Unless
these declarations were mere bluff and bluster England could not dare
wait their application. She must at once warn her citizens and make
clear her position as a neutral. The Proclamation was no effort "to keep
straight with both sides"; it was simply the natural, direct, and prompt
notification to British subjects required in the presence of a _de
facto_ war.

Moreover, merely as a matter of historical speculation, it was fortunate
that the Proclamation antedated the arrival of Adams. The theory of the
Northern administration under which the Civil War was begun and
concluded was that a portion of the people of the United States were
striving as "insurgents" to throw off their allegiance, and that there
could be no recognition of any Southern _Government_ in the conflict. In
actual practice in war, the exchange of prisoners and like matters, this
theory had soon to be discarded. Yet it was a far-seeing and wise theory
nevertheless in looking forward to the purely domestic and
constitutional problem of the return to the Union, when conquered, of
the sections in rebellion. This, unfortunately, was not clear to foreign
nations, and it necessarily complicated relations with them. Yet under
that theory Adams had to act. Had he arrived before the Proclamation of
Neutrality it is difficult to see how he could have proceeded otherwise
than to protest, officially, against any British declaration of
neutrality, declaring that his Government did not acknowledge a state of
war as existing, and threatening to take his leave. It would have been
his duty to _prevent_, if possible, the issue of the Proclamation.
Dallas, fortunately, had been left uninformed and uninstructed. Adams,
fortunately, arrived too late to prevent and had, therefore, merely to
complain. The "premature" issue of the Proclamation averted an
inevitable rupture of relations on a clash between the American theory
of "no state of war" and the international fact that war existed. Had
that rupture occurred, how long would the British Government and people
have remained neutral, and what would have been the ultimate fate of the
United States[196]?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 127: Sir George Cornewall Lewis was better informed in the
early stages of the American conflict than any of his ministerial
colleagues. He was an occasional contributor to the reviews and his
unsigned article in the _Edinburgh_, April, 1861, on "The Election of
President Lincoln and its Con