420 (_note_) summarizes arguments on this point, but thinks that the Proclamation might have been delayed without harm to British interests.
This is perhaps true as a matter of historical fact, but such fact in no way alters the compulsion to quick action felt by the Ministry in the presence of probable _immediate_ fact.] [Footnote 196: This was the later view of C.F.Adams, Jnr.

He came to regard the delay in his father's journey to England as the most fortunate single incident in American foreign relations during the Civil War.].