He hoped that the final outcome would be not two, but at least four separate nations, and stated his belief that the friendly emulation of these nations would result for Americans in a rapid advance in art and commerce such as had been produced in the old commonwealths of Greece.

The _Spectator_ answered that such a breaking up of America was much more likely to result in a situation comparable to that in South America, inquired caustically whether Bulwer Lytton had heard that slavery was in question, and asserted that his speech presumably represented the official view of the Tories, and embodied that of the English governing class[342].
In press utterances during the autumn and early fall of 1861 there is little on British policy toward America.

Strict neutrality is approved by all papers and public speakers.

But as the months passed without further important military engagements attention began to be directed toward the economic effects on England of the war in America and to the blockade, now beginning to be made effective by the North.

The _Saturday Review_, though pro-Southern, declared for neutrality, but distinguished between strict observance of the blockade and a reasonable recognition of the _de facto_ government of the Confederacy "as soon as the Southern States had achieved for their independence that amount of security with which Great Britain had been satisfied in former cases[343]." But another article in the same issue contained a warning against forcibly raising the blockade since this must lead to war with the North, and that would commend itself to no thoughtful Englishman.