It was not enough to declare the true principles. They must be enforced. Spain and Portugal hung back. The Secretary of the Antislavery Society was sent “to endeavor to create in those countries a public feeling in favor of the abolition of Slavery”; and the British minister at Lisbon was desired by Lord Palmerston to “afford all the assistance and protection in his power for promoting the object of his journey.”[89] British functionaries abroad sometimes backslided. This was corrected by circulars setting forth “that it would be unfitting that any officer holding an appointment under the British Crown should, either directly or indirectly, hold or be interested in slave property.”[90] The Parliamentary Papers which attest the universality of this instruction show the completeness with which it was executed. The consul at Rio Janeiro, in slaveholding Brazil, had among his domestics three negro slaves, two men and a woman; “of the men one was a groom and the other a waiter, and the woman he was forced to hire to nurse one of his children”; but he discharged them at once, under the antislavery discipline of the British Foreign Office, and Lord Palmerston, in formal despatch, “expresses his satisfaction.”[91] In Cuba, at the time of its reception, there was not a single resident officer, holding under the British Crown, “who was entirely free from the charge of countenancing Slavery.” But only a few weeks afterwards it was officially reported from Havana that there was “not a single British officer residing within the consular jurisdiction who had not relinquished, or was not at least preparing to relinquish, this odious practice.”[92] This was quick work. The metamorphosis was prompt as anything in ancient fable. Every person holding office under the British Government at once set his face against Slavery, _and the way was by having nothing to do with it, even in employing or hiring the slave of another,--nothing, “directly or indirectly”_.