ad no
party complexion," and the smiling readiness with which it received
Palmerston's jocular reply indicating that Britain's safest policy was
to keep strictly to neutrality is evidence that even the deputation
itself though harassed by Lindsay and others into making this
demonstration, was quite content to let well enough alone. Not so _The
Index_ which sneered at the childishness of Palmerston:

"... He proved incontestably to his visitors that, though he
has been charged with forgetting the vigour of his prime, he
can in old age remember the lessons of his childhood, by
telling them that

They who in quarrels interpose
Will often wipe a bloody nose (laughter)--

a quotation which, in the mouth of the Prime Minister of the
British Empire, and on such an occasion, must be admitted as
not altogether unworthy of Abraham Lincoln himself[1193]."

Spence took consolation in the fact that Mason had at last come into
personal contact with Palmerston, "even now at his great age a charming
contrast to that piece of small human pipe-clay, Lord Russell[1194]."
But the whole incident of Lindsay's excited efforts, Mason's journey to
London and interview with Palmerston, and the deputation, left a bad
taste in the mouth of the more determined friends of the South--of those
who were Confederates rather than Englishmen. They felt that they had
been deceived and toyed with by the Government. Mason's return to London
was formally approved at Richmond but Benjamin wrote that the argument
for recognition advanced to Palmerston had laid too much stress on the
break-down of the North. All that was wanted was recognition which was
due the South from the mere facts of the existing situation, and
recognition, if accorded, would have at once ended the war without
intervention in any form[1195]. Similarly _The Index_ stated that
mediation was an English notion, not a Southern one. The South merely
desired justice, that is, recognition[1196]. This was a bold front yet
one not unwarranted by the military situation in midsummer of 1864, as
reported in the press. Sherman's western campaign toward Atlanta had but
just started and little was known of the strength of his army or of the
powers of Southern resistance. This campaign was therefore regarded as
of minor importance. It was on Grant's advance toward Richmond that
British attention was fixed; Lee's stiff resistance, the great losses of
the Nor