rals
have conceived the design of using the ports of the United
Kingdom for the purpose of constructing ships of war to be
equipped and armed to serve as cruisers against the commerce
of the United States of America, a State with which Her
Majesty is at peace...."

"These acts are inconsistent with the respect and comity
which ought to be shewn by a belligerent towards a
Neutral Power.

"Her Majesty has declared her Neutrality and means strictly
to observe it.

"You will therefore call upon Mr. Benjamin to induce his
Government to forbear from all acts tending to affect
injuriously Her Majesty's position[1035]."

To carry out this instruction there was required permission for Crawford
to pass through the blockade but Seward refused this when Lyons made the
request[1036].

Not everyone in Britain, however, approved the Government's course in
seizing the Rams. Legal opinion especially was very generally against
the act. Adams now pressed either for an alteration of the British law
or for a convention with America establishing mutual similar
interpretation of neutral duty. Russell replied that "until the trials
of the _Alexandra_ and the steam rams had taken place, we could hardly
be said to know what our law was, and therefore not tell whether it
required alteration. I said, however, that he might assure Mr. Seward
that the wish and intention of Government were to make our neutrality an
honest and bona-fide one[1037]." But save from extreme and avowed
Southern sympathizers criticism of the Government was directed less to
the stoppage of the Rams than to attacks of a political character,
attempting to depict the weakness of the Foreign Minister and his
humiliation of Great Britain in having "yielded to American threats."
Thus, February II, 1864, after the reassembling of Parliament, a party
attack was made on Russell and the Government by Derby in the House of
Lords. Derby approved the stopping of the Rams but sought to prove that
the Government had dishonoured England by failing to act of its own
volition until threatened by America. He cited Seward's despatch of July
II with much unction, that despatch now having appeared in the printed
American diplomatic correspondence with no indication that it was not an
instruction at once communicated to Russell. The attack fell flat for
Russell simply replied that Adams had never presented such an
instruction