported Hammond's account to
Admiral Milne, writing that the legal opinion was that "Nothing could be
done to save the Packet's being interfered with outside of the Marine
league from the British Coast"; but he added, "I am not informed that
the Law Officers decided that Mason and Slidell might be taken out of
the Packet, but only that we could not prevent the Packet's being
interfered with," thus previsioning that shift in British legal opinion
which was to come _after_ the event. Meanwhile Lyons was so uncertain as
to what his instructions would be that he thought he "ought to maintain
the greatest reserve here on the matter of the _Trent_[412]."

This British anxiety and the efforts to prevent a dangerous complication
occurred after the envoys had been seized but some two weeks before that
fact was known in London. "Adams," wrote Russell, "says it was all a
false alarm, and wonders at our susceptibility and exaggerated
notions[413]." But Russell was not equally convinced with Adams that the
North, especially Seward, was so eager for continued British
neutrality, and when, on November 27, the news of Captain Wilkes' action
was received, Russell and many others in the Cabinet saw in it a
continuation of unfriendly Northern policy now culminating in a direct
affront. Argyll, the most avowed friend of the North in the Cabinet, was
stirred at first to keen resentment, writing "of this wretched piece of
American folly.... I am all against submitting to any clean breach of
International Law, such as I can hardly doubt this has been[414]." The
Law Officers now held that "Captain Wilkes had undertaken to pass upon
the issue of a violation of neutrality on the spot, instead of sending
the _Trent_ as a prize into port for judicial adjudication[415]." This
was still later further expanded by an opinion that the envoys could not
be considered as contraband, and thus subject to capture nor the _Trent_
as having violated neutral