The United States have now completed what they have to say in this connection of the conduct of Great Britain during the insurrection. Some of the narrative may, in its perusal, appear minute, and to refer to transactions which will be claimed. on the part of Great Britain to have been conducted in conformity with some construction of alleged International Law. These transactions are, however, historically narrated; and even those which come nearest to a justification, as within some precedent, or some claim of neutral right, exhibit a disinclination to investigate, not to say a foregone conclusion of adverse decision. British municipal statute rather than recognized International Law was the standard of neutral duty; and the rigid rules of evidence of the English Common Law were applied to the complaints made in behalf of the United States, in striking contrast to the friendliness of construction, the alacrity of decision, and the ease of proof in the interests of the insurgents.

Before proceeding to relate in detail the acts of the several cruisers, which will constitute specific claims against Great Britain, the United . States ask the Tribunal to pause to see what has been already established.

September 25, 1869,

idence.

[300] *In a dispatch from Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, on the 25th of September, 1869, in which the Government of the The charges in Mr. United States, for the last time, recited diplomatically its Fish's instruction of grievances against Great Britain, certain statements were sustained by this ev made which were esteemed to be of sufficient importance to be transferred to Mr. Mountague Bernard's book. Mr. Bernard was pleased to say of these statements, that a "rhetorical color, to use an inoffensive phrase, [was] thrown over the foregoing train of assertions, which purport to be statements of fact." The United States now repeat those statements which Her Majesty's High Commissioner did them the honor to incorporate into his able work, and to comment upon, and they confidently insist that every statement therein contained has been more than made good by the evidence referred to in this paper. Those statements were as follows, the references to the proof being inserted for the convenience of the Tribunal:

"As time went on; as the insurrection from political came at length to be military; as the sectional controversy in the United States proceeded to exhibit itself in the organization of great armies and fleets, and in the prosecution of hostilities on a scale of gigantic magnitude,

then it was that the spirit of the Queen's Proclamation showed [301] itself in the event, seeing that in virtue of the Proclamation

maritime enterprises in the ports of Great Britain, which would otherwise have been piratical, were rendered lawful, [see Lord Campbell's speech in the House of Lords, May 16, 1861; cited ante, page 14,] and thus Great Britain became, and to the end continued to be, the arsenal, [sce Huse and Ferguson's letters and Gorgas's report of Huse's purchases,] the navy-yard, [see the foregoing account of Bullock's doings,] and the Treas ury, [see the foregoing evidence as to Fraser, Trenholm & Co.'s acts as depositaries,] of the insurgent Confederates.

"A spectacle was thus presented without precedent or parallel in the history of civilized nations. Great Britain, although the professed friend of the United States, yet, in time of avowed international peace, permitted [see the decision in the Alexandra case; also the refusals to proceed against the Florida, Alabama, and the rams] armed cruisers to be fitted out and harbored and equipped in her ports to cruise against the

1 Bernard's Neutrality of Great Britain, 378-380.

merchant-ships of the United States, and to burn and destroy them until our maritime commerce was swept from the ocean. [See Mr. Cobden's speech in the House of Commons, May 13, 1864.] Our merchantvessels were destroyed piratically by captors who had no ports of their own [see Earl Russell's speech in the House of Lords, April 26, 1864] in which to refit or to condemn prizes, and whose only [302] nationality was the quarter-deck of their ships, built, dispatched to sea, and, not seldom in name, still professedly owned in Great Britain. [See the evidence in regard to the transfers of the Georgia, and of the Shenandoah.]

"The Queen's Ministers excused themselves by alleged defects in the municipal law of the country. [See Earl Russell's constant pleas of want of sufficient proof to convict criminals] Learned counsel either advised that the wrongs committed did not constitute violations of the muni cipal law, or else gave sanction to artful devices of deceit to cover up such violations of law. [ [See the decision as to the Florida; as to the Alabama until she was ready to sail; as to the rams; and as to the oper ations at Nassau, Bermuda, and Liverpool.] And, strange to say, the courts of England or of Scotland, up to the very highest, were occupied month after month with juridical niceties and technicalities of statute construction in this respect, [see the Alexandra case,] while the Queen's Government itself, including the omnipotent Parliament, which might have settled these questions in an hour by appropriate legislation, sat with folded arms, as if unmindful of its international obligations, and suffered ship after ship to be constructed in its ports to wage [303] war on the United States. [See the decision of the Cabinet, communicated to Mr. Adams, February 13, 1863, and Lord Palmerston's speech in the House of Commons, March 27, 1863.]

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"When the defects of the existing laws of Parliament had become apparent, the Government of the United States earnestly entreated the Queen's Ministers to provide the required remedy, as it would have been easy to do, by a proper act of Parliament; but this the Queen's Government refused. [See the account of Lord Russell's interview with Mr. Adams, February 13, 1863.]

"On the present occasion, the Queen's Ministers seem to have committed the error of assuming that they needed not to look beyond their own local law, enacted for their own domestic convenience, and might, under cover of the deficiencies of that law, disregard their sovereign duties toward another Sovereign Power. Nor was it, in our judgment, any adequate excuse for the Queen's Ministers to profess extreme tenderness of private rights, or apprehension of actions for damages, in case of any attempt to arrest the many ships which, either in England or Scotland, were, with ostentatious publicity, being constructed to cruise against the United States. [See the evidence as to the [304] Florida, the Georgia, the Alabama, the rams, the Bermuda, the Tallahassee, the Pampero, the Rappahannock, the Laurel, and other vessels.]

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"But although such acts of violation of law were frequent in Great Britain, and susceptible of complete technical proof, notorious, flaunted directly in the face of the world, varnished over, if at all, with the shal lowest pretexts of deception, yet no efficient step appears to have been taken by the British Government to enforce the execution of its municipal laws or to vindicate the majesty of its outraged sovereign power.

[The Alabama, the Florida, the Georgia, and the Shenandoah escaped. The rams were seized, but never condemned; no guilty party was ever punished; Bullock and Prioleau were never interfered with.]

"And the Government of the United States cannot believe-it would conceive itself wanting in respect for Great Britain to impute-that the Queen's Ministers are so much hampered by juridical difficulties that the local administration is thus reduced to such a state of legal impotency as to deprive the Government of capacity to uphold its sovereignty against local wrong-doers, or its neutrality as regards other Sover

eign Powers. [Contrast with this the course of the British Gov[305] *ernment and Parliament during the Franco-German war.]

"If, indeed, it were so, the causes of reclamation on the part of the United States would only be the more positive and sure, for the law of nations assumes that each Government is capable of discharging its international obligations; and, perchance, if it be not, then the absence of such capability is itself a specific ground of responsibility for consequences. [This statement probably will not be denied.]

"But the Queen's Government would not be content to admit, nor will the Government of the United States presume to impute to it, such political organization of the British Empire as to imply any want of legal ability on its part to discharge, in the amplest manner, all its duties of sovereignty and amity toward other Powers.

"It remains only in this relation to refer to one other point, namely, the question of negligence; neglect on the part of officers of the British Government, whether superior or subordinate, to detain Confederate cruisers, and especially the Alabama, the most successful of the depredators on the commerce of the United States.

"On this point the President conceives that little needs now to be said, for various cogent reasons:

[306] * "First, the matter has been exhaustively discussed already by this Department, or by the successive American Ministers. Then, if the question of negligence be discussed with frankness, it must be treated in this instance as a case of extreme negligence, which Sir William Jones has taught us to regard as equivalent or approximate to evil intention. The question of negligence, therefore, cannot be presented without danger of thought or language disrespectful toward the Queen's Ministers; and the President, while purposing, of course, as his sense of duty requires, to sustain the rights of the United States in all their utmost amplitude, yet intends to speak and act in relation to Great Britain in the same spirit of international respect which he expects of her in relation to the United States, and he is sincerely desirous that all discussions between the Governments may be so conducted as not only to prevent any aggravation of existing differences, but to tend to such reasonable and amicable determination as best becomes two great nations of common origin and conscious dignity and strength.

"I assume, therefore, pretermitting detailed discussion in this respect, that the negligence of the officers of the British Government in [307] the matter of the Alabama, at least, was gross and inexcusable,

and such as indisputably to devolve on that Government full responsibility for all the depredations committed by her. Indeed, this conclusion seems in effect to be conceded in Great Britain. [See the preface to Earl Russell's Speeches and Dispatches.] At all events, the United States conceive that the proofs of responsible negligence in this matter are so clear that no room remains for debate on that point, and it should be taken for granted in all future negotiations with Great Britain."

WHEREIN GREAT BRITAIN FAILED TO PERFORM ITS DU. TIES AS A NEUTRAL.-THE INSURGENT CRUISERS.

"In the first place, I am sorry to observe that the unwarrantable practice of building ships in this country, to be used as vessels of war against a State with which Her Majesty is at peace, still continues. Her Majesty's Government had hoped that this attempt to make the territorial waters of Great Britain the place of preparation for warlike armaments against the United States might be put an end to by prosecutions and by seizure of the vessels built in pursuance of contracts made with the Confederate agents. But facts which are unhappily too notorious, and correspondence which has been put into the hands of Her Majesty's Government by the Minister of the Government of the United States, show that resort is had to evasion and subtlety in order to escape the penalties of the law; that a vessel is bought in one place, that her armament is prepared in another, and that both are sent to some distant port beyond Her Majesty's jurisdiction, and that thus an armed steamship is fitted out to cruise against the commerce of a Power in amity with Her Majesty. A crew, composed partly of British subjects, is procured separately; wages are paid to them for an unknown service. They are dispatched, perhaps, to the coast of France, and there, or elsewhere, are engaged to serve in a Confederate man-of-war.

"Now, it is very possible that by such shifts and stratagems, the penalties of the existing law of this country, nay, of any law that could be enacted, may be evaded; but the offense thus offered to Her Majesty's authority and dignity by the de facto rulers of the Confederate States, whom Her Majesty acknowledges as belligerents, and whose agents in the United Kingdom enjoy the benefit of our hospitality in quiet security, remains the same. It is a proceeding totally unjustifiable, and manifestly offensive to the British Crown."-Earl Russell's Letter to Messrs. Mason, Slidell, and Mann, February 13, 1865. Vol. I, page 630.

which the United

unwarranted and

The Tribunal of Arbitration will probably agree with Earl Rus[310] sell in his statement to the insurgent agents, that Earl Russell de "the practice of building ships" in Great Britain "to nuces the acts of be used as vessels of war" against the United States, and States coulin to the "attempts to make the territorial waters of Great Brit- tally unjustifiable. ain the place of preparation for warlike armaments against the United States" "in pursuance of contracts made with the Confederate agents," were unwarrantable" and "totally unjustifiable."

British territory

val operations of the

British territory was, during the whole struggle, the base of the naval operations of the insurgents. The first serious fight had scarcely taken place before the contracts were made the base of the ne in Great Britain for the Alabama and the Florida. The insurgents. contest was nearly over when Waddell received his orders in Liverpool to sail thence in the Laurel in order to take command of the Shenandoah and to visit the Arctic Ocean on a hostile cruise.1

Their arsenal.

There also was the arsenal of the insurgents, from whence they drew their munitions of war, their arms, and their supplies. It is true that it has been said, and may again be said, that it was no infraction of the law of nations to furnish such supplies. But, while it is not maintained that belligerents may infringe upon the rights which neutrals have to manufacture and deal in such military supplies

in the ordinary course of commerce, it is asserted with confidence [311] that a neutral *ought not to permit a belligerent to use the neutral soil as the main if not the only base of its military supplies, during a long and bloody contest, as the soil of Great Britain was used by the insurgents.

1 Vol. III, page 461.