that our countrymen will not
give these fellows anything in the shape of an ovation." Continuing, the
_Times_ argued:

"What they and their secretaries are to do here passes our
conjecture. They are personally nothing to us. They must not
suppose, because we have gone to the very verge of a great
war to rescue them, that therefore they are precious in our
eyes. We should have done just as much to rescue two of their
own Negroes, and, had that been the object of the rescue, the
swarthy Pompey and Caesar would have had just the same right
to triumphal arches and municipal addresses as Messrs. Mason
and Slidell. So, please, British public, let's have none of
these things. Let the Commissioners come up quietly to town,
and have their say with anybody who may have time to listen
to them. For our part, we cannot see how anything they have
to tell can turn the scale of British duty and deliberation."

This complete reversal, not to say somersault, by the leading British
newspaper, was in line with public expressions from all sections save
the extreme pro-Southern. Adams was astonished, writing privately: "The
first effect of the surrender ... has been extraordinary. The current
which ran against us with such extreme violence six weeks ago now seems
to be going with equal fury in our favour[489]." Officially on the same
day he explained this to Seward as caused by a late development in the
crisis of a full understanding, especially "among the quiet and
religious citizens of the middle classes," that if Great Britain did
engage in war with the United States she would be forced to become the
ally of a "slave-holding oligarchy[490]."

Here, in truth, lay the greatest cause of British anxiety during the
period of waiting for an answer and of relief when that answer was
received. If England and America became enemies, wrote Argyll, "we
necessarily became virtually the _Allies_ of the _Scoundrelism_ of the
South[491]." Robert Browning, attempting to explain to his friend Story
the British attitude, declared that early in the war Britain was with
the North, expecting "that the pure and simple rights [of anti-slavery]
in the case would be declared and vigorously carried out without one let
or stop," but that Lincoln's denial of emancipation as an object had
largely destroyed this sympathy. Browning thought this an excusable
though a mistaken judgment since at least: "T