At the same time Granville wrote to another member of
the Cabinet, Lord Stanley of Alderley, a letter published forty
years afterwards in Granville's "Life" (I, 442) to the private
secretary altogether the most curious and instructive relic of
the whole lesson in politics:
. . . I have written to Johnny my reasons for thinking it
decidedly premature. I, however, suspect you will settle to do
so. Pam., Johnny, and Gladstone would be in favor of it, and
probably Newcastle. I do not know about the others. It appears
to me a great mistake. . . .
Out of a Cabinet of a dozen members, Granville, the best
informed of them all, could pick only three who would favor
recognition. Even a private secretary thought he knew as much as
this, or more. Ignorance was not confined to the young and
insignificant, nor were they the only victims of blindness.
Granville's letter made only one point clear. He knew of no fixed
policy or conspiracy. If any existed, it was confined to
Palmerston, Russell, Gladstone, and perhaps Newcastle. In truth,
the Legation knew, then, all that was to be known, and the true
fault of education was to suspect too much.
By that time, October 3, news of Antietam and of Lee's retreat
into Virginia had reached London. The Emancipation Proclamation
arrived. Had the private secretary known all that Granville or
Palmerston knew, he would surely have thought the danger past, at
least for a time, and any man of common sense would have told him
to stop worrying over phantoms.
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