challenge to the thesis of
Spence[962]. England's "unnatural infatuation" for a slave power,
Cairnes prophesied, would be short-lived. His pamphlet began to be read
with more conviction by that class which until now had been coldly
neutral and which wished a more reassured faith in the Northern cause
than that stirred by the emotional reception given the emancipation
proclamation. Yet at bottom it was emancipation that brought this
reasoning public to seek in such works as that of Cairnes a logical
basis for a change of heart. Even in official circles, utterances
previously made in private correspondence, or in governmental
conversations only, were now ventured in public by friends of the North.
On April 1, 1863, at a banquet given to Palmerston in Edinburgh, the
Duke of Argyll ventured to answer a reference made by Palmerston in a
speech of the evening previous in which had been depicted the horrors of
Civil War, by asking if Scotland were historically in a position to
object to civil wars having high moral purpose. "I, for one," Argyll
said, "have not learned to be ashamed of that ancient combination of the
Bible and the sword. Let it be enough for us to pray and hope that the
contest, whenever it may be brought to an end, shall bring with it that
great blessing to the white race which shall consist in the final
freedom of the black[963]."

The public meetings in England raised high the hope in America that
governmental England would show some evidence of a more friendly
attitude. Lincoln himself drafted a resolution embodying the ideas he
thought it would be wise for the public meetings to adopt. It read:

"Whereas, while _heretofore_ States, and Nations, have
tolerated slavery, _recently_, for the first time in the
world, an attempt has been made to construct a new Nation,
upon the basis of, and with the primary, and fundamental
object to maintain, enlarge, and perpetuate human slavery,
therefore,

_Resolved_: that no such embryo State should ever be
recognized by, or admitted into, the family of Christian and
civilized nations; and that all Christian and civilized men
everywhere should, by all lawful means, resist to the utmost,
such recognition or admission[964]."

This American hope much disturbed Lyons. On his return to Washington, in
November, 1862, he had regarded the emancipation proclamation as a
political manoeuvre purely and an unsuccessful one. T