strous political
results--if not a revolution in England. This is the language of English
statesmen, manufacturers, and merchants, in Parliament and at cotton
associations' debates, and it discloses the truth[661]."

The historical student will find but few such British utterances at the
moment, and these few not by men of great weight either in politics or
in commerce. The South was labouring under an obsession and prophesied
results accordingly. So strong was this obsession that governmental
foreign policy neglected all other considerations and the first
Commission to Europe had no initial instructions save to demand
recognition[662]. The failure of that Commission, the prompt British
acquiescence in the blockade, were harsh blows to Southern confidence
but did not for a long time destroy the faith in the power of cotton. In
June, 1861, Bunch wrote that there was still a firm belief that "Great
Britain will make any sacrifice, even of principle or of honour, to
prevent the stoppage of the supply of cotton," and he enclosed a copy of
an article in the _Charleston Mercury_ of June 4, proclaiming: "The
cards are in our hands, and we intend to play them out to _the
bankruptcy of every cotton factory in Great Britain and France, or the
acknowledgment of our independence_[663]." As late as March, 1862, Bunch
was still writing of this Southern faith in cotton and described the
newly-made appointment of Benjamin as Secretary of State as partly due
to the fact that he was the leader of the "King Cotton" theory of
diplomacy[664]. It was not until the war was well nigh over that British
persistence in neutrality, in spite of undoubted hardships caused by the
lack of cotton, opened Southern eyes. Pollard, editor of a leading
Richmond newspaper, and soon unfriendly to the administration of
Jefferson Davis, summed up in _The Lost Cause_ his earlier criticisms of
Confederate foreign policy:

"'Cotton,' said the Charleston _Mercury_, 'would bring
England to her knees.' The idea was ludicrous enough that
England and France would instinctively or readily fling
themselves into a convulsion, which their great politicians
saw was the most tremendous one of modern times. But the
puerile argument, which even President Davis did not hesitate
to adopt, about the power of 'King Cotton,' amounted to this
absurdity: that the great and illustrious power of England
would submit to the ineffable humili