If not a part of the convention there could be no advantage in making the Declaration since, unratified by the Senate, it would have no force.

Adams therefore declined to proceed further with the matter until he had received new instructions from Washington.
To this Russell answered, August 28, with a very explicit exposition of his reasons.

Great Britain, he said, had declared her neutrality in the American conflict, thereby recognizing the belligerent rights of the South.

It followed that the South "might by the law of nations arm privateers," and that these "must be regarded as the armed vessels of a belligerent." But the United States had refused to recognize the status of belligerency, and could therefore maintain that privateers issued by the Southern States were in fact pirates, and might argue that a European Power signing a convention with the United States, embodying the principles of the Declaration of Paris, "would be bound to treat the privateers of the so-called Confederate States as pirates." Hence Russell pointed out, the two countries, arguing from contradictory premises as to the status of the conflict in America, might become involved in charges of bad faith and of violation of the convention.

He had therefore merely intended by his suggested declaration to prevent any misconception by the United States.
"It is in this spirit that Her Majesty's Government decline to bind themselves, without a clear explanation on their part, to a Convention which, seemingly confined to an adoption of the Declaration of Paris of 1856, might be construed as an engagement to interfere in the unhappy dissensions now prevailing in the United States; an interference which would be contrary to Her Majesty's public declarations, and would be a reversal of the policy which Her Majesty has deliberately sanctioned[249]." Thus the negotiation closed.