o had become involved in a plot to send out from the port of
San Francisco, a Confederate "privateer" to prey on Northern
commerce[1207].

This record of the activities of Northern friends and organizations, the
relative subsidence of their efforts in the latter part of 1864, thus
indicating their confidence in Northern victory, the practical cessation
of public Southern meetings, are nevertheless no proof that the bulk of
English opinion had greatly wavered in its faith in Southern powers of
resistance. The Government, it is true, was better informed and was
exceedingly anxious to tread gently in relations with the North, the
more so as there was now being voiced by the public in America a
sentiment of extreme friendship for Russia as the "true friend" in
opposition to the "unfriendly neutrality" of Great Britain and
France[1208]. It was a period of many minor irritations, arising out of
the blockade, inflicted by America on British interests, but to these
Russell paid little attention except to enter formal protests. He
wrote to Lyons:

"I do not want to pick a quarrel out of our many just causes
of complaint. But it will be as well that Lincoln and Seward
should see that we are long patient, and do nothing to
distract their attention from the arduous task they have so
wantonly undertaken[1209]."

Lyons was equally desirous of avoiding frictions. In August he thought
that the current of political opinion was running against the
re-election of Lincoln, noting that the Northern papers were full of
expressions favouring an armistice, but pointed out that neither the
"peace party" nor the advocates of an armistice ever talked of any
solution of the war save on the basis of re-union. Hence Lyons strongly
advised that "the quieter England and France were just at this moment
the better[1210]." Even the suggested armistice was not thought of, he
stated, as extending to a relaxation of the blockade. Of military
probabilities, Lyons professed himself to be no judge, but throughout
all his letters there now ran, as for some time previously, a note of
warning as to the great power and high determination of the North.

But if the British Government was now quietly operating upon the theory
of an ultimate Northern victory, or at least with the view that the only
hope for the South lay in a Northern weariness of war, the leading
British newspapers were still indulging in expressions of confidence in
the