He gave a resume of all the sins of the North as a belligerent and wrote in a distinctly captious spirit.

Yet these sins had not "induced Her Majesty's Government to swerve an inch from an impartial neutrality[716]." Here was no promise of a continuance of neutrality--rather a hint of some coming change.

At least one member of the Cabinet was very ready for it.

Gladstone wrote privately: "It is indeed much to be desired that this bloody and purposeless conflict should cease.

From the first it has been plain enough that the whole question was whether the South was earnest and united.