The defunct Trent case is resurrected, this time, however, as a 
casus belli not between England and the United States, but 
between the English people and the English government. The new 
casus belli will be decided in Parliament, which assembles next 
month. Without doubt you have already taken notice of the 
polemic of The Daily News* and The Star against The Morning Post 
over the suppression and denial of Seward’s peace dispatch of 
November 30,” which on December 19 was read to Lord John 
Russell by the American Ambassador, Mr. Adams. Permit me, 
now, to return to this matter. With the assurance of The Morning 
Post that Seward’s dispatch had not the remotest bearing on the 
Trent affair,“ stock exchange securities fell and property worth 
millions changed hands, was lost on the one side, won on the 
other. In commercial and industrial circles, therefore, the wholly 
unjustifiable semi-official lie of The Morning Post disclosed by the 
publication of Seward’s dispatch of November 30 arouses the most 
tremendous indignation. 

On the afternoon of January 9 the peace news reached London. 
The same evening The Evening Star (the evening edition of The 
Morning Star) interpellated the government concerning the 
suppression of Seward’s dispatch of November 30. The following 
morning, January 10, The Morning Post replied as follows: 

Times, No. 24141, January 13, 1862.— Ed. 

December 21, 1861, leading article.— Ed. 

“It is asked why nothing has been heard sooner of Mr. Seward’s dispatch, which 
reached Mr. Adams some time in December. The explanation of this is very simple. 
It is that the dispatch received by Mr. Adams was not communicated to our 

On the evening of the same day The Star gave the lie to the Post 
completely and declared its “rectification” to be a miserable 
subterfuge. The dispatch, it wrote, had in fact not been 
“communicated” to Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell by 
Mr. Adams, but had been “read out”. 

Next morning, Saturday, January 11, The Daily News entered 
the lists and proved from The Morning Post’s article of December 
21 that the Post and the government had been fully acquainted 
with Seward’s dispatch at that time and deliberately falsified it. 
The government now prepared to retreat. On the evening of 
January 11 the semi-official Globe declared that Mr. Adams had, 
to be sure, communicated Seward’s dispatch to the government on 
December 19; this, however, “contained no offer by the Washing- 
ton Cabinet” any more than “a direct apology for the outrage on 
the British flag”. This shamefaced admission of a deliberate 
deception of the English people for three weeks only fanned the 
flame higher, instead of quenching it. A cry of anger resounded 
through all the organs of the industrial districts of Great Britain, 
which yesterday finally found its echo even in the Tory 
newspapers. The whole question, one should note, was placed on 
the order of the day, not by politicians, but by the commercial 
public. Today’s Morning Star remarks on the subject: 

“Lord John Russell is undoubtedly an accomplice in that suppression of the 
truth; he allowed the Morning Post’ lie to circulate uncontradicted, but he is 
incapable of having dictated that mendacious and incalculably pernicious article 
which appeared in The Morning Post on the 21st of December. This could only be 
done by one man. The Minister who fabricated the Afghan war is alone capable of 
having suppressed Mr. Seward’s message of peace.!63 The foolish leniency of the 

House of Commons condoned the one offence. Will not Parliament and people 
unite in the infliction of punishment for the other?” 

January 18, 1862