Tories Welcomed Mason.
The Tories of
England received
Commissioner Mason with open arms.
They flocked to his apartments to welcome him and to applaud his country.
They escorted him to a seat in the galleries of Parliament, that he might hear with his own ears how they prodded the ministry and shamed it. They carried him to their country homes to see their kennels and their stables and to look upon their balls.
‘They are the same people here as in old
Virginia,’ wrote
Mason to his wife.
The
Lord Mayor invited him to attend the grand annual dinner.
He was there called upon to speak and his speech was tumultuously applauded.
Commissioner Mason took up the question of blockade with the
English ministry, to the limited extent that the ministry would hear him.
England had insisted that the
Confederate States should informally accede to the
Paris Convention; and this Paris Convention had committed the powers that signed it to the proposition that: (1) Blockade by belligerents must be effective; (2) That blockade once raised, even for an hour, could not be restored without notice to neutrals.
