Russell might well speak of it as an instruction already given to Lyons.

Moreover there were two points in Adams' conversation of the eighteenth likely to give Russell cause for thought.
The first was Adams' protest against the British recognition of a status of belligerency.

If the North felt so earnestly about this, had it been wise to instruct Lyons to make an approach to the South?
This required consideration.

And in the second place did not Adams' offer again open up the prospect of somehow getting from the North at least a formal and permanent renunciation of privateering?
For if an examination is made of Russell's instruction to Lyons of May 18 it appears that he had not, after all, dropped that reference to privateering which Thouvenel had omitted in his own instructions to Mercier.

Adams understood Russell to have said that he "had already transmitted authority [to Lyons] to assent to any modification of the only point in issue which the Government of the United States might prefer.