Five days later, May 6, he announced in the Commons that Great Britain must be strictly neutral, and that a policy of close harmony with France was being matured; and on this day he proposed through Cowley, in Paris, that Great Britain and France each ask _both_ the contending parties in America to abide by the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris[273].

If there was ulterior motive here it does not appear in any despatch either then or later, passing between any of the British diplomats concerned--Russell, Cowley, and Lyons.

The plain fact was that the United States was not an adherent to the Declaration, that the South had announced privateering, and the North a blockade, and that the only portions of the Declaration in regard to which the belligerents had as yet made no statement were the second and third articles.
It was, indeed, an anxious time for the British Government.

On May 9 Forster asked in the Commons what would be the Government's attitude toward a British subject serving on a Southern privateer[274].

The next day in the Lords there occurred a debate the general burden of which was that privateering was in fact piracy, but that under the conditions of the American previous stand, it could not be treated as such[275].