to Seward he wrote privately to his son in Boston:

"My position here thus far has not been difficult or painful.
If I had followed the course of some of my colleagues in the
diplomatic line, this country might have been on the high
road to the confederate camp before now. It did not seem to
me to be expedient so to play into the hands of our
opponents. Although there has been and is more or less of
sympathy with the slave-holders in certain circles, they are
not so powerful as to overbear the general sentiment of the
people. The ministry has been placed in rather delicate
circumstances, when a small loss of power on either extreme
would have thrown them out[187]."

In Adams' opinion the Liberals were on the whole more friendly, at
least, to the North than were the Conservatives, and he therefore
considered it best not to press too harshly upon the Government.

But the concluding sentence of this same letter was significant: "I wait
with patience--but as yet I have not gone so far as to engage a house
for more than a month at a time...." He might himself be inclined to
view more leniently the Proclamation of Neutrality and be able to find
excuses for the alleged haste with which it had been issued, but his
instructions required strong representations, especially on the latter
point. Adams' report to Seward of June 14, just noted, on the interview
with Russell of June 12, after treating of privateering and the Southern
commissioners, turns in greater length to the alleged pledge of delay
given by Russell to Dallas, and to the violation of that pledge in a
hasty issue of the Proclamation. He renews attack on the line already
taken on May 18[188]. From this time on, throughout and after the war,
this criticism was repeatedly made and with increasing bitterness.
British friends of the North joined in the American outcry. By mere
reiteration it became in the popular mind on both sides of the Atlantic
an accepted and well-founded evidence of British governmental
unfriendliness in May, 1861. At the conclusion of the Civil War, John
Bright in Parliament, commenting on the causes of American ill-will,
declared that the Government of 1861, knowing that Adams was on his way,
should in mere courtesy, have waited his arrival. Then, said Bright, the
Proclamation, entirely justifiable in itself, might have been issued
without offence and without embittering the United States[189