While again insisting upon the essential injustice of the original concession of belligerent rights to the South, and objecting to some details in the instructions to the Admiralty, he yet admitted that normal relations were again established and acknowledged that the United States could no longer exercise a right of search[1317].

July 4, Russell presented this paper to Parliament, reading that portion in which Seward expressed his pleasure that the United States could now enter again upon normal relations with Great Britain[1318].

Two days later Russell wrote to Bruce that he had not expected Seward to acknowledge the rightfulness of England's neutrality position, pointed out that his Admiralty instructions were misunderstood and were less objectionable than appeared and concluded by the expression of a hope for the "establishment of a lasting and intimate friendship between the two nations[1319]." * * * * * Great Britain, wrote the Russian Minister in Washington in January, 1860, was about to experience one of those "strokes of fortune" which occurred but rarely in the history of nations, in the approaching dissolution of the American Union.

She alone, of all the nations of the world, would benefit by it in the expansion of her power, hitherto blocked by the might of the United States.

Broken into two or more hostile pieces America would be at the mercy of England, to become her plaything.