There was not now, nor later, any yielding on this point.

But, for the present, this was intended for Adams' eye alone, and Seward prefaced his argument by a disclaimer, much as stated to Lyons, of any ill-will to Great Britain: "I may add, also, for myself, that however otherwise I may at any time have been understood, it has been an earnest and profound solicitude to avert from foreign war; that alone has prompted the emphatic and sometimes, perhaps, impassioned remonstrances I have hitherto made against any form or measure of recognition of the insurgents by the government of Great Britain.

I write in the same spirit now; and I invoke on the part of the British government, as I propose to exercise on my own, the calmness which all counsellors ought to practise in debates which involve the peace and happiness of mankind[233]." Diplomatic correspondence couched in the form of platform oratory leads to the suspicion that the writer is thinking, primarily, of the ultimate publication of his despatches.

Thus Seward seems to have been laying the ground for a denial that he had ever developed a foolish foreign war policy.

History pins him to that folly.