The whole situation was plainly one that called for great tact, and for that delicate use of language in which the shadows of words are not to be left out of account. It was probably with reference to this particular encounter that the London _Spectator_ said shortly after Lowell’s death: “There was a question at one time whether the late Lord Granville or Mr. Lowell were the more accomplished and subtle in conveying, without offence, the suggestion or conviction which it might be the duty of either of them to impress on any one to whom the communication might not be welcome. And probably this is a point which would be very differently determined by different people. But though equal in courtesy and grace of manner to Lord Granville, we should say that Mr. Lowell had the greater power of the two to impress his meaning, even where it was a meaning painful and difficult to enforce, without conveying even the slightest tincture of personal discourtesy. Lord Granville was perhaps even fuller of the _suaviter in modo_, but Mr. Lowell never forgot the necessity, where the necessity existed, of conveying also the impression of the _fortiter in re_. With all his grace, there was a plainness of purpose in him which could not be mistaken.”[85] Lowell himself, writing to Dr. Holmes shortly before leaving England, recalls the situation and says: “Some of my Irishmen had been living in their old homes seventeen years, engaged in trade or editing nationalist papers, or members of the poor-law guardians (like MacSweeney), and neither paying taxes in America nor doing any other duty as Americans. I was guided by two things--the recognized principles of international law, and the conduct of Lord Lyons when Seward was arresting and imprisoning British subjects. We kept one man in jail seven months without trial or legal process of any kind, and, but for the considerateness and moderation of Lyons, might have had war with England. I think I saved a misunderstanding here.... When I had at last procured the conditional (really unconditional) release of all the suspects, they refused to be liberated. When I spoke of this to Justin McCarthy (then the head of the Irish Parliamentary party, Parnell being in Kilmainham), he answered cheerfully, ‘Certainly: _they are there to make trouble_.’”[86] One of the intimations of what lay in his mind throughout all the delicate business may be read in a note to Mr. John W. Field, 19 January, 1884: “I wonder, by the way, when we shall see an American politician able to appreciate and shrewd enough to act on Curran’s saying about his countrymen, that ‘an Irishman is the worst fellow in the world to run away from.’”