Pious wishes do not always bear fruit, and seeing the vital importance to England, and especially to Lancashire, of trade with the Southern States, it was evident that blockade running would soon become a common practice, and, seeing how ineffectual that blockade was, would be resorted to with the result that considerable fortunes would be amassed by it. Matters were not made easier by the negotiations which were taking place at home between Lord John and Mr. Adams, the new American Minister, who had succeeded Mr. Dallas. Mr. Adams said that the language held by Lord John to his predecessor had given umbrage in the United States, and might even lead to the termination of his own mission unless the unfavourable impression should be corrected. He complained, moreover, of the recognition of the South as a belligerent. Lord Newton very justly points out that Lord John Russell was honest in his endeavours to show that England, as a whole, was in sympathy with the North—popular feeling was naturally all on the side of the abolition of slavery. The ovation which Mrs. Beecher Stow received in London was not yet forgotten, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” now a forgotten book, was still selling by thousands. But Lord John Russell as a negotiator was neither conciliatory nor tactful, and it was certainly remarkable that while on the other side of the Atlantic Lord Lyons was using all his tact, all his discretion, both natural and trained, to soften the asperities of Mr. Seward, Mr. Adams, on this side, was confronted with the querulous acrimony of the English Foreign Minister. There was, moreover, another British statesman whose clumsy activities and hardly concealed partiality were peculiarly exasperating to the men of the North. Mr. Gladstone never quite shared the indignation and horror with which slavery was regarded by the bulk of his fellow-countrymen, and when, later in the conflict, the cotton famine and the attacks of the American Press had alienated many Englishmen from the North, there were “demonstrations of pleasure” in the House of Commons at McClellan’s defeat, and Mr. Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy, and they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation.”