The unfriendliness of Great Britain and France was a most serious and ever-present danger to the United States throughout the whole period of the war, and was prolific of injury to American interests. From the first Great Britain showed a conscious unfriendly purpose. That government privately proposed to France, even before Queen Victoria's proclamation recognizing the insurgents as belligerents, to open direct negotiations with the South, and the British Legation at Washington was used for secret communications with the Confederate President. When the Confederate agents, James M. Mason and John Slidell and their secretaries, were taken from the British mail-steamer Trent by Captain Wilkes, of the American warship San Jacinto, the course of the British Cabinet indicated an unfriendliness so extreme as to approach a desire for war. Peremptory instructions were sent to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, to demand the release of the men arrested, and to leave Washington if the demand was not complied with in seven days. Vessels of war were fitted out by the British, and troops pressed forward to Canada. The official statement of the American Minister at London that the act had not been authorized by the American Government was kept from the British people, and public opinion was encouraged to drift into a state of hostility toward the United States. The surrender of Mason and Slidell removed all excuse for war, much to the disgust, doubtless, of the ruling class in Great Britain. Leading English statesmen made public speeches favoring the Confederacy. Lord Russell, himself, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, stated in the House of Lords that the subjugation of the South by the North "would prove a calamity to the United States and to the world." The Alabama and other privateers went forth from British ports to prey on American commerce, and the builder of the Alabama was cheered in the House of Commons when he boasted of what he had done. Even Mr. Gladstone--before Vicksburg and Gettysburg--declared that "the restoration of the American Union by force is unattainable."