and disciplinary purposes, by putting to English and French statesmen the question, Are you prepared to accept and to agree hereafter yourselves to abide by the precedent which your governments have set in this American civil war, of refusing to acknowledge any blockade established for the repression of domestic insurrection, except upon the footing of insurgent equality and of free license to blockade-running, except so far as is interfered with by the lax restraints of general maxims of international duty? If you are not, then you will agree with me, that even if the American blockade had been actually enforced at the date of the 6th of May, 1861, and even though that blockade had infringed upon the rights of foreign commerce in some degree, a fair share of international comity toward a nation engaged in the suppression of a groundless revolt, originating in the most immoral motives of any rebellion on record, would have kept off the recognition of its rebellious subjects as a belligerent power longer than was practiced toward the United States in the present struggle.

III-CORRECTION OF VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS OF HISTORICUS IN HIS ARTICLE of MARCH 22, AND INCIDENTAL NOTICE OF EARL RUSSELL'S DISPATCH TO LORD LYONS OF MARCH 6, 1861.

I proceed briefly to notice some additional misstatements or perversions of fact of Historicus's, besides those which I have already attempted to set right. It is perhaps quite unnecessary to do this, at the side of the more general discussion in which I have engaged; but as I shall limit myself to those bearing upon the main points of contention, and as this writer enjoys (I take pleasure in saying, most deservedly, in many respects) a large share of English confidence for his elucidation of international topics, I trust that the reader who has thus far followed my disquisition will not find his patience abused by being asked to judge of the fairness of my strictures upon these detached though affiliated matters.

Historicus says (inter alia) that the proclamation of neutrality conferred no rights upon the confederates-it only recognized an existing state of things. In his precise

words:

"It is nothing more nor less than a domestic document affecting the position of the Queen's subjects alone, and not in any way interfering with the affairs of other nations." But did not Lord Russell regard it as something more, when he was communicating to the French government through Lord Cowley, with solemn diplomatic earnestness, as I have already quoted, that:

"Her Majesty's government cannot hesitate to admit that such confederacy is entitled to be considered a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent."

Who "invested" them with those rights and prerogatives, I would ask, but England and France? When Lord Chelmsford says, that, after the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as a belligerent power, no British subject aiding them in rebellion would be liable to be treated as a pirate, and that such a subject who undertook to fit out a privateer against the federal government, but for that recognition, would be guilty of piracy, is there no "conferring" of a right or privilege upon the rebels? When Lord Derby says that the northern States must be given to understand that they cannot turn privateering into piracy, and that if British subjects participate in the latter, they will still be treated as under her Majesty's protection, is it not "in some way interfering with the affairs of other nations ?" And, finally, when the lord chancellor sums up the climax, by stating the law to be, that if any such British aider and abettor of the rebellion were treated as a pirate, the persons so dealing with him would be guilty of murder, does it not strike the common mind that the creation of such a state of things carries with it aid and comfort of an important kind?

And this leads me to notice another gross blunder (or something worse) on the part of Historicus, which the authority of the law lords just quoted effectually disposes of. He says:

"If no such war (recognized by the declaration of neutrality) existed, then the shipbuilders might equip, arm, and dispatch, vessels of war equally to New York and to Charleston. English subjects might enlist and take service in the forces of either party."

And again:

"If there had been no war, Mr. Laird might have equipped for the South five hundred Alabamas without interference. This is what the North have gained."

Per contra, Lord Chelmsford:

"If, he might add, the Southern Confederacy had not been recognized by us as a belligerent power, he agreed with his noble and learned friend (Brougham) that any Engglishman aiding them by fitting out a privateer against the federal government would be guilty of piracy."

I have just above quoted the lord chancellor to the same effect. Lord Kingsdown

followed in the same strain. Indeed, so strong ran the debate in the "lords," in the direction of throwing British protection over aiding and abetting the confederate cause, that Lord Ellenborough at the close of the discussion had to deprecate what he thought would be the effect of the speeches made by the peers in counteracting the tenor and effect of the Queen's proclamation, by assuring Englishmen that if they adopted the notions of the speakers and took part in the war, they might find themselves hung, upon American principles, long before diplomacy could come to their relief. Perhaps these declarations of a lord chancellor and two ex-chancellors, to say nothing of the other legal luminaries alluded to, or who took part in the debate, will induce Historicus to abate somewhat from the dash of his assertion about fitting out Alabamas for the South with impunity. Perhaps, instead of asserting hereafter that Mr. Laird might have equipped "five hundred" "without interference," but for the Queen's proclamation, he will agree with Lord Chelmsford, that he could not have fitted out one without being guilty of piracy, unless for the shelter of that state document; and that will be enough for all practical purposes.

Enlarging upon the notions of free commerce and free fighting, Historicus goes on to say, that even the United States themselves did not treat the confederate privateers as pirates. And he quotes the case of the trial of the crew of the Savannah for piracy in New York, in 1861, (not 1862, as he erroneously has it,) where a confederate vessel had been captured at an early day of the rebellion by the federal navy, and her crew carried into that city and tried for piracy. He says:

"The judge charged the jury that the ship could not be regarded as a pirate under the law of nations. And the government could not get a jury to convict on the municipal statute. The arguments are published at length in a report of the trial, for a copy of which I am indebted to the eminent lawyer, Mr. Evarts, who represented the United States government on that occasion. We have the authority of the American judges in this very conflict, that by the law of nations a southern privateer could not be treated as a pirate when exercising force against us."

# *

In reply to this, I can only say that I wish Historicus had read the report of the trial so kindly sent him by Mr. Evarts, before making this representation, or misrepresentation of American law. I have the report referred to before me at this writing, and I read from the learned judge's charge to the jury, at p. 371, as follows:

"The robbery charged in this case is that which the act of Congress prescribes as a crime, and may be denominated a statute offense, as contradistinguished from that known to the law of nations."

Thus, according to Judge Nelson, the crew of the Savannah were not tried at all for an offense under the law of nations; and the learned judge had no occasion to pass upon the question whether they were not protected from the penalties of piracy by being under the shelter of international law as legitimate belligerents. On the contrary, a little further on than where I have quoted, after explaining the statute, (an old one of 1820, denominating "robbery," &c., on the high seas, “piracy,”) he goes on to say:

"Now, if you are satisfied, upon the evidence, that the prisoners have been guilty of this statute offense of a robbery upon the high seas, it is your duty to convict them, though it may fall short of the offense as known to the law of nations."

The learned judge took especial pains not to take it upon himself to decide that the North had made the South belligerents under the law of nations, as Historicus would apparently have his readers believe, and expressly left the case to the jury upon the statute offense. That they did not convict was probably rather due to the judge's blackletter notion that the robbery must have been committed lucri causa, as in land robbery, than to any dietum of his about international law.

If Historicus would like to have the whole truth told, (supposing his acquaintance with American transactions has not yet put him in possession of it,) would he be glad to be informed that some of the confederate privateersmen were convicted of piracy in Philadelphia, about the same time and under precisely the same condition of things as the crew tried in New York; and that his authority, Judge Nelson, has since expressly held in banco, at Washington, that there did not exist any state of belligerency between the North and South till July 13, 1861? If so, I would refer him to all the journals of the day for the first fact, and, for the second, to the following brief extract from Judge Nelson's opinion in "the Prize Cases," 2d of Black's U. S. Reports, already referred to. In this opinion Chief Justice Taney and Judges Catron and Clifford concurred with Judge Nelson. The whole case, it may be remarked in passing, which does not perhaps yet decisively adjudicate the great question of when and how far the federal government have made the confederates belligerents for all purposes, was decided by a bare majority of one judge. Says Mr. Justice Nelson, in giving the opinion of the minority of the court, at page 698:

"Upon the whole, after the most careful examination of this case which the pressure of other duties has admitted, I am compelled to the conclusion that no civil war existed

between this government and the States in insurrection, till recognized by the act of Congress of the 13th of July, 1861."

Is not this rather a damper, from his American voucher, for that notion of Historicus's, that the British government ought to have proclaimed neutrality and recognition of belligerency at the earliest possible moment after the issue of the President's blockade manifesto, say on the very same day, the 19th of April, 1861, if it had been possible to know of it by the Atlantic telegraph being then in operation?

Again Historicus says:

"The North created belligerent rights in both parties by making war upon the South." Perhaps most of his readers will accept this statement as intended for literal fact. If so, a grosser misrepresentation could not be made. The attack on Fort Sumter-the most ungallant and unrighteous challenge to combat that ever roused a free people to the defense of its government-must be understood, even by the shortest memoried Englishmen, as a confederate and not a Union stroke of war. I am willing to concede that Historicus might not have intended to turn this great fact in the world's history wrong side out; but, without this correction, I fear that very many of his literal minded readers would understand it otherwise; and I submit that he is therefore reprehensible for something worse than mere literary carelessness.

Another of the Times's publicist's misstatements, bearing upon the main issue which I have all along been discussing, is, that even Mr. Adams, the American minister, when he arrived in England, felt no sense of grievance at the hasty action of the English government in issuing the proclamation of neutrality and recognizing confederate belligerency, because he both ought to have been, and therefore doubtless was, prepared for it.

Historicus attempts to shape it as if the grievance lay in the want of proper personal consideration for the American minister, in not waiting for his expected arrival. But Mr. Adams, I venture to assume, felt the wrong, if it were such, on his country's account, not his own. It was the minister of the United States who ought to have been waited for, not Mr. Adams. Now, will Historicus dare assert that the American minister, as a matter of fact, was not both surprised and aggrieved by the haste with which the Queen's proclamation was got out, in anticipation of his reaching Liverpool? If this is his intimation, let us see if it is not a most unfounded one.

I have already quoted a part of Mr. Adams's first impressions of English action and opinion in his dispatch to his government, giving an account of his first interview with the British foreign secretary. I quoted the dispatch, it will be recollected, apropos of Lord Russell's explanation of the motives of the Queen's proclamation. I now recur again to the same document to see whether the American minister had any complaint to make at that time in regard to the circumstances under which the British government precipitated belligerent recognition.

I quote from the Diplomatic Correspondence accompanying the President's message, &c., for 1862, p. 92:*

*

[I told Earl Russell in this interview of May 18] "that I must be permitted to express the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the Queen's proclamation which at once raised the insurgents to a level of a belligerent state, and still more the language used in regard to it by her Majesty's ministers in both houses of Parliament, before and since. [I said further] I must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed at least to my mind a little more rapid than was absolutely called for by the occasion. * It did seem to me, therefore, as if a little more time might have been taken, to form a more complete estimate of the relative force of the contending parties, and of the probabilities of any long-drawn issue. And I did not doubt that the view taken by me would be that substantially taken both by the government and the people of the United States. They would inevitably infer the existence of an intention, more or less marked, to extend the struggle. I said this with

*

*

regret, as my own feelings had been and were of the most friendly nature." Nearly a month later, in a dispatch to his government, dated June 14, Mr. Adams gives an account of a further discussion of the same subject, when the first excitement of surprise might be supposed to have somewhat worn off:

* # #

"I next approached the most delicate portion of my task. I descanted upon the irritation produced in America by the Queen's proclamation, upon the construction almost universally given to it, as designed to aid the insurgents by raising them to the rank of a belligerent state. I ventured to repeat my regret that the proclamation had been so hastily issued, and adverted to the fact that it seemed contrary to the agreement, said to have been proposed by Mr. Dallas and concurred in by his lordship, to postpone all action until I should arrive possessed with all the views of the new administration. Our objection to this act (the proclamation) was that it was practically not an act of neutrality. It had depressed the spirits of the friends of the government. It had raised the courage of the insurgents. We construed it as adverse, because we could not see the necessity of such immediate haste. These people were not a navigating people. They had not a ship on the ocean, &c."

*

* See page 183, Vol. I, of this compilation.

The diplomatic correspondence of the American minister with his government at this period is full of language like the above on the part of Mr. Adams. How, in view of it, (and of course he has at some time read it,) Historicus can assert that Mr. Adams neither felt aggrieved nor had a right to feel aggrieved at the haste with which the British government acted-how can he still more dogmatically assert, as he does at the earlier point of his article already noticed, "that nothing has ever so much astonished him as to find that on either side of the Atlantic any man of ordinary intelligence and education should be capable of advancing or entertaining for an instant such a complaint as that of the premature concession of belligerent rights to the South by Great Britain"-is to me not less a matter of mystery than of regret.

Mr. Adams is certainly a person of "ordinary intelligence and education," even by Historicus's own showing. Does not he complain of it? And has he not continued to complain of it-earnestly and persistently-down to the present moment of his official connection with the British government? Has not Historicus himself devoted a long forensic of three columns of the Times, as recently ago as last December, to proving' that President Lincoln and his advisers, Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, were in the wrong in adhering to this error-" querulous complaint" he called it-for three years and upwards, because the Artigas precedent of the American government made against it? Have these eminent persons-(alas! that the great and good President, who so amply filled out the perfect character of a Christian ruler in loving mercy, dealing justly, and walking humbly before his God," is no longer with us to be quoted as a living authority, and that our sagacious, patriotic, and peace-seeking Secretary of State will perhaps have been maimed for future usefulness by the assassin's knife!*) -have the survivors of these eminent persons neither education nor intelligence to entitle them to a moment's mention?

I need not refer to other Americans, official or unofficial, who have shared and still continue to share in this "querulous complaint;" for if Historicus has never taken note of the acknowledged mouth-pieces of the American government, its President, its Secretary of State, and its minister to England, neither will he listen though I should produce the whole American people in testimony against him.

My only mystery is, how any one, even a correspondent of the London Times of three years' standing, should have the hardihood to throw out such bold and unwarranted misstatements as the above, supposing the object even to be the annihilation of an opponent as odious as Mr. Bright. My regret is, that one whose influence with Englishmen has hitherto been so deservedly potent in many particulars should run the risk of having it so largely impaired for the future by having any one examine and verify the reckless assertions and the unfounded reasoning which make up the staple of this late communication.

The last observation which I shall have to make upon Historicus's paper relates rather to its general tone, and the strain with which he rounds its swelling peroration, than to any distinct assertion of fact or enunciation of a proposition of law. It seems worth while to notice this tone or strain, because several eminent Englishmen, who have taken a prominent part of late in parliamentary discussions upon American affairs, and particularly the attorney general, Sir Roundell Palmer, whom Historicus on the present occasion seems to be imitating, have fallen into a habit of wondering at American "irritation" when things are said or done which are (erroneously) alleged by the speaker to be said or done after American fashion, and then attempting to soothe the so-called irritation by applying to it what may be called an American blister. Thus the attorney general wonders at our irritation at the English government's following American precedents of neutrality, he all the while misquoting or misapplying those precedents, and assuming a better aquaintance with them than he is willing to allow to the Americans themselves.

On the present occasion, Historicus is attempting to soothe our "irritation" at the hasty recognition of rebel belligerency a matter which, considering how hardly it has pressed upon us in vital particulars for the last four years, I think the world must give us credit for having borne with at least tolerable equanimity-with the following international blister.

Says Historicus:

*

"I am too well aware of the unhappy irritation which exists on the subject [of recognition of the rebels] in the public mind of America not to desire to offer the smallest contribution toward its removal." "Unhappily, there are too many persons on both sides of the Atlantic who indulge themselves in the wicked and dangerous amusement of inflaming passions which they ought to soothe." "My ambition is of quite another sort. I desire, by a recourse to those fixed and ascertained principles of law and maxims of justice which are enshrined in the records of nations and the conscience of mankind as the perpetual arbiters of truth and of peace, to remonstrate against an unreasonable anger and an unjust animosity. Surely, sir, these evil tongues,

* Since the publication of this last allusion, though not until within two days past, it will have rejoiced my American readers to see Mr. Secretary Seward's name again attached to American state

papers.

which are like a sharp sword, may rest sated with the blood which they have helped to [make?] flow. Sat prata biberunt."

All of which I venture to call the quintessence of cant; only equalled by Lord Russell's declaring to his envoy at the American seat of government, Lord Lyons, on the 6th day of May, 1861, how deeply he deplored the disruption of the American republic, and that "no expression of regret you may employ at the present deplorable state of affairs will too strongly declare the feelings with which her Majesty's government contemplate all the evils which cannot fail to result from it;" and yet leading off to the world (the tidings of the attack on Sumter being then less than ten days old) with the announcement that "the late Union" "has separated into distinct confederacies," and, "the government of the southern portion (having) duly constituted itself," her Majesty's government" 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"-and “her Majesty's government do not wish you to make any mystery of that [this] view!" That is, "the civil war," as he calls it, having so far lasted ten days, he instructs his envoy "to make no mystery" of telling the government to which he is accredited that its supremacy has gone to pieces, and that he shall henceforth consider himselɲ minister plenipotentiary to "the late Union!"

Great affection, that, for the ally "with whom her Majesty's government have at all times sought to cultivate the most friendly relations!" And quite of a piece with that friendly declaration made by the same organ of her Majesty's government in the House of Lords, as lately as April 29th, 1864, when he said, "for my part, I have never been able to feel much sympathy with either of the contending republics, the United States or the Confederate States!"-very much in the sense in which the affectionate wife looked on to see her husband grappling with the bear, coolly remarking that she did not care a straw which beat.

But Historicus feels bound to denounce those who make "an amusement" of saying irritating things, and desires to enter his protest against "an unreasonable anger." If he had felt bound to denounce those who make a business of saying irritating things, one would think that he must have hit hard at his great political exemplar and leader, the foreign secretary. At any rate, one would think that it would be hard to find a better illustration of irritating, either on principle or else for amusement, than is furnished by this letter of Earl Russell to the British envoy at Washington of May 6th. Of course, as Historicus would have us believe, the foreign secretary could not have meant to say anything irritating by that little piece of diplomatic effroutery and unfriendliness! Of course, it would have been a very "unreasonable anger" on the part of the American President and Secretary of State to have felt anything like resentment at a communication so full of ungenerous discouragement-not to say ill-timed impertinence -as that!

But leaving Earl Russell's insincere diplomacy in this connection to speak for itself, (and I do not doubt that by this time, regarding the present stage of our struggle, he is ready to admit that this dispatch of the 6th of May was a hasty and ill-advised communication on his part,) I pass on to notice the affected formalism, or-as I must call it -cant of his newspaper champion and expositor.

Historicus plants himself, then, upon those immutable principles of justice and maxims of law" which are enshrined in the records of nations and the conscience of mankind," and he abhors the evil example of slanderous tongues which help on bloodshed. Now, if I understand the sum and substance of the learned publicist's late communication to the Times, wherein occurs this piece of bold and swelling rhetoric, its upshot may be reduced to these two propositions:

(1.) That no person on either side of the Atlantic, of ordinary intelligence or education, has ever for an instant advanced or entertained a complaint on this score of the hasty recognition of rebel belligerency by England; and,

(2.) That if ever any ignorant or half-educated American has been so foolish as to make such a complaint heretofore, or is so benighted as to propose to make it hereafter, then that he is advised to consider himself estopped and annihilated by this new discovery of the blockade theory.

As to the first of these propositions, if it is altogether untrue in fact, (notoriously and flagrantly untrue, even within Historicus's own knowledge,) as I have endeavored to suggest, rather than to take the trouble of attempting to prove at length, is it worth while to talk about soothing irritation, and affect the Christian virtue of peace-loving, when the soothing process consists in an attempt to force a lie down the American throat, and then to palm off upon the British public the notion that the American throat has swallowed it?

As to the second of these propositions, I hope that I have shown that Earl Russell himself, the highest and best authority, never thought it worth while, even down to September, 1863, to put forth the blockade theory of recognition as that upon which he acted.

But leaving Earl Russell aside, for the present matter in hand, I believe it has been made to appear that this new invention of a blockade as the causa causans of belligerent