A great wave of relief and exultation swept over anti-slavery England, but did not so quickly extend to governmental circles.

It was largely that England which was as yet without direct influence on Parliament which so exulted and now upheld the North.

Could this England of the people affect governmental policy and influence its action toward America?
Lyons correctly interpreted the North and Seward as now more inclined to press the British Government on points previously glossed over, and in the same month in which Lyons wrote this opinion there was coming to a head a controversy over Britain's duty as a neutral, which both during the war and afterwards long seemed to Americans a serious and distinctly unfriendly breach of British neutrality.

This was the building in British ports of Confederate naval vessels of war.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 846: _Punch_, Nov.

22, 1862, has a cartoon picturing Palmerston as presenting this view to Napoleon III.] [Footnote 847: Rhodes, IV, p.