"I am pleased to hear from your lordship the expressions of good will from her Gracious Majesty's Government."
"I am sorry to say, however," the Minister hastened to add, "that the Proclamation of Emancipation was not received by the best people of England as favorably as we had hoped."
"And why not?" Seward politely asked.
"Seeing that it could have no effect in really freeing the slaves until the South is conquered it appeared to be merely an attempt to excite a servile insurrection."
The Secretary lifted his eyebrows, took another dip of snuff, and softly inquired:
"And may I ask of your lordship whether this would not have been even more true in the earlier days of the war than now?"
"Undoubtedly."
"And yet I understand that her Gracious Majesty's Government was cold toward us because we had failed to take such high moral grounds at once in the beginning of the war?"
His lordship lifted his hands in polite admission of the facts.
"The trouble you see is," he went on softly, "Europe begins to feel that the division of sentiment in the North will prove a fatal weakness to the administration in so grave a crisis. Unfortunately, from our point of view, of course, your Government is a democracy, the sport of every whim of the demagogue of the hour——"