It quoted an item in the _Morning Herald_ of July 16, to the effect that Mason had secured an interview with Palmerston and that "the meeting was satisfactory to all parties": "The withdrawal of Mr.Lindsay's motion was, it is said, the result of that interview, the Premier having given a sort of implied promise to support it at a more opportune moment; that is to say, when Grant and Sherman have been defeated, and the Confederacy stand in no need of recognition." In the same issue _The Index_ described a deputation of clergymen, noblemen, Members of Parliament "and other distinguished and influential gentlemen" who had waited upon Palmerston to urge mediation toward a cessation of hostilities in America.

Thus at last the joint project of the Southern Independence Association and of the Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America had been put in execution _after_ the political storm had passed and not before--when the deputation might have had some influence.

But the fact was that no deputation, unless a purely party one, could have been collected before the conclusion of the Danish crisis.

When finally assembled it "had no party complexion," and the smiling readiness with which it received Palmerston's jocular reply indicating that Britain's safest policy was to keep strictly to neutrality is evidence that even the deputation itself though harassed by Lindsay and others into making this demonstration, was quite content to let well enough alone.

Not so _The Index_ which sneered at the childishness of Palmerston: "...