of war, which were built, manned, armed, equipped, and fitted out in British ports, and despatched therefrom by or through the agency of British subjects, and which were harbored, sheltered, provided, and furnished as occasion required, during their devastating career, in ports of the realm, or in ports of British colonies in nearly all parts of the globe.

The table is not supposed to be complete, but it presents such a recapitulation of the claims as the evidence thus far received in this Department enables me to furnish. Deficiencies will be supplied hereafter. Most of the claims have been from time to time brought by yourself, as the President directed, to the notice of her Majesty's government, and made the subject of earnest and continued appeal. That appeal was intermitted only when her Majesty's government, after elaborate discussions, refused either to allow the claims, or to refer them to a joint claims commission, or to submit the question. of liability therein to any form of arbitration. The United States, on the other hand, have all the time insisted upon the claims as just and valid. This attitude has been, and doubtless continues. to be, well understood by her Majesty's government. The considerations which inclined this government to suspend for a time the pressure of the claims upon the attention of Great Britain were these:

The political excitements in Great Britain, which arose during the progress of the war, and which did not immediately subside at its conclusion, seemed to render that period somewhat unfavorable to a deliberate examination of the very grave questions which the claims involve.

The attention of this government was, during the same period, largely engrossed by questions at home or abroad of peculiar interest and urgency. The British government has seemed to us to have been similarly engaged. These circumstances have now passed away, and a time has arrived when it is believed that the subject may receive just attention in both countries.

The principles upon which the claims are asserted by the United States have been explained by yourself in an elaborate correspondence with Earl Russell and Lord Clarendon. In this respect, there seems to be no deficiency to be supplied by this Department. Thus, if it should be the pleasure of her Majesty's government to revert to the subject in a friendly spirit, the materials for any new discussion

on your part will be found in the records of your legation, properly and duly prepared for use by your own hand. It is the President's desire that you now call the attention of Lord Stanley to the claims in a respectful but earnest manner, and inform him that, in the President's judgment, a settlement of them has become urgently necessary to a reëstablishment of entirely friendly relations between the United States and Great Britain.

This government, while it thus insists upon these particular claims, is neither desirous nor willing to assume an attitude unkind or unconciliatory towards Great Britain. If on her part there are claims, either of a commercial character, or of boundary, or of commercial or judicial regulation, which her Majesty's government esteem important to bring under examination at the present time, the United States would, in such case, be not unwilling to take them into consideration in connection with the claims which are now presented on their part, and with a view to remove at one time, and by one comprehensive settlement, all existing causes of misunderstanding.

In asking an early attention to the subject, it is supposed that you may, with propriety, dwell upon some of its important features, which, although they have heretofore been indicated by you, may nevertheless not hitherto have sufficiently engaged the attention of the British government.

In the beginning of the year 1861, the people of the United States had, by means of commercial enterprise at home and abroad, built up and realized the enjoyment of a foreign trade second only among the nations, and but little inferior to that of Great Britain. They had habitually refrained from wars, and especially from intervention in the political affairs of other nations. Mutual recollections of ancient conflicts which for three-fourths of a century had held the two countries in a state of partial alienation and irritation had subsided, and what was supposed to be a lasting friendship had been established between the United States and Great Britain; at this moment a domestic disturbance rose in our country, which, although it had severe peculiarities, yet was in fact only such a seditious insurrection as is incidental to national progress in every state.

In its incipient stage, it was foreseen here that the insurgents would, as in all cases insurgents must, appeal to foreign states for intervention. It was supposed that their appeal, if successful

anywhere, would be successful in Great Britain, popularly regarded in both countries in one sense as a kindred nation, in another sense as a rival, and in a third, by reason of the great expansion of manufacture, a dependent upon the cotton-planting interest of the southern states, which were to become the theatre of the insurrection. It was foreseen that British intervention, even though stopping many degrees short of actual alliance, or even of recognition of the insurgents as a political power, must nevertheless inevitably protract the apprehended civil war, and aggravate its evils and sufferings on the land, while it must materially injure, if not altogether destroy, our national commerce.

When the insurrection began, the United States believed themselves to hold a position and prestige equal in consideration and influence to that of any other nation; and it was foreseen that foreign intervention in behalf of the insurgents, even to the extent only of recognizing them as a belligerent, must directly, and more or less completely, derogate from the just and habitual influence of the Republic. It was foreseen that, should the insurgents receive countenance, aid, and support, in any degree, from Great Britain, the insurrection might be ripened under such influences into a social war, which would involve the life of the nation itself. The United States did not fail to give warning to her Majesty's government that the American people could not be expected to submit without resistance to the endurance of any of these great evils, through the means of any failure of Great Britain to preserve the established relations of peace, amity, and good neighborhood with the United States.

The earnest remonstrances thus made seem to the United States to have failed to receive just and adequate consideration. While as yet the civil war was undeveloped, and the insurgents were without any organized military force or a treasury, and long before they pretended to have a flag, or to put either an armed ship or even a merchant vessel upon the sea, her Majesty's government, acting precipitately, as we have always complained, proclaimed the insurgents a belligerent power, and conceded to them the advantages and privileges of that character, and thus raised them in regard to the prosecution of an unlawful armed insurrection to an equality with the United States. This government has not denied that it was within the sovereign authority of Great Britain to assume this attitude;

but, on the other hand, it insisted in the beginning, and has continually insisted, that the assumption of that attitude, unnecessarily and prematurely, would be an injurious proceeding for which Great Britain would immediately come under a full responsibility to jus tify it, or to render redress and indemnity. The United States remain of the opinion that the proclamation referred to has not been justified on any ground of either necessity or moral right, and that, therefore, it was an act of wrongful intervention, a departure from the obligations of existing treaties, and without sanction of the law of nations.

Upon a candid review of the history of the rebellion, it is believed that Great Britain will not deny that a very large number of the Queen's subjects combined themselves and operated as active allies with the insurgents, aided them with supplies, arms, munitions, men, and many ships of war. The chief reply which her Majesty's government has made to this complaint, has been that they apprehended inconveniences, from being involved in the contest, unless they should declare themselves neutrals; and, further, that they did, in fact, put forth all the efforts to prevent such aggressions by British subjects which the laws of Great Britain permitted.

Without descending on this occasion so far as to insist, as we always have insisted, that there was a deficiency of energy in the respect adverted to, you may remind Lord Stanley that, in the view which we have taken of the subject, the misconduct of the aggressors was a direct and legitimate fruit of the premature and injurious proclamation of belligerency, against which we had protested, and that the failure of her Majesty's government to prevent or counteract the aggressions of British subjects was equally traceable to the

same unfortunate cause.

When the municipal laws of Great Britain proved in practical application to be inadequate to the emergency, the British nation omitted, for various reasons which seemed to us insufficient, to revise these laws, and the United States were left to maintain a conflict with a domestic enemy which British sympathy, aid, and assistance had rendered formidable, and in which British subjects continued throughout to be active allies, without any effective interposition by her Majesty's government.

The claims upon which we insist are of large amount. They affect the interest of many thousand citizens of the United States

in various parts of the Republic. The justice of the claims is sustained by the universal sentiment of the people of the United States. Her Majesty's government, we think, cannot reasonably expect that the government of the United States can consent, under such circumstances, to forego their prosecution to some reasonable and satisfactory conclusion. This aspect of the case is, however, less serious than that which I have next to present. A disregard of the obligations of treaties, and of international law, manifested by one state, so injurious to another as to awaken a general spirit of discontent and dissatisfaction among its people, is sure, sooner or later, to oblige that people, in a spirit of self-defence, if not of retaliation, in the absence of any other remedy, to conform their own principles and policy, in conducting their intercourse with the of fending state, to that of the party from whom the injury proceeds.

Subsequently to the time when her Majesty's government disallowed the claims in question, and determined to exclude them from consideration, a part of the British realm, and certain of the British North American provinces, became the scenes of sedition, threatening insurrection and revolution against the government of Great Britain. Native-born British subjects residing here, some of whom have been naturalized, and more of whom have not been naturalized in the United States, sympathizing in those revolutionary movements, attempted to organize on our soil, and within our jurisdiction, auxiliary land and naval forces for invasions of Ireland and Canada. The government of the United States, without waiting for remonstrances, appeals, or protests from her Majesty's government, effectively put their municipal laws into execution and prevented the threatened invasions.

Thus we have seen ruinous British warlike expeditions against the United States practically allowed and tolerated by her Majesty's government, notwithstanding remonstrance; and we have seen similar unlawful attempts in this country against Great Britain disallowed and defeated by the direct and unprompted action of the government of the United States.

Her Majesty's government, we think, cannot reasonably object to acknowledge our claims, and to adopt such measures as will assure the American people that their friendly policy of non-intervention in the domestic controversies of Great Britain will be made reciprocal and equal.