No notice is taken of lectures or speeches in the provinces[1175]." Before any move was made in Parliament letters to the newspapers began anew to urge that the Ministry should be pressed to offer mediation in America.

They met with little favourable response.

The _Times_, at the very end of Lindsay's effort, explained its indifference, and recited the situation of October-November, 1862, stating that the question had then been decided once for all.

It declared that Great Britain had "no moral right to interfere" and added that to attempt to do so would result in filling "the North with the same spirit of patriotism and defiance as animated the invaded Confederates[1176]." Thus support to Lindsay was lacking in a hoped-for quarter, but his conferences with Association members had brought a plan of modified action the essential feature of which was that the parliamentary motion must not be made a _party_ one and that the only hope of the South lay in the existing Government.

This was decidedly Lindsay's own view though it was clearly understood that the opportuneness of the motion lay in ministerial desire for and need of support in its Danish policy.