December 12, he wrote to his son in America: "It has given us here an indescribably sad feeling to witness the exultation in America over an event which bids fair to be the final calamity in this contest...." Great Britain "is right in principle and only wrong in point of consistency.

Our mistake is that we are donning ourselves in her cast-off suit, when our own is better worth wearing[443]." His secretarial son was more vehement: "Angry and hateful as I am of Great Britain, I still can't help laughing and cursing at the same time as I see the accounts of the talk of our people.

What a bloody set of fools they are! How in the name of all that's conceivable could you suppose that England would sit quiet under such an insult.

_We_ should have jumped out of our boots at such a one[444]." The British Cabinet members were divided in sentiments of hope or pessimism as to the outcome, and were increasingly anxious for an honourable escape from a possible situation in which, if they trusted the observations of Lyons, they might find themselves aiding a slave as against a free State.

On November 29, Lyons had written a long account of the changes taking place in Northern feeling as regards slavery.