Such a war as we should now wage with the States would be an unloosing of hell upon all that is best upon the world's surface[496]." The expressions of men like Browning and Trollope may not indeed, be regarded as typical of either governmental or general public reactions.
Much more exactly and with more authority as representing that thoughtful opinion of which Adams wrote were the conclusions of John Stuart Mill.

In an article in _Fraser's Magazine_, February, 1862, making a strong plea for the North, he summarized British feeling about the _Trent_: "We had indeed, been wronged.

We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity, which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant succession of insults and injuries from the same and from every other quarter.

We could have acted no otherwise than we have done; yet it is impossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what we have escaped.

We, the emancipators of the slave--who have wearied every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly co-operating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro ...