Russell
now thought:
"If no fresh battles occur, I think the suggestion might be
adopted, tho' I am far from thinking with Mercier that the
North would accept it. But it would be a fair and defensible
course, leaving it open to us to hasten or defer recognition
if the proposal is declined. Lord Lyons might carry it over
on the 25th[777]."
British policy, as represented by the inclinations of the Foreign
Secretary, having started out on a course portending positive and
vigorous action, was now evidently in danger of veering far to one side,
if not turning completely about. But the day after Russell seemed to be
considering such an attenuation of the earlier plan as to be content
with a mere suggestion of armistice, a bomb was thrown into the already
troubled waters further and violently disturbing them. This was
Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, October 7, a good third of which was
devoted to the Civil War and in which he asserted that Jefferson Davis
had made an army, was making a navy, and had created something still
greater--a nation[778]. The chronology of shifts in opinion would, at
first glance, indicate that Gladstone made this speech with the
intention of forcing Palmerston and Russell to continue in the line
earlier adopted, thus hoping to bolster up a cause now losing ground.
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