as an offset to the simple story of injuries which has been told in this paper. unnecessary. Mr. Mountague Bernard's list of detained Comment upon it is vessels 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 the 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 case of proof in the interest 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. by Great Britain. The charges in Mr. Fish's instruc 25, 1869, sustained by this evidence. In a dispatch from Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, on tion of September the 25th of September, 1869, in which the Government of the United States, for the last time, recited diplomatically its grievances against Great Britain, certain statements were 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 phase, [was] thrown over the foregoing train of assertions, which purport to be statements of fact." 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: The "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 itself in Bernard's Neutrality of Great Britain, 378-380. The charges in Mr. Fish's instruc 25, 1869, sustained by this evidence. the event, seeing that in virtue of the Proclamation maritime enterprises in the ports of Great Britain, tion of September 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, [see 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 treasury, [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 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 merchant vessels 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 The charges in or to condemn prizes, and whose only nationality Mr. Fish's instruc 25, 1869, sustained by this evidence. tion of September 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 municipal 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 operations 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 The charges in Mr. Fish's instruction of September 25, 1869, sustained in its ports to wage war on the United States. [See the decision of the Cabinet, communicated to Mr. Adams, February 13, 1863, and Lord Palmers by this evidence. ton's speech in the House of Commons, March 27, 1863.] "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 |