92 POLITICAL LIFE-III 



be, I said, &quot;Wait till Lord John Russell speaks.&quot; Lord 

 John Russell spoke, and my heart sank within me. He was 

 the solemnly constituted impostor whose criminal care 

 lessness let out the Alabama to prey upon our commerce, 

 and who would have let out more cruisers had not Mr. 

 Charles Francis Adams, the American minister, brought 

 him to reason. 



Lord John Russell was noted for his coolness, but in 

 this respect Mr. Adams was more than his match. In 

 after years I remember a joke based upon this character 

 istic. During a very hot summer in Kansas, when the 

 State was suffering with drought, some newspaper pro 

 posed, and the press very generally acquiesced in the sug 

 gestion, that Mr. Charles Francis Adams should be asked 

 to take a tour through the State, in order, by his presence, 

 to reduce its temperature. 



When, therefore, Lord John Russell showed no signs 

 of interfering with the sending forth of English ships, 

 English built, English equipped, and largely English 

 manned, against our commerce, Mr. Adams, having 

 summed up to his Lordship the conduct of the British 

 Government in the matter, closed in his most icy way with 

 the words: &quot;My lord, I need hardly remind you that this 

 is war.&quot; 



The result was, that tardily, just in time to prevent war 

 between the two nations, orders were given which pre 

 vented the passing out of more cruisers. 



Goldwin Smith, who in the days of his professorship at 

 Oxford, saw much of Lord John Russell, once told me that 

 his lordship always made upon him the impression of 

 &quot;an eminent corn-doctor.&quot; 



During the following summer, that of 1863, being much 

 broken down by overwork, and threatened, as I supposed, 

 with heart disease, which turned out to be the beginning 

 of a troublesome dyspepsia, I was strongly recommended 

 by my physician to take a rapid run to Europe, and though 

 very reluctant to leave home, was at last persuaded to go 

 to New York to take my passage. Arrived there, bad news 



