sailed away with them. Russell at once received
indirectly from Mason (who was now in France), charges that these men
had been enlisted and in the presence of the American consul at
Queenstown; he was prompt in investigation but before this was well
under way the _Kearsarge_ sailed into Queenstown again and landed the
men. She had gone to a French port and no doubt Adams was quick to give
orders for her return. Adams was soon able to disprove the accusation
against the consul but it still remained a question whether the
commander of the vessel was guilty of a bold defiance of British
neutrality. On March 31, 1864, the Irishmen, on trial at Cork, pleaded
guilty to violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act, but the question of
the commander's responsibility was permitted to drop on Adams' promise,
April 11, of further investigation[1166].

The _Kearsarge_ case occurred as Parliament was drawing to a close in
1863, and at a time when Southern efforts were at low ebb. It was not,
therefore, until some months later when a gentleman with a shady past,
named Patrick Phinney, succeeded in evading British laws and in carrying
off to America a group of Irishmen who found themselves, unwillingly,
forced into the Northern army, that the two cases were made the subject
of a Southern and Tory attack on Russell. The accusations were sharply
made that Russell was not sufficiently active in defending British law
and British honour[1167], but these were rather individual accusations
than concerted and do not indicate any idea of making an issue with the
Government[1168]. Whenever opportunity arose some inquiry up to July,
1864, would be made intended to bring out the alleged timidity of
Russell's policy towards the North--a method then also being employed on
many other matters with the evident intention of weakening the Ministry
for the great Tory attack now being organized on the question of
Danish policy.

In truth from the beginning of 1864, America had been pushed to one side
in public and parliamentary interest by the threatening Danish question
which had long been brewing but which did not come into sharp prominence
until March. A year earlier it had become known that Frederick VII of
Denmark, in anticipation of a change which, under the operations of the
Salic law, would come at his death in the constitutional relations of
Denmark to Schleswig-Holstein, was preparing by a new "constitutional
act" to secure for his successor the re