even an accompanying note, that had been dropped
into the letter-box on Saturday evening. To all appearance, every letter
and every remonstrance and every affidavit, as fast as it arrived from
Liverpool, had been piled in a pigeon-hole till four or five o'clock on
Saturday, when the Minister, on taking his own departure for the
country, had directed a clerk to tie up the whole heap and carry it to
Doctors' Commons.

'The facts are, that in the earlier stage of that business, before July
23, the Attorney- and Solicitor-General only were consulted, and Sir
John Harding knew nothing at all about it. No part of the statement said
by Mr. Mozley to have been made to him could possibly be true; because
during the whole time in question Sir John Harding was under care for
unsoundness of mind, from which he never even partially recovered, and
which prevented him from attending to any kind of business, or going
into court, or to his chambers, or to his country house. He was in that
condition on July 23, 1862 (Wednesday, not Saturday) when the
depositions on which the question of the detention of the "Alabama"
turned were received at the Foreign Office. Lord Russell, not knowing
that he was ill, and thinking it desirable, from the importance of the
matter, to have the opinion of all the three Law Officers (of whom the
Queen's Advocate was then senior in rank), sent them on the same day,
with the usual covering letter, for that opinion; and they must have
been delivered by the messenger, in the ordinary course, at Sir John
Harding's house or chambers. There they remained till, the delay causing
inquiry, they were recovered and sent to the Attorney-General, who
received them on Monday, the 28th, and lost no time in holding a
consultation with the Solicitor-General. Their opinion, advising that
the ship should be stopped, was in Lord Russell's hands early the next
morning; and he sent an order by telegraph to Liverpool to stop her; but
before it could be executed she had gone to sea.

'Some of the facts relating to Sir John Harding's illness remained,
until lately, in more or less obscurity, and Mr. Mozley's was not the
only erroneous version of them which got abroad. One such version having
been mentioned, as if authentic, in a debate in the House of Commons on
March 17, 1893, I wrote to the "Times" to correct it; and in
confirmation of my statement the gentleman who had been Sir John
Harding's medical attendant in July 1862 came f