For the moment Russell appears to have yielded easily to this French advice.

On May 13 he had that interview with the Southern commissioners in which he mentioned a communication about to be made to the South[280]; and on May 15 the London _Times_, presumably reflecting governmental decision, in commenting on the Proclamation of Neutrality, developed at some length the idea that British citizens, if they served on Southern privateers, could claim no protection from Great Britain if the North chose to treat them as pirates.

May 16, Cowley reported that Thouvenel had written Mercier in the terms of Russell's draft to Lyons of the eleventh, but omitting the part about privateering[281], and on this same day Russell sent to Cowley a copy of a _new_ draft of instructions to Lyons, seemingly in exact accord with the French idea[282].

On the seventeenth, Cowley reported this as highly satisfactory to Thouvenel[283].

Finally on May 18 the completed instruction was despatched.
It was on this same day, May 18, that Adams had his first interview with Russell.