Recognize the Southern States as a Belligerent on this condition only[143]." The next day, referring to this memorandum, Russell wrote Lyons that the law officers "are of opinion that we must consider the Civil War in America as regular war[144]," but he does _not_ comment on the legal advice to press the South to abandon privateering before recognizing her belligerent rights, for this is the only meaning that can be attached to the last sentence quoted from the Attorney-General's memorandum.

This advice, however, in view of the opinion that there was "no help for it," was presumably but a suggestion as to a possible diplomatic manoeuvre with little confidence that it would succeed.

The "best solution" was not the probable one, for the South, without a navy, would not readily yield its only naval weapon.
In these few days British policy was rapidly matured and announced.

The letter of May 4 to Lyons, stating the Civil War to be a "regular war" was followed on May 6 by a formal instruction giving Lyons advance notice of the determination reached by the Cabinet to recognize the belligerent rights of the South.

Russell indulged in many expressions of regret and sympathy, but Lyons was not to conceal that this British action represented the Government's view of the actualities of the American situation.