eding the
debate, now finally to occur in the Commons. Evidently there had been an
error in the understanding of Napoleon by Slidell, Roebuck and Lindsay,
or else there was a question of veracity between Russell, Baron Gros
and Napoleon.

Roebuck's motion was couched in the form of a request to the Queen to
enter into negotiations with foreign powers for co-operation in
recognition of the Confederacy. Roebuck argued that the South had in
fact established its independence and that this was greatly to England's
advantage since it put an end to the "threatening great power" in the
West. He repeated old arguments based on suffering in Lancashire--a
point his opponents brushed aside as no longer of dangerous
concern--attacked British anti-slavery sentiment as mere hypocrisy and
minimized the dangers of a war with the North, prophesying an easy
victory for Great Britain. Then, warmed to the real attack on the
Government Roebuck related at length his interview with Napoleon,
claiming to have been commissioned by the Emperor to urge England to
action and asserting that since Baron Gros had been instructed to apply
again to the British Cabinet it must be evident that the Ministry was
concealing something from Parliament. Almost immediately, however, he
added that Napoleon had told him no formal French application could be
renewed to Great Britain since Russell had revealed to Seward, through
Lyons, the contents of a former application.

Thus following the usual pro-Southern arguments, now somewhat
perfunctorily given, the bolt against the Government had been shot with
all of Roebuck's accustomed "vigour" of utterance[1089]. Here was direct
attack; that it was a futile one early became evident in the debate.
Lord Robert Montagu, while professing himself a friend of the South, was
sarcastic at the expense of Roebuck's entrance into the field of
diplomacy, enlarged upon the real dangers of becoming involved in the
war, and moved an amendment in favour of continued British neutrality.
Palmerston was absent, being ill, but Gladstone, for the Government,
while carefully avoiding expressions of sympathy for either North or
South, yet going out of his way to pass a moral judgment on the disaster
to political liberty if the North should wholly crush the South, was
positive in assertion that it would be unwise to adopt either Roebuck's
motion or Montagu's amendment. Great Britain should not _commit_ herself
to any line of policy, especi