r.

The manner of proceeding on the part of the British Government, and
the arguments which have been put forward in justification of its
pro-slavery policy, are serious aggravations of its original offence.
The first declaration of Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, was to the effect that England would not show any favor
to the Secessionists. His subordinate (Lord Wodehouse, Under-Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs) was even more emphatic than his chief in
speaking to the same purpose. Suddenly, the Foreign Secretary turned
about, with a facility and promptness for which men had not been
prepared even by his rapid changes on the questions of the Russian War
and Italian Nationality, and said that the Southern Confederacy would be
recognized as a belligerent, which is, to all intents and purposes of a
practical character, the same thing as acknowledging it to be a nation.
What was the cause of this sudden change? We have only to look at the
dates of the events that, followed the fall of Fort Sumter to find an
answer. Lord John Russell believed that the capital of the United States
had fallen into the hands of the rebels, and he was anxious to please
the masters of the cotton-fields by showing them that he had not waited
to hear of their victory to behold their virtues. There was some excuse
for his belief that the raid upon Washington had succeeded; for down to
the 27th of April there was but too much reason for supposing that that
city was in serious danger of becoming the prey of the Confederates,
who might have taken it, if they had been half as forward in their
preparations for war as they were supposed to have been by the chiefs of
the British Government. But this belief that the rebels had delivered
an effective blow at the Union only places the meanness of Lord John
Russell and his associates in a worse light than we could view it in,
if they had acted solely upon principle. Their political opinions had
pledged them to oppose the principles of the Secessionists; but they
were in a hurry to give all the support they could to those principles,
because they had come to the conclusion that victory was to be with the
Secessionists. They desired to appropriate the merit of being the first
of European statesmen to welcome the destroyers of the American Union
into the family of nations. Had the event justified their expectations,
they would have gained much by their action, and would have enjoye