Page:The Education of Henry Adams (1907).djvu/167

 calling "the conduct" of the rebel agents "suspicious" when no one else in Europe or America felt any suspicion about it, because the whole question turned not on the rams but on the technical scope of the Foreign Enlistment Act, "that I have thought it necessary to direct that they should be detained," not, of course, under the Statute, but on the ground urged by the American Minister, of international obligation above the Statute. "The Solicitor General has been consulted and concurs in the measure as one of policy though not of strict law. We shall thus test the law, and, if we have to pay damages, we have satisfied the opinion which prevails here as well as in America that that kind of neutral hostility should not be allowed to go on without some attempt to stop it."

For naïveté that would be unusual in an unpaid attache of Legation, this sudden leap from his own to his opponent's ground, after two years and a half of dogged resistance, might have roused Palmerston to inhuman scorn, but instead of derision, well earned by Russell's old attacks on himself, Palmerston met the appeal with wonderful loyalty. "On consulting the law-officers he found that there was no lawful ground for meddling with the iron clads," or, in unprofessional language, that he could trust neither his law-officers nor a Liverpool jury; and therefore he suggested buying the ships for the British navy. As proof of "criminal negligence" in the past, this suggestion seemed decisive, but Russell, by this time was floundering in other troubles of negligence, for he had neglected to notify the American Minister. He should have done so at once, on September 3. Instead he waited till September 4, and then merely said that the matter was under "serious and anxious consideration." This note did not reach the Legation till three o'clock on the afternoon of September 5,—after the "superfluous" declaration of war had been sent. Thus Lord Russell had sacrificed the Lairds: had cost his ministry the price of two iron-clads, besides the Alabama Claims,—say, in round numbers, twenty million dollars,—and had put himself in the position of appearing to yield only to a threat of war. Finally he wrote to the Admiralty a letter which, from the American point of view, would have sounded youthful from an Eton school-boy:—