THE END OF THE WAR "I think you need not trouble yourself about England.

At this moment opinion seems to have undergone a complete change, and our people and indeed our Government is more moderately disposed than I have ever before known it to be.

I hear from a member of the Government that it is believed that the feeling between our Cabinet and the Washington Government has been steadily improving[1261]." Thus wrote Bright to Sumner in the last week of January, 1865.

Three weeks later he again wrote in reassurance against American rumours that Europe was still planning some form of intervention to save the South: "_All parties and classes_ here are resolved on a strict neutrality[1262]...." This was a correct estimate.

In spite of a temporary pause in the operations of Northern armies and of renewed assertions from the South that she "would never submit," British opinion was now very nearly unanimous that the end was near.