Sumner "animated by a spirit of vengeance[882]." If the South did yield
and the Union were restored _with_ slavery, Russell thought that
"Slavery would prevail all over the New World. For that reason I wish
for separation[883]." These views were repeated frequently by Russell.
He long had a fixed idea on the moral value of separation, but was
careful to state, "I give you these views merely as speculations," and
it is worthy of note that after midsummer of 1862 he rarely indulged in
them. Against such speculations, whether by Russell or by others, Mill
protested in his famous article in _Fraser's_, February, 1862[884].

On one aspect of slavery the North was free to act and early did so.
Seward proposed to Lyons a treaty giving mutual right of search off the
African Coast and on the coasts of Cuba for the suppression of the
African Slave Trade. Such a treaty had long been urged by Great Britain
but persistently refused by the United States. It could not well be
declined now by the British Government and was signed by Seward, April
8, 1862[885], but if he expected any change in British attitude as a
result he was disappointed. The renewal by the South of that trade might
be a barrier to British goodwill, but the action of the North was viewed
as but a weak attempt to secure British sympathy, and to mark the limits
of Northern anti-slavery efforts. Indeed, the Government was not eager
for the treaty on other grounds, since the Admiralty had never "felt any
interest in the suppression of the slave trade ... whatever they have
done ... they have done grudgingly and imperfectly[886]."

This was written at the exact period when Palmerston and Russell were
initiating those steps which were to result in the Cabinet crisis on
mediation in October-November, 1862. Certainly the Slave Trade treaty
with America had not influenced governmental attitude. At this juncture
there was founded, November, 1862, the London Emancipation Society, with
the avowed object of stirring anti-slavery Englishmen in protest against
"favouring the South." But George Thompson, its organizer, had been
engaged in the preliminary work of organization for some months and the
Society is therefore to be regarded as an expression of that small group
who were persistent and determined in assertion of slavery as the cause
and object of the Civil War, before the issue of Lincoln's
proclamation[887]. Thus for England as a whole and for official England
the declar