fact of its being between neutral ports is not conclusive, for it is plainly supposable that a vessel containing contraband of war might make a circuitous voyage, in order to be able to say if captured that she was sailing from one neutral port to another. In the case of the 'Trent' nothing of the kind has even been suggested, and could not be without a flagrant disregard of truth. The real distinction to be observed is this:-If the vessel is chartered by, or can in any fair sense be considered as performing the voyage in the service of one of the belligerents, she becomes liable to seizure and condemnation in the Prize Courts of the other. It is laid down by an American writer-Mr., now Judge, Duerin his work on Insurance,' that 'a neutral owner who has suffered his vessel to be employed by a belligerent Power or its officers, for purposes immediately or mediately connected with the operations of the war, if the vessel is captured in the employment, is never permitted to assert his claim. The vessel while thus employed was as truly the vessel of the enemy as if she had been such by the documentary title.'

In the case of 'The Friendship'* decided in our own Courts, Lord Stowell condemned the vessel on the ground that it was 'the case of a vessel letting herself out in a distinct manner, under a contract with the enemy's Government, to convey a number of persons described as being in the service of the enemy, with their military character travelling with them, and to restore them to their country in that character.' He added, that if a military officer in the service of a belligerent belligerent was going merely as an ordinary passenger, as other passengers do, and at his own expense, the question would present itself in a very different form.' In Lawrence's edition of Wheaton's Elements of International Law,' he says, p. 507 :-'It is conceived that the carrying of dispatches can only invest a neutral vessel with a hostile character in the case of its being employed for that purpose by the belligerent' [exactly as put by Lord Stowell], and that it cannot affect with criminality either a regular postal packet or a merchant ship which takes a despatch in its ordinary course of conveying letters, and with the contents of which the master must necessarily be ignorant. This view, it is supposed, is not inconsistent with the text which refers to a fraudulent carrying of the despatches of the enemy.' But we really need not say anything farther on the subject of despatches, for not only were none found on board the Trent, but they were not even asked for. Admitting what cannot be denied, that the voyage of the vessel was a bonâ fide voyage from a neutral port to a

* 6 Robinson's Admiralty Reports, p. 420.

neutral

neutral port, the seizure of the Commissioners was precisely the same act as if it had occurred between Dover and Calais, or as if a privateer of the Confederate States had taken Mr. Secretary Seward out of one of the Cunard steamers between Liverpool and New York. We do not at all insist that the Southerners were protected in their character of envoys, for as neither England nor France had acknowledged the Confederate States as an independent Power, they had in the eye of the law no official status, and could not claim any immunity as accredited to a foreign government, supposing such immunity to exist in favour of ambassadors,—a question which therefore we need not discuss.

The case in fact lies in a nutshell. We claim for our flag the right to cover with its protection all persons found under it where the vessel is not employed directly or indirectly for the purpose of conveying them in the service of a belligerent. England has challenged America to produce one single legal. authority to vindicate the act of which we complain. The only case cited against us as directly in point-the case of Mr. Laurens -broke down so signally that we think the Trans-Atlantic lawyers will in future be careful how they venture to quote precedents. All that the Federal States Government can urge is that we did much the same thing ourselves before the war of 1812, when we stopped American ships and took out of them seamen whom we claimed as British. In point of fact it was not the same thing, for we merely asserted, on the part of the Crown, a right to the services of our own sailors; we imputed to the ships in which those sailors might be found no breach of neutrality, and consequently we had no right to take them before a Prize Court, and therefore, if the right was to be exercised at all, it was necessary that it should be exercised by our naval officers. But we do not undertake to justify all our acts half a century ago. The law of impressment has been abolished, and it is very certain that during the last fifty years nothing of the kind has been attempted or even imagined by England. The law of nations is deduced from the actual practice of nations, and as we during our last war (though sorely in need of sailors) did not revive our claim to take our sailors out of American ships, the claim must be held to have been conclusively abandoned. We have expressly given up even the claim to visit vessels which our cruisers more than suspected to be slavers, if they hoisted the American flag. If the United States Government thought our proceedings in former times so derogatory to the national honour that rather than submit to them they declared war, with what face could the Federal Government now justify, an act of the same kind? Either we were ex hypothesi wrong in 1812, and, therefore, if the

cases

cases are similar, the seizure of the Commissioners was wrong also, or we were then right, and the United States had no justifiable cause of war. But we know that the American Government has never for a moment conceded the right which we claimed in 1812, and has upheld the inviolability of the national flag with almost unexampled strictness. It would therefore have given the lie to all its previous professions if it had refused to make reparation for an act which, if we had committed it, would have been indignantly denounced in America as the worst outrage against the rights of neutrals which England had ever ventured to perpetrate. Nor did we stand alone in asserting the justice of our demand. The moral support which Great Britain has received from the other European Powers in this dispute is without parallel. France, Prussia, Austria, and Belgium, have all pressed upon the Lincoln Cabinet their conviction that we are right. M. Thouvenel, in a remarkably clear and able despatch to the French Minister at Washington, argued our case with unanswerable force, and in it he declared that the Washington Cabinet cannot, without infringing those principles which all neutral powers are alike interested in maintaining, nor without putting itself in contradiction with its own conduct up to the present time, give its approbation of the conduct of the commander of the "San Jacinto.'

There ought, then, to have been no difficulty nor demur in disavowing the act of Captain Wilkes, which, we are told, was not authorised by his Government, and of which he ostentatiously took the whole responsibility upon himself; nor any delay in releasing the prisoners. This is what we should expect from France or any other European Power. But in America the pressure of mob opinion was brought to bear with disastrous weight upon a question the determination of which ought to have been left to the calm and dispassionate judgment of reflecting men, responsible for the character which the United States have to maintain in their relations with Foreign Powers. The Secretary of the Navy openly expressed his approval of Captain Wilkes's conduct in capturing the defenceless passengers of an unarmed merchantman; accordingly, the prisoners were accepted by the Government, and subjected to close and severe confinement for many weeks. The tone of the American press was that of jubilant joy. Public meetings were held in honour of the hero of the hour, and public dinners were given, at one of which a Judge had the indecency to commit himself to a bombastic eulogy of an act, the legality of which the law officers had yet to

consider.

It may be said—indeed it was said—that we are not to mistake the

the ravings of the mob for the voice of the Government, nor the fury of the press that panders to the passions of the populace for the deliberate judgment of the nation. But, unfortunately, in America the mob and the press are all-powerful. It has long been a subject of sorrowful remark that the best men are practically excluded from all share in the direction of her policy. The elections are managed by committees, filled, as they are described by a French writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes, with briefless lawyers, with doctors without patients, with schemers and place-hunters, who devote themselves to the triumph of the party in order to be elected to some little salaried place. All the chances are for the intriguers, if success be obtained. And it is these committees which name the delegates for the Convention, which has to choose the party candidate. The immense majority of the citizens have no other alternative than to accept these nominations as they stand, or renounce the exercise of their vote.' Mr. Chancellor Kent says, in his 'Commentaries,' 'The progress and impulse of popular opinion is rapidly destroying every constitutional check, every conservative element, intended by the sages who framed the earliest American Constitutions as safeguards against the abuses of popular suffrage.'

It is very instructive to observe the sycophantic tone of the North towards France, in contrast with its tone towards England. The conduct of France in proclaiming neutrality between the two belligerents has been precisely the same as that of Great Britain. But, so far as we know, not a word of irritation has been spoken against her. It was hoped, no doubt, that England's difficulty would be France's opportunity, and that in case of a war with this country she might be tempted to find a pretext for joining in the struggle against us. The manly and upright conduct of the French Government in the affair of the Trent' dissipated this delusion, and we know that if we had been dragged into a war the word of France was pledged that we were right. The outrage indeed was too glaring to admit of doubt. It spoke trumpet-tongued to the heart of the people, and a proud monarchy like that of England must have resigned its right to the companionship of honourable nations if she had accepted less than she demanded in reparation of the wrong she had received.

The attitude of Canada at this crisis afforded a gratifying proof of the justice and wisdom of our rule. That magnificent colony, which, independently of its north-western possessions, is onethird larger than France, nearly three times as large as Great Britain and Ireland, and more than three times as large as Prussia, is loyal to the heart's core. Long has she been coveted by the United States. It is a significant fact that so early as the year

1781,

1781, when the Articles of Confederation were framed, it was provided by one of them that Canada, acceding to this Confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.'

In the progress of the war there has been unmistakable evidence of a desire to tempt the South back by the prospect of the annexation of Canada to the Union. It was conceived just possible that the Confederate States might be reconciled by the hope of sharing in such a prize, or, at all events, that a foreign war might have the effect of healing the domestic quarrel. Canada has made her response by calling out her militia and fortifying her frontier, and in any event we have no fears for her. She has no wish to sink into the position of a satellite of a shattered republic. We earnestly hope that immediate steps will be taken to place Canada in such a state of permanent defence as to relieve both her and ourselves from anxiety in case of a sudden attack from her restless neighbours. As she has no winter port and the St. Lawrence is impassable from ice during several months of the year, no time should be lost in constructing a line of railway to connect Halifax with Quebec and Montreal. It is only necessary to continue the line of the Halifax and Truro Railway to the St. John and Shediac Railway, and to fill up the gap between Frederickton and Rivière du Loup, and the communication will then be complete. Fortifications should be erected at proper intervals on the northern shores of the lakes, and Montreal should be protected by earthworks, if not by a fortress, lying as the city does within forty miles of the United States frontier, and exposed to the dash of an active and enterprising enemy.

A definite answer from America has at last been received, and the Southern Envoys are to be given up-indeed we believe that they are already on the way to our shores. The cloud, therefore, of threatened war which blackened the horizon has passed away. We rejoice at this, for we can have no wish to quarrel with a nation of the same lineage and language as ourselves, and with which we have so many and such extensive interests in common.

We observe that Mr. Seward in his despatch insists upon the

It is an error to suppose that pauperism does not exist in the United States. The larger cities of that country have long contained a numerous population plunged in abject poverty and destitution; the people must henceforth be highly taxed; and unless grossly misinformed and deluded (which need not be the case if our Government does its duty) our emigrants will surely betake them. selves, in preference, to the far more thriving and prosperous country of Canada.