undabout language, "with such form of
allusion to the _concession_ we held in reserve, as would make him
necessarily comprehend it[1266]," and turning again and again to a
supposed "latent, undisclosed obstacle[1267]" to British recognition,
Mason yet made clear the object of his visit. The word slavery was not
mentioned by him, but Palmerston promptly denied that slavery in the
South had ever been, or was now, a barrier to recognition; British
objections to recognition were those which had long since been stated,
and there was nothing "underlying" them. On March 26, Mason called on
the Earl of Donoughmore, a Tory friend of the South with whom he had
long been in close touch, and asked whether he thought Palmerston's
Government could be induced by a Southern abolition of slavery to
recognize the Confederacy. The reply was "that the time had gone by
now...." This time the words "slavery" and "abolition" were spoken
boldly[1268], and Donoughmore was positive that if, in the midsummer of
1863, when Lee was invading Pennsylvania, the South had made its present
overture, nothing could have prevented British recognition. The opinion
clashed with Mason's own conviction, but in any case no more was to be
hoped, now, from his overture. Only a favourable turn in the war could
help the South.

There was no public knowledge in London of this "last card" Southern
effort in diplomacy, though there were newspaper rumours that some such
move was on foot, but with a primary motive of restoring Southern
fighting power by putting the negroes in arms. British public attention
was fixed rather upon a possible last-moment reconciliation of North and
South and a restored Union which should forget its domestic troubles in
a foreign war. Momentarily somewhat of a panic overcame London society
and gloomy were the forebodings that Great Britain would be the chosen
enemy of America. Like rumours were afloat at Washington also. The
Russian Minister, Stoeckl, reported to his Government that he had
learned from "a sure source" of representations made to Jefferson Davis
by Blair, a prominent Unionist and politician of the border state of
Maryland, looking to reconstruction and to the sending by Lincoln of
armies into Canada and Mexico. Stoeckl believed such a war would be
popular, but commented that "Lincoln might change his mind[1269]
to-morrow." In London the _Army and Navy Gazette_ declared that Davis
could not consent to reunion and that Lincoln c