Of course the London Times and other confederate organs dilated the next morning upon the importance of this ministerial step. So that we have it fixed as an historical fact, to all posterity, that the authorized spokesman of the British cabinet officially announced to the House of Commons, on the 6th day of May, 1861, that the British government had resolved to recognize the confederates as a belligerent power. The home secretary, Sir George Cornwall Lewis, announced to the same body, on the 9th of the same May, that a proclamation of neutrality was about to be issued; and the proclamation itself actually bears date the 13th. But of course the blow at the integrity of the American government, or at American good will, shall I say? was leveled at the date of the 6th.

So that if Historicus (following the Blue Book) correctly states the date of the reception at the foreign office of the official copy of the President's proclamation of blockade, on which official communication of the document only, as he seems properly to consider, were the British government authorized to treat it as a valid state paper, it follows that the Queen's proclamation of neutrality could have had no connection with the American proclamation of blockade, inasmuch as the former preceded all official knowledge of the latter by at least three entire days.

How, then, could Lord Campbell or the law-advisers of the Crown have given any such advice as Earl Russell is now sure that they gave, or, as Historicus is ready dogmatically to prove, a priori, that they could not help but have given?

But supposing that the telegraph or the newspapers had brought to the foreign office, at an earlier date than the 6th of May, the upshot and effect of the blockade proclamation, or even what purported to be a summary of its contents, (of which I am free to confess that I make no question; indeed, I purpose presently to quote a dispatch of Earl Russell's to Lord Cowley of that date, distinctly assuming a knowledge of its existence,) and supposing further, that the law advisers of the Crown were willing to give their opinion upon the scope and bearing of the proclamation without having the official text before them, (which I must confess I can hardly for a moment believe would either have been asked or expected of them,)* let us see if Earl Russell's new theory is borne out by the other attending facts and probabilities belonging to the case.

In the first place, I beg my readers to look at the contemporaneous explanation of motives accompanying the announcement of the determination of her Majesty's government to extend to the rebels the status of belligerents, put forth by Earl Russell himself.

I have already quoted from Hansard a part of the foreign secretary's declaration on the 6th of May. I now go back and give a few sentences earlier:

"With respect to belligerent rights in the case of certain portions of a State being in insurrection, there was a precedent which seems applicable to this purpose, in the year 1825. The British government at that time allowed the belligerent rights of the provisional government of Greece, and in consequence of that allowance the Turkish government made a remonstrance. I may state the nature of that remonstrance and the reply of Mr. Canning. The Turkish government complained that the British government allowed to the Greeks a belligerent character, and observed that it appeared to forget that to subjects in rebellion no national character could properly belong. But the British government informed Mr. Stratford Canning that the character of belligerency was not so much a principle as a fact; that a certain degree of force and consistency acquired by any mass of population engaged in war entitled that population to be treated as a belligerent, and, even if their title were questionable, rendered it the interest, well understood of all civilized nations, so to treat them; for what was the alternative? A power or a community (call it which you will) which was at war with another and which covered the sea with its cruisers, must either be acknowledged as a belligerent or dealt with as a pirate; which latter character as applied to the Greeks was loudly disclaimed."

*I believe that it will turn out on investigation that the foreign office at the date of the 6th of May, 1861, and until the receipt of Lord Lyons's dispatch referred to, on the 10th, had not even a correct or complete newspaper copy of the blockade proclamation before it, upon which to act or to solicit an opinion from the Crown lawyers. From what investigation I am able to give the subject, looking to two leading London journals and various American newspapers, I am led to believe that up to the 6th of May no other abstract or summary of the proclamation was known, on the other side of the Atlantic, than that contained in the telegraphic summary from Washington to the New York daily newspapers of April 20, communication being interrupted on that day between Washington and New York, and continuing so interrupted till the 27th, which summary, instead of giving the text of the proclamation, recites as an item of news, "The President has issued a proclamation that an insurrection against the government of the United States," &c., giving all the body of the proclamation except the last important sentence, which denounces the penalties of piracy against all who molest United States vessels, [under Jefferson Davis's commissions of marque and reprisal,] but containing such interpolations as "the President says," &c. [See, for instance, the London Daily News, of May 3, which copies this summary without the preamble or any signature of the President or Secretary of State.] The National Intelligencer of April 20, alone of American newspapers, I suspect, gave on that day what purported to be, and what actually was, the text of the proclamation. But this newspaper, I am quite confident, did not find its way to England till it was carried out by the packet which bore Lord Lyons's official copy of the President's proclamation, communicated to him from the State Department.

So that, according to this, while Earl Russell was likening the rebels to the struggling Greeks and the federal government to their Turkish oppressors-undesignedly, perhaps, though it was bitterly complained of at the time by the upholders of the Union cause-he was approving and acting upon Mr. Canning's dictum, that "belligerency is not so much a principle as a fact, and that a certain degree of force and corsistency acquired by any mass of population engaged in war entitles that population to be treated as a belligerent."

What is there here which reads like the President's proclamation not merely "entitling" but requiring the British government to treat the declaration of blockade as tantamount to a declaration of war against the South? On the contrary, is not the inference unavoidable, that "the principles which seemed (to the law advisers) to be the just principles" for recognizing a state of belligerency on the part of the South were those sanctioned by the high authority of Canning, and acted upon under his lead in the case of the Greeks versus the Turks?

In the next place, I beg attention to the Queen's proclamation itself, as containing its own exposition of the motives which occasioned its issue. Herein I gladly follow Historicus, who challenges Mr. Bright to go over the instrument with him, and see how harmlessly impartial and unnoticeably inefficient are its provisions. If it be true that Mr. Bright had never read or closly scanned these provisions, as Historicus presumes to believe, then I can only say that I venture to suggest that Mr. Bright has much better got at its scope by hearsay and on trust than his critic, with all his refinements and improvements, who undertakes to say that it is based upon the American proclamation of blockade, and who, in a gross confounding together of the English and American proclamations, (or something worse,) interpolates into the latter an important paragraph, belonging only to the former and wholly perversive of its leading.

intent.

Says the Queen's proclamation, then, in its recital clause:

"Whereas hostilities have unhappily commenced between the government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America"-not, whereas certain proclamations of blockade and of threat to issue letters of marque and reprisal have been published by President Lincoln and Mr. Jefferson Davisand [going on]"whereas we have declared our royal determination to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending parties"-not, whereas we are compelled to define our position in the state of constructive warfare consequent upon the federal manifesto-[we therefore have thought fit] "to issue this our royal proclamation; and we do hereby strictly charge and command all our loving subjects to observe a strict neutrality in and during the aforesaid hostilities." It then goes on to recite the terms of the foreign enlistment act, (which Historicus says is never operative except in case of war,) and concludes with the denunciation and exposition of the specific acts of entering the military or marine service of either party, &c., which will be contrary to her Majesty's good pleasure, and will forfeit her countenance and protection as against either belligerent.

Thus summarized, is not this instrument as positive an assertion of her Majesty's behest and injunction that her subjects shall not intermingle in a flagrant war that has actually broken out and is now raging between the two belligerent factions of the American republic as words can frame? At any rate, does it not fully negative the notion that her Majesty's advisers had only in mind a constructive, and not an actual state of hostilities?

The only allusion to a blockade throughout the proclamation is, if anything, a more offensive announcement to the American government-who were sedulously insisting that the outbreak was only an insurrection, and to be smothered by a blockade without the use of force-than the perverse assertion that there was already a state of flagrant war itself. It occurs toward the end of the document, where British subjects, among other unneutral acts, are forbidden to "break, or endeavor to break, any blockade, lawfully or actually established, by or on behalf of either of the said contending parties." To think of its being suggested to an American, on the 6th day of May, 1861, that the northern ports were blockaded, or in danger of being blockaded, by a rebel navy!

But let us look outside of the proclamation for further contemporaneous explanation of its motives. The American minister, Mr. Adams, as Mr. Bright notices, had not yet reached England, though momentarily expected there, and though his arrival within a few days, or even hours, might almost be predicted with mathematical certainty, as his sailing from Boston had already been announced. In fact, he landed at Liverpool the evening of the 13th, and was probably met by the newsboys crying the proclamation as he drove up from the steamboat to his lodgings. He hastened to London the 14th, and as soon as possible after, allowing for a few days' delay occasioned by a domestic bereavement which had befallen Lord Russell, obtained an interview with the foreign secretary.

The subject of the recognition of the confederates as belligerents was, of course, one of the leading topics of this interview. Mr. Adams has set down in his dispatch to his gov2 A C-VOL. IV

ernment, dated May 21, 1861, the full particulars of this (to him) most interesting commencement of his ministerial career. It will be found in the "President's Message and Accompanying Documents for 1862," and there covers some six pages. Not one word of this dispatch, from beginning to end, speaks of recognition being rendered necessary by the President's proclamation of blockade. On the contrary, the representation then made by Lord Russell is summed up in the following sentence, p. 92:*

"A necessity seemed to exist [as Lord Russell urged] to define the course of the government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending conflict. Their conclusion had been that, as a question merely of fact, a war existed." Earl Russell himself furnishes a report of this same interview to Lord Lyons, to be found in the Parliamentary Blue Book for 1862, ("North America, No. 1," p. 34.)† His own version, thus afforded, contains nothing at all at variance with Mr. Adams's account, but, on the contrary, fully corroborates it in important particulars. Thus, in a paragraph relating to full recognition of rebel independence, which Mr. Adams seemed to feel apprehensive of as the next step, Earl Russell reports himself as using the following language, quite upsetting any theory of a state of constructive belligerency :

I said that we had taken no step except that of declaring ourselves neutral, and allowing to the southern States a belligerent character; that the size and population of the seceding States were so considerable that we could not deny them that character."

Some allusion, to be sure, is made in both reports to the American blockade, but only to the point to inquire how complete the American government proposed to make it. Now, I beg to ask if it is within the bounds of possibility that, if the proclamation of neutrality had been based upon the President's proclamation of blockade, (as Earl Russell says it was, quoting the Lord Chancellor,) no allusion should have been made to it by the foreign secretary in this interview? Here was Mr. Adams seeking an immediate interview, and demanding, with suppressed sensibility, if not with uncontrolled excitability, what was the meaning of this piece of unexpected and unwelcome conduct of England toward his government. And here, on the other hand, was the foreign secretary, fresh from the cabinet council and from contact with the lord chancellor and his legal associates, undertaking to explain the reasons of so grave and unfriendly a step on the part of his government, in the least offensive and yet most simple manner. Is it in human nature, if he could have replied to Mr. Adams-"It is all the fault of your President's proclamation; it is an unavoidable necessity, forced on us by him"that he would not have surely done so?

It is very noticeable, in the same connection, that Earl Russell, when called upon to vindicate the issuing of the proclamation of neutrality on an emergency similar to that created by Mr. Adams's first official interview, and as late as September 25, 1863, namely, in his Blairgowrie speech in reply to Mr. Sumner's address at the Cooper Institute in New York, September 10, 1863, omits all allusion to the proclamation of blockade as one of the justifying motives for the declaration of British neutrality. Mr. Sumner had insisted, with great vehemence and power, that the declaration of neutrality, or of "equality" between the national government and "the rebel slave-mongers," was not only "an insult to the national government," but "a moral absurdity, offensive to reason and all those precedents which make the glory of the British name." And he had proceeded to charge upon it such bitter and momentous consequences that one would suppose that no possible stimulant could have been wanting to induce the foreign secretary to revive all the justifications which memory could conjure up to palliate the measure of "investing" the rebels" with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent." What had Earl Russell to say in reply?

This was his justification, according to the report of his speech in the London Times of September 28:

"Our course on the subject [of neutrality] has been attacked and blamed in the bitterest terms-blamed sometimes by the federals and sometimes by the confederates. The first offense was felt by the federals. They said we had no right to grant, so far as we were concerned, to the confederates the rights of belligerents. Well, now, gentlemen, that question of the rights of belligerents is a question of fact. I put it to you whether, with 5,000,000 people-5,000,000, I mean, of free men-declaring themselves in their several States collectively an independent State, we could pass over that as a petty rebellion? Our admirals asked whether the ships they met bearing the confederate flag should be treated as pirates or no. If we had treated them as pirates we should have been taking part in that contest. (Cheers.) It was impossible to look on the uprising of a community of five millions of people as a mere petty insurrection, (hear, hear,) or as not having the rights which at all times are given to those who, by their numbers and importance, or by the extent of territory they possess, are entitled to these rights. (Cheers.) Well, it was said we ought not to have done that because they were a community of slaveholders, &c."

So that at this juncture, again, there is no word about a blockade; but the old posi tion of "a question of fact," and "a great community of rebel subjects." Truly, if *See near the bottom of page 183, Vol. I, of this compilation.

† See Vol. I, p. 187, of this compilation.

Lord Campbell had survived to hear his noble friend make this utterance, he must have wondered at the notice taken of his own (supposed?) advice, that the proclamation of blockade had left but one course to pursue!*

But the case against Earl Russell, founded upon contemporaneous evidence furnished by himself, by no means stops with his speech in Parliament of the 6th of May, announcing the government's decision, nor with the respective accounts of his first interview with Mr. Adams. Unfortunately for the foreign secretary, on the very day on which he announced in the House of Commons the ministerial determination to recognize the rebels as belligerents, he indited two dispatches, printed in the Parliamentary Blue Book for 1862, "North America, No. 3," in which he confidentially makes known to the English ambassadors at Paris and at Washington the motives which actuated the home government in coming to their decision. In that to Lord Cowley, (p. 1,)† he says:

"The accounts which have reached them from some of her Majesty's consuls, coupled with what has appeared in the public prints, are sufficient to show that a civil war has broken out among the States which lately composed the American Union. Other nations have, therefore, to consider the light in which, with reference to that war, they are to regard the confederacy into which the southern States have united themselves; and it appears to her Majesty's government that, looking at all the circumstances of the case, they cannot hesitate to admit that such confederacy is entitled to be considered as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent." And, more pointedly still, in that to Lord Lyons, he writes (p. 2) as follows:t

[Lord J. Russell to Lord Lyons.]

"FOREIGN OFFICE, May 6, 1861.

"MY LORD: Her Majesty's government are disappointed in not having received from you, by the mail which has just arrived, any report of the state of affairs, and of the prospects of the several parties with reference to the issue of the struggle which appears unfortunately to have commenced between them; but the interruption of the communication between Washington and New York sufficiently explains the non-arrival of New York dispatches.

"The account, however, which her Majesty's consuls at different ports were enabled to forward by the packet coincide in showing that whatever may be the final result of what cannot now be designated otherwise than as the civil war which has broken out between the several States of the late Union, for the present, at least, those States have separated into distinct confederacies, and as such are carrying on war against each other.

"The question for neutral nations to consider is, what is the character of the war; and whether it should be regarded as a war carried on between parties severally in a position to wage war, and to claim the rights and to perform the obligations attaching to belligerents?

"Her Majesty's government consider that that question can only be answered in the affirmative. If the government of the northern portion of the late Union possesses the advantages inherent in long-established governments, the government of the southern portion has nevertheless duly constituted itself and carries on in a regular form the administration of the civil government of the States of which it is composed.

"Her Majesty's government, therefore, without assuming to pronounce upon the merits of the question on which the respective parties are at issue, can do no less than accept the facts presented to them. They deeply deplore the disruption of a confederacy with which they have at all times sought to cultivate the most friendly relations; they view with the greatest apprehension and concern the misery and desolation in which that disruption threatens to involve the provinces now arrayed in arms against each other; but they feel that they cannot question the right of the southern States to claim to be recognized as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent.

"I think it right to give your lordship this timely notice of the view taken by her Majesty's government of the present state of affairs in North America, and her Majesty's government do not wish you to make any mystery of that view.

"I shall send your lordship by an early opportunity such further information on these matters as may be required for your guidance; at present I have only to add that no expression of regret that you may employ at the present disastrous state of affairs

*I would notice, in passing, how defective must have been the foreign secretary's memory of dates on this occasion, in coupling dispatches from the English admirals asking for instructions how to treat confederate cruisers with a period prior to May 6th, when the secretary himself had not yet received his official copy of the President's proclamation, and when Lord Lyons, in the dispatch inclosing it, of the date of April 22, (the same, received May 10, about which Historicus makes so great a demonstration,) only speaks of his (Lord Lyons) losing no time in communicating the proclamation to Admiral Milne. It is hard to see how Admiral Milne's answer to this communication could have got the start of Lord Lyons's dispatch, unless the admiral happened to be ashore at Halifax, and then it would be at most a single admiral, and not "admirals," who had asked for instructions.

+ See Vol. I, page 36 of this compilation.

I give this dispatch entire, believing that it will constitute hereafter a memorable document in the history of the American civil struggle. See further comments on it hereafter, p. 30.

will too strongly declare the feelings with which her Majesty's government contemplate all the evils which cannot fail to result from it.

"I am, &c.,

"J. RUSSELL."

These grave utterances have never before been reprinted in the United States, that I am aware of. The dispatches from which they are taken well deserve the attention of the American reader as tending to show (in judicial phraseology)-I will not go so far as to say as absolutely proving-that it was England, and not France, which took the initiative in recognizing the belligerency of the confederates. As a matter of fact, England, as is well known, issued her proclamation of neutrality a month earlier than the French Emperor his. But I would ask any reader, English or American, if there is anything here which sounds like "interfering with neutral commerce" by an American blockade, as spoken of by Earl Russell in his late apology for the motives for recognition, or anything that sounds like the opinion quoted by him on the part of the lord chancellor, "that there was no course but one to pursue, namely, to regard the blockade on the part of the United States as the exercise of a belligerent right"? On the contrary, is there not matter enough here to have disturbed the conscience of Lord Russell when he read such a sentence as that reported in Mr. Bright's speech in the Times of March 14?

"Is there not a consciousness in your heart of hearts that you have not behaved generously toward your neighbor? [Loud cries of 'No! and some cries of Hear, hear.'] Do we not feel in some way or other a reproving of conscience? [Renewed cries of 'No!] And in ourselves are we not sensible of this, that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular juncture? ['No, no.']"

To put my readers for a moment in possession of the facts upon which the British secretary for foreign affairs was making these utterances, namely, that a flagrant subsisting war between the two "distinct confederacies of the late Union," and the constitution of the southern confederacy into a duly organized form of government, were the grounds upon which her Majesty's government "feel that they cannot question the right of the southern States to claim to be recognized as a belligerent," I would state that the assault upon Fort Sumter was made April 12, and that it surrendered two days after, the 14th. This was the first intimation that the government at Washington had that the insurrectionists were preparing to push matters so far as to take up arms. Then, as I believe, every American will bear me out in asserting the general belief at the North was that the act was only one of "State-right" hotheads, which the great body of secessionists would repudiate immediately, and that the insurrection, if it called for the use of arms to suppress it, would be entirely local in its character and easily subdued. At this time the federal government had not a soldier in the field, nor had it taken the first step in arms toward avenging the gross insult offered to its flag. Lord Lyons, himself, writing to Earl Russell, under date of April 15, (received in London April 30, Blue Book, No. 1, p. 19,) speaks of the President's "only having resolved to adopt coercive measures against the South," not of having actually taken any steps in that direction, down to the date of the 13th. Now there was just six days' interval between the receipt of this letter and the announcement in Parliament of the cabinet determination to recognize the confederates as belligerents.

Was it ever heard of before in history that insurgents who were only known to have been in arms one week, and against whom it was not yet certain that the present government would adopt any other coercion than that of an external blockade, or, perhaps, repossessing itself of the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the national authority," were to be recognized as belligerents on the ground of a subsisting flagrant war, and that they had become a duly organized government?

a

But of course it will not be left out of view that the irresistible and inevitable necessity which is alleged to have constrained the acknowledgment of confederate belligerency, and so of confederate equality, must have arisen out of the rebels' ability to carry on war by sea as well as by land; since it was only on the sea that the steps taken to encounter and suppress their insurrectionary proceedings would touch upon the interests of England and France. Had the insurrection been purely inland, I suppose that it might have gone on for twenty years, and even assumed larger proportions than it did, without disturbing the equanimity of the two great western powers. I believe the world have not yet heard that the great struggle of the Poles for independence within the last two or three years necessitated any recognition of Polish belligerency. Now, how was the fact in regard to the marine struggle between "the two distinct confederacies of the late Union," as Lord Russell styles them on the 6th day of May, 1861 ?

It will hardly be pretended, I suppose, that there was on that day any subsisting war on the ocean between the two confederacies, nor even, I believe, that there was a probability of any such war for some time to come, unless the confederates could subsidize a show of naval force by hiring or buying vessels from abroad. But is England a convert to the doctrine of fighting naval wars by proxy? Quite recently we have heard of the proposal of Switzerland to buy or hire a seaport on the Mediterranean and hoist a nautical national flag. Is England so far prepared to accept the maxim in the