Near the close of the summer, Gladstone wrote to his wife: "Lord Palmerston has come exactly to my mind about some early representations of a friendly kind to America, if we can get France and Russia to join." At about the same time he wrote to another correspondent: "My opinion is that it is vain, and wholly unsustained by precedent, to say that nothing shall be done until parties are desirous of it," and went on to repeat the former suggestion. About two months later Palmerston wrote to Gladstone saying that he and Russell were agreed that an offer of mediation should be made by Britain, France, and Russia, and that the Ambassador at Paris was to be instructed to communicate with the French Government on the subject. "Of course," he added, "no actual step would be taken without the sanction of the Cabinet." Lord Russell had but a few days previously written a letter to Palmerston, which had been shown to Gladstone, in which he said: "I agree with you that the time is come for offering mediation to the United States government with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confederates. I agree further that, in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Confederate States as an independent State." With the words of these two letters singing in his mind and mingling with the mental harmonies he himself had conceived, Mr. Gladstone went to Newcastle to partake of a banquet prepared for him by party admirers, and to utter on October 7, 1862, in the course of a general speech, a comment upon American affairs that was to vex him to the end of his life. Said he: "We know quite well that the people of the North have not yet drunk of the cup,--they are still trying to hold it far from their lips,--which, all the rest of the world see, they, nevertheless, must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other 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. We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States, so far as their separation from the North is concerned." It is difficult to exaggerate the profound sensation that this passage in Gladstone's speech made in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in the United States. There was no escaping its significance. It meant that the British Government was on the point of recognizing the independence of the South, and such an act must have led to war between Great Britain and the United States. Aware of the sentiment that pervaded the Cabinet, Minister Adams had sought explicit instructions from the United States State Department, which instructions had come in unequivocal terms in a letter from Secretary Seward. Mr. Seward wrote: