_we_ should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to slavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism...." No such protestations of relief over escape from a possible alliance with the South were made officially by the Government, or in a debate upon the _Trent_, February 6, when Parliament reassembled.

In the Lords the Earl of Shelburne thought that America should have made a frank and open apology.

The Earl of Derby twitted the United States with having yielded to force alone, but said the time "had not yet come" for recognizing the Confederacy.

Lord Dufferin expressed great friendship for America and declared that Englishmen ought to make themselves better informed of the real merits of the Civil War.

Earl Granville, speaking for the Government, laid stress upon the difficulties at home of the Washington administration in pacifying public opinion and asserted a personal belief that strict neutrality was England's best policy, "although circumstances may arise which may call for a different course." On the same day in the Commons the debate was of a like general tenor to that in the Lords, but Disraeli differed from his chief (Derby) in that he thought America had been placed in a very difficult position in which she had acted very honourably.