e assured me that it had all along given him the greatest
pleasure to feel that the Southern cause had the sympathies of so many
in the 'old country,' to which he looked as a second home; but, in
answer to my questions, he replied that he had never expected us to
give them material aid, and added that he thought all governments were
right in studying only the interests of their own people and in not
going to war for an 'idea' when they had no distinct cause of quarrel.

"On the subject of slavery, he assured me that he had always been in
favour of the emancipation of the negroes, and that in Virginia the
feeling had been strongly inclining in the same direction, till the
ill-judged enthusiasm (amounting to rancour) of the abolitionists in
the North had turned the Southern tide of feeling in the other
direction. In Virginia, about thirty years ago, an ordinance for the
emancipation of the slaves had been rejected by only a small majority,
and every one fully expected at the next convention it would have been
carried, but for the above cause. He went on to say that there was
scarcely a Virginian now who was not glad that the subject had been
definitely settled, though nearly all regretted that they had not been
wise enough to do it themselves the first year of the war. Allusion
was made by him to a conversation he had with a distinguished
countryman of mine. He had been visiting a large slave plantation
(Shirley) on the James River. The Englishman had told him that the
working population were better cared for there than in any country he
had ever visited, but that he must never expect an approval of the
institution of slavery by England, or aid from her in any cause in
which that question was involved. Taking these facts and the
well-known antipathy of the mass of the English to the institution into
consideration, he said he had never expected help from England. The
people 'at the South' (as the expression is), in the main, though
scarcely unanimously, seem to hold much the same language as General
Lee with reference to our neutrality, and to be much less bitter than
Northerners generally--who, I must confess, in my own opinion, have
much less cause to complain of our interpretation of the laws of
neutrality than the South. I may mention here, by way of parenthesis,
that I was, on two separate occasions (once in Washington and once in
Lexington), told that there were many people in the country who wished
that Gene