blockade. That there has been and still is a very strong inclination in the country to get rid of it is unquestionable. That but for its unavoidable connexion with possibilities of consequences in other and not very remote complications, an attempt of the kind would have been made, I am strongly inclined to believe. The argument that has overborne all these tendencies is drawn from the fear that such a step would only lead in the same direction with the preceding ones taken at Paris. It would ultimately deprive Britannia of her power longer to rule the waves. The "entente cordiale" with France is not yet hearty enough to make such a result altogether acceptable even to the fancy. Neither are the relations with Russia so friendly as to render a voluntary release of the main instrument to keep her in check, a proposition to be entertained with favor. For these reasons no countenance will be given to any remonstrance against our blockade; neither will the general reasoning of Mr Cobden, in favor of limiting the right of blockade, find much response among people in authority. Even the admissions rendered necessary to establish a position in reclaiming the rebel emissaries on board the Trent will be limited, as far as may be, to shut the door against further concessions. It will then continue to depend upon the degree of concert established among those nations of the world which have ever upheld neutral rights, whether any real advance be made in the recognized doctrines of international law or not, just as it has done in preceding times. Great Britain will concede only from a conviction that such a course is the safest for herself. The remedy for other countries is obvious. It is to unite in the labor of raising the obligations of specific contracts to the level of permanent international law, and to enforce the observation of a consistent system of policy upon any single power whenever it may venture to set up the promptings of its immediate interest as the only rule of action it thinks proper to abide by. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, SIR: I have no despatches from you since the date of my last acknowledgments. The events of the week have been striking and significant :-The capture of Newbern by Burnside, with the consequent evacuation of Beaufort and Fort Macon by the insurgents, and the destruction by themselves of their own piratical steamer Nashville; the rout of the insurgents, on their retreat from Winchester to Strasburg, by Shields; the victory of General Pope at New Madrid, and the bombardment of Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, by Commodore Foote. A movement of the main army of the Potomac down the river to Fortress Monroe is quietly going on, and demonstrations will soon be made against Norfolk and Richmond. We suppose our ocean expedition against New Orleans must, at this time, have reached the mouth of the Mississippi. There are some indications of reviving loyalty in Virginia and Tennessee. The bonds of the insurgents are now understood to be everywhere at a discount of seventy-five per cent. While it seems impossible that their organization can be longer maintained, there are abundant indications that they will find guerilla warfare even more hopeless than privateering has proved to be. How much longer can the European states resist the ideas concerning this war which we submitted to them a year ago, and which they then so inconsiderately rejected? SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception from the department of despatches numbered from 199 to 208, inclusive. It will have come to your knowledge, by the reception of my despatch No. 131, of the 13th of March, that I had already acted in conformity with the suggestions contained in your No. 207, dated on the 11th, by addressing a note to Earl Russell in remonstrance against the notorious activity of the subjects of Great Britain in efforts to set at nought the blockade. To that communication I have not yet received a reply. The reception of a letter from Mr. Dudley, the consul at Liverpool, containing additional information to the same effect, supplied me with a new occasion to write to his lordship in the spirit of your despatch No. 196, of the 27th of February. A copy of this latest note, dated the 26th instant, is herewith transmitted. After a full conversation with Mr. Morse, we both arrived at the conclusion that the evidence in our possession would not sustain so broad a position as that contemplated in your letter; for, whatever may have been the purposes of the confederate emissaries and their friends pending the difficulties connected with the Trent case-and I am inclined to believe they went to the full extent indicated-I fancy they have shrunk within much smaller compass since that speck of war has disappeared. The activity is now mainly directed to the expediting of every species of supply through the means of steam vessels, which may themselves be turned to some account in the way of illicit trade or of piratical warfare. Of these last the Oreto seems to be the only one likely to prove formidable. I thought it, therefore, a good opportu nity to place upon his lordship the responsibility of the consequences of permitting himself to be deluded by what I cannot help thinking the wilful blindness and credulous partiality of the British authorities at Liverpool. From the experience of the past, I have little or no confidence in the success of any application that may be made of the kind. It is not the less important, for all that, to perpetuate the testimony for future use. That Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in struggling with a monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect way possible to verify its prejudgment, will probably be the verdict made up against her by posterity on a calm comparison of the evidence. I do not mean to say that such has been the course of the whole people. A considerable portion of them in all classes have been actuated by nobler views. There is, throughout England, a great deal of warm though passive sympathy with America. But there is likewise an extraordinary amount of fear as well as of jealousy. And it is these last passions which have pervaded the mass of the governing classes, until they have inscribed for the whole nation a moral and political record which no subsequent action will ever avail to obliterate. * I am bound to notice, in several of your late despatches, a strong disposition to press upon the British government an argument for a retraction of its original error in granting to the rebels the rights of a belligerent. There may come a moment when such a proceeding might seem to me likely to be of use. But I must frankly confess that I do not see it yet. The very last speech of Lord Russell in the House of Lords is, from beginning to end, inspired by an opposite idea. The final disruption of the United States and the ultimate recognition of the seceding States are as visible in every word of that address as they were in the letter of the same nobleman to Mr. Edwards on the 14th of May last. Lord Palmerston has entertained the same conviction. * *The foreign policy of the government, upon which its friends almost exclusively depend for what is left it of popularity in the nation, rests upon this basis. * * * For these reasons I respectfully submit to your consideration my doubts about the expediency of moving in this direction now. Indeed, should it so happen that the existing indications of an early termination of the struggle continue to multiply, there will be little occasion for further remonstrance of any kind here; for the disposition to help a party once that it is felt to be certainly sinking is not very common among either political or commercial men; and there are no others in great Britain who would stop to shed a tear over the fallen fortunes of the quasi belligerent of their own creation. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. [Enclosures.] 1. Copy of Mr. Adams's note of March 25, to Earl Russell, on the Oreto, &c. 2. Copy of Mr. Consul Dudley's note to Mr. Adams, of March 22, about the arming of the Oreto. Mr. Adams to Earl Russell. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, MY LORD: I have the honor to submit to your consideration the copy of a letter received from the consul of the United States at Liverpool, touching the case of the steam gunboat Oreto, which I have already made the subject of a communication some time ago. It is with great reluctance that I am driven to the conviction that the representations made to your lordship of the purposes and destination of that vessel were delusive, and that though at first it may have been intended for service in Sicily, yet that such an intention has been long since abandoned in fact, and the pretence has been held up only the better to conceal the true object of the parties engaged. That object is to make war on the United States. All the persons thus far known to be most connected with the undertaking are either directly employed by the insurgents in the United States of America, or residents of Great Britain notoriously in sympathy with and giving aid and comfort to them on this side of the water. It is with the deepest regret that the President directs me to submit to her Majesty's government a representation of the unfortunate effect produced upon the minds of the people of the United States from the conviction that nearly all of the assistance that is now obtained from abroad by the persons still in arms against their government, and which enables them to continue the struggle, comes from the kingdom of Great Britain and its dependencies. Neither is this impression relieved by the information that the existing municipal laws are found to be insufficient, and do not furnish means of prevention adequate to the emergency. The duty of nations in amity with each other would seem to be plain, not to suffer their good faith to be violated by ill-disposed persons within their borders merely from the inefficacy of their prohibitory policy. Such is the view which my government has been disposed to take of its own obligations in similar cases, and such, it doubts not, is that of all foreign nations with which it is at peace. It is for that reason I deprecate the inference that may be drawn from the issue of the investigation which your lordship caused to be made in the case of the Oreto, should that vessel be ultimately found issuing safely from this kingdom and preying on the commerce of the people of the United States. Not doubting myself the sincerity and earnest desire of your lordship to do all that is within your power to fulfil every requirement of interna tional amity, it is to be feared that all the favorable effect of it may be neutralized by the later evidence of adverse results. It is no part of my intention to imply the want of fidelity or of good-will in any quarter. I desire to confine myself closely within the pale of my duty, a representation of the precise causes of uneasiness between the two countries, and an earnest desire to remove them. Firmly convinced that the actual position of things in connexion with the hostile equipment in British waters by no means does justice to the true disposition of her Majesty's government, I am anxious to place the matter before your lordship in such a light as to obtain the evidence more perfectly to establish the truth. I am further instructed to say that, well aware of the embarrassment and losses sustained by the nations with which the United States are in amity, through the operation of the restrictive measures to which the government has felt itself obliged to have recourse in its efforts to suppress the insurrection within its borders, it has ever been its desire to hasten the moment when it might be practicable to rescind them, consistently with the attainment of its great object. But to that end much must necessarily depend upon the degree in which co-operation with its policy, or the contrary, may be experienced from without. It is obvious that just in proportion to the success of the efforts made by the ill-intentioned people of foreign countries to violate the blockade must be the endeavors to enforce it with increased stringency. So also in proportion to the success of such persons in supplying, by violation of law, the insurgents with the means of continuing their resistance must be the delay in restoring to all honest people the customary facilities of trade and intercourse to which they are justly entitled. It has not been without great regret that the government has been compelled to observe the extent to which her Majesty's flag has been abused to subserve the purposes of the disaffected, and thus to continue the present depressed condition of legitimate trade. A very great proportion of the vessels which attempted to violate the blockade appear to be fitted out directly from Great Britain or some of her dependencies. The effect of permitting such violations of good faith to go unnoticed by government is not merely to create an unfortunate degree of irritation in America, implicating many far beyond the sphere of the unworthy parties concerned in producing it, but to postpone proportionately the prospect of bringing about a better state of things. It is for this reason, as well as from a desire earnestly felt by the President to maintain unbroken all the customary relations of amity with Great Britain, that I have been directed to make the present representation. Any suggestion of the means best adapted to remedy the evils complained of is deemed a matter exclusively within the competency of those in whom the decision to act is vested. Disclaiming every wish to solicit more than my government would in its turn be prepared under similar circumstances to concede, and entertaining full confidence in the disposition of her Majesty's ministers on their part to act to the utmost of their ability in the same spirit, I pray your lordship to accept the assurances of the highest consideration with which I have the honor to be, my lord, your most obedient servant, Right Hon. EARL RUSSELL, &c., &c., &c. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Mr. Dudley to Mr. Adams. UNITED STATES CONSULATE, SIR: The Oreto is still in the river. A flatboat has taken a part of her armament to her. A part of the crew of the steamer Annie Childs, which came to this port loaded with cotton, have just left my office. They tell me that Captain Bulloch is to command the Oreto, and that four other officers for this vessel came over in the Childs with them. The names of three are Young, Law, and Maffet, or Maffit; the fourth was called Eddy. The two first are lieutenants, and the two last named midshipmen. They further state that these officers during the voyage wore naval uniforms; that they came on the Childs at a place called Smithville, some twenty miles down the river from Wilmington; that it was talked about and understood by all on board that their object in coming was to take command of this vessel which was being built in England for the southern confederacy. They further state that it was understood in Wilmington before they left that several war vessels were being built in England for the south. As they were coming up the river in the Childs as they passed the Oreto she dipped her flag to the Childs. I have had this last from several sources, and the additional fact that the same evening after the arrival of this steamer a dinner was given on the Oreto to the officers who came over in the Childs. I understand she will make direct for Madeira and Nassau. I have the honor to be your obedient servant, SIR: I have the honor to transmit the copies of three notes received by me from Lord Russell. One of these is in reply to a letter of mine of the 28th of December, based upon an affidavit of Frederick Williams, sent to me by Mr. Morse. The |