Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/175

 Our American Civil War. 163

it would be both unnecessary and impolitic for the Government to give undue offence or encouragement to either of the com- batants."

Elsewhere he says :

"Earl Russell, as the Foreign Secretary, was necessarily the active member of the Cabinet in carrying out its neutral policy, and is not to be held individually responsible for what either Federal or Confederate may have thought objectionable in that policy. In saying that his sympathies were with the North, I merely give currency to the impression commonly held by the representatives of the Confederate States in England during the war, and I can give no other grounds for the impression than the opinion to the same effect, which was often and I may say unanimously expressed by those politicians and other frequent- ers of the London clubs and London society, with whom we were brought in contact. * * * The duty of replying to the long argumentative dispatches of Mr. Adams and the perusal of the numerous consular affidavits which accompanied them, must have been a very serious labor, and it is only fair to re- member there was no recognized Confederate agent who could address him officially and freely, and thus modify the effect of the statements of the other side, or set before him the reasons for non-interference. The radical element within the Liberal party, if not actually within the Cabinet, was only a strong and active force ,always exercised to check the Government in any apparent concession to the South, and ever striving to nullify the benefit which the Confederate States might obtain from their recognized position as belligerents."

The conclusion formed by Captain Bullock upon the English situation was that the leaning towards either side in the Ameri- can Civil War was not due to any well defined party tendencies in Great Britain. He says again :

"1 have the strongest possible reasons for believing that if the conservative party had been in power, their policy would have been strictly neutral, and the Confederate Government would not