It is in the highest degree likely that the North will not be able to subdue the south, and it is no doubt certain that if the Southern union is established as an independent state it would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures but the operations of the war have as yet been too indecisive to warrant an acknowledgement of the southern union.

Letter to Sir Austen Henry Layard (20 October 1861), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 552.