Meanwhile Lyons was so uncertain as to what his instructions would be that he thought he "ought to maintain the greatest reserve here on the matter of the _Trent_[412]." This British anxiety and the efforts to prevent a dangerous complication occurred after the envoys had been seized but some two weeks before that fact was known in London.

"Adams," wrote Russell, "says it was all a false alarm, and wonders at our susceptibility and exaggerated notions[413]." But Russell was not equally convinced with Adams that the North, especially Seward, was so eager for continued British neutrality, and when, on November 27, the news of Captain Wilkes' action was received, Russell and many others in the Cabinet saw in it a continuation of unfriendly Northern policy now culminating in a direct affront.

Argyll, the most avowed friend of the North in the Cabinet, was stirred at first to keen resentment, writing "of this wretched piece of American folly....

I am all against submitting to any clean breach of International Law, such as I can hardly doubt this has been[414]." The Law Officers now held that "Captain Wilkes had undertaken to pass upon the issue of a violation of neutrality on the spot, instead of sending the _Trent_ as a prize into port for judicial adjudication[415]." This was still later further expanded by an opinion that the envoys could not be considered as contraband, and thus subject to capture nor the _Trent_ as having violated neutrality, since the destination of the vessel was to a neutral, not to an enemy port[416].

This opinion would have prohibited even the carrying of the _Trent_ into an American port for trial by a prize court.
But the British Government did not argue the matter in its demand upon the United States.