"We may now expect 40 or 50,000[447]." Two days later he wrote to Gladstone that if America would only "let the Commissioners free to go where they pleased," he would be satisfied.

He added that in that case, "I should be very glad to make a treaty with the U.S., giving up our pretensions of 1812 and securing immunity to persons not in arms on board neutral vessels or to persons going bona fide from one neutral port to another.

This would be a triumph to the U.S.in principle while the particular case would be decided in our favour[448]." On Saturday, December 14, the Prince Consort died.

It was well-known that he had long been a brake upon the wheel of Palmerston's foreign policy and, to the initiated, his last effort in this direction--the modification of the instruction to Lyons on the _Trent_--was no secret.
There is no evidence that his death made any change in the British position, but it was true, as the American Minister wrote, that "Now they [the British public] are beginning to open their eyes to a sense of his value.

They discover that much of their political quietude has been due to the judicious exercise of his influence over the Queen and the Court, and they do not conceal their uneasiness as to the future without him[449]." The nation was plunged into deep mourning, but not to distraction from the American crisis, for on the day when all papers were black with mourning borders, December 16, they printed the news of the approval of Wilkes by the United States Congress, and gave a summary of Lincoln's message of December 2, which, to their astonishment, made no mention of the _Trent_ affair.