When Adams paid no attention to the proviso but insisted on signature of the treaty, Russell at last wrote a declaration in the nature of an insult, which could not be disregarded[254]." In this presentation of the case to the jury certain minor points are insisted upon to establish a ground for suspicion--as the question of who first made the proposal--that are not essential to Henry Adams' conclusions.

This conclusion is that "From the delays interposed by Russell, Adams must conclude that the British Cabinet was trying one device after another to evade the proposition; and finally, from the written declaration of August 19, he could draw no other inference than that Russell had resorted to the only defensive weapon left to him, in order to avoid the avowal of his true motives and policy[255]." The _motive_ of this tortuous proceeding, the author believed to have been a deep-laid scheme to revive, _after_ the American War was ended, the earlier international practice of Great Britain, in treating as subject to belligerent seizure enemy's goods under the neutral flag.

It was the American stand, argues Henry Adams, that in 1854 had compelled Great Britain to renounce this practice.

A complete American adherence, now, to the Declaration, would for ever tie Britain's hands, but if there were no such complete adherence and only temporary observation of the second article, after the war had resulted in the disruption of the United States, thus removing the chief supporter of that article, Great Britain would feel free to resume her old-time practice when she engaged in war.

If Great Britain made a formal treaty with the United States she would feel bound to respect it; the Declaration of Paris as it stood constituted "a mere agreement, which was binding, as Lord Malmesbury declared, only so long as it was convenient to respect it[256]." Thus the second article of the Declaration of Paris, not the first on privateering, was in the eye of the British Cabinet in the negotiation of 1861.