Appendix to Chapter XXX.
Earl Russell to Mr. Mason.—(Extract.)
Foreign office, August 2, 1862.
You state that the Confederacy has a population of twelve millions; that it has proved itself for eighteen months capable of successful defence against every attempt to subdue or destroy it; that in the judgment of the intelligence of all Europe the separation is final; and that under no possible circumstances can the late Federal Union be restored.
On the other hand, the Secretary of State of the United States has affirmed, in an official dispatch, that a large portion of the once disaffected population has been restored to the Union, and now evinces its loyalty and firm adherence to the government; that the white population now in insurrection is under five millions, and the Southern Confederacy owes its main strength to hope of assistance from Europe.
In the face of the fluctuating events of the war, the alternations of victory and defeat, the capture of New Orleans, the advance of the Federals to Corinth, to Memphis, and the banks of the Mississippi as far as Vicksburg, contrasted, on the other hand, with the failure of the attack on Charleston and the retreat from before Richmond; placed, too, between allegations so contradictory on the part of the contending powers, her Majesty's government are still determined to wait.
In order to be entitled to a place among the independent nations of the earth, a state ought to have not only strength and resources for a time, but afford promise of stability and permanence.
Should the Confederate States of America win that place among nations, it might be right for other nations justly to acknowledge an independence achieved by victory and maintained by a successful resistance to all attempts to overthrow it. That time, however, has not, in the judgment of her Majesty's government, yet arrived.
