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 NEUTRAL RELATIONS 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 
 
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 3 1822 02669 0941 
 
 iiiiiiii 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 AND 
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 By CHARLES G. LORING. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 W T I. T. T A M V. S r E N C E R, 
 
 134, Washington Stijeet. 
 18G3. 
 
BOSTON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 5, Water Strekt. 
 
6 3^1 
 
 LI 
 
 PREFATOllY NOTE. 
 
 The following articles, which appeared in the " Bos- 
 ton Daily Advertiser" at the times of their respective 
 dates, originated in an nndertaking to reply to a letter 
 from a highly respected correspondent m Ireland, in 
 which he had remarked, that, in complaining of alleged 
 breaches of neutrality on the part of England in reference 
 to the Rebel ships-of-war, the present writer had done less 
 than justice to " the Government and a very considerable 
 section of her people, who, without any sympathy for the 
 North, or indeed any just appreciation of the cause which 
 is at stake, do honestly desire on legal grounds, and with 
 a view to the honor of the country, to preserve a strict 
 neutrality ; " and had remarked, further, that he believed, 
 that " in general, among the professional classes, this 
 mode of viewing the question is the prevailmg one." 
 
 It was soon found, however, that an effort to do any 
 justice to the subject would far transcend the bounds of a 
 letter, or indeed of ordinary correspondence. And it 
 being a subject of great present interest and importance, 
 and the investigation of it havmg necessarily led to much 
 more extensive inquiry and reflection than had been anti- 
 cipated, or than any one would probably give to it without 
 an especial purpose, it was thought that the results of the 
 investigation, however imperfect, or however unimportant 
 
IV PREFATORY NOTE, 
 
 as adding any thing to the stock of knowledge, might at 
 least attract the attention of others more competent for 
 the discussion, and thus aid in the dissemination of useful 
 intelligence. With this vj^ew, these results were offered 
 to the Editors of the "Advertiser." 
 
 While they were in the course of publication, several 
 persons, whose opmions are entitled to high consideration, 
 expressed the wish that the Numbers should be printed 
 together in pamphlet form for more convenient perusal 
 and dissemination ; and it is in compliance with that 
 suggestion that they are now thus presented to the public. 
 
 As these papers do not purport to be a systematic or 
 exhaustive treatise on the subject, but merely to exhibit 
 the results of the inquiries and reflections of one, who, 
 amid many distracting engagements, was originally m- 
 duced to enter upon them simply for the purpose of a 
 friendly correspondence ; — as they were written at inter- 
 vals as they were published, and consequently afforded 
 no opportunity for reconstruction or change of arrange- 
 ment ; — and as their ephemeral nature does not call for 
 a pams-taking revision of them with a view to more sys- 
 tematic or elaborate treatment, or finish of style, — it is 
 hoped that no further apology will be thought needful 
 for defects which might othermse seem inexcusable. 
 
 They appear in this form almost precisely as they were 
 originally printed, with very few verbal alterations, and, 
 except one short passage, with nothing added that was 
 not in the manuscript as prepared for the " Advertiser," 
 and omitted there for the sake of brevity. In all quoted 
 passages the Italicizing is by the author of these papers 
 where the contrary is not stated. 
 
 C. G. L. 
 Boston, 1 October, 1863. 
 
NEUTRAL RELATIONS 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 I. 
 
 t 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT, 
 
 There is no subject of greater present concern than the 
 position of England in reference to her relations, as a neutral 
 nation, to the United States ; and none, probably, soon to be- 
 come of more engrossing public thought and anxiety. It is 
 therefore important that we have well-defined and sound 
 opinions concerning it, in order, on the one hand, not to be 
 misled by an imaginary sense of injury into undue hostility 
 towards her, which may stand in the way of a just apprecia- 
 tion of her professed discharge of her duties as a neutral, and 
 of continued peace with her as a friendly, nation ; and, on 
 the other, to be prepared to sustain our Government in its 
 dealings with her, if she is justly chargeable, as is often al- 
 leged, with a want of substantial good faith, and a virtual 
 complicity with the rebels who are waging war upon our 
 national life. 
 
 The following thoughts are thrown out with the sole intent 
 of affording aid towards a right understanding of this matter ; 
 and whether they shall be found acceptable as true exponents 
 of it, or lead to reply or refutation tending to a more correct 
 and satisfactory exposition, the purpose of their presentation 
 to the public will be equally well answered. ' 
 
2 NEUTEAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 The duties of neutrality are regulated by the laws of na- 
 tions ; and it is only when these are substantially violated 
 that any just cause of complaint exists. 
 
 But many nations, and among them England and the United 
 States, have enacted statutes termed Neutrality Acts, or 
 Foreign Enlistment Laws, for the purpose of compelling their 
 respective subjects to conform to the laws of nations, and to 
 forbear from interfering in wars between them, under various 
 pains and penalties. These enactments, however, are merely 
 municipal laws, which foreign nations have no power to en- 
 force, nor to punish the infraction of; and the breach of which, 
 in ordinary cases, they have no right to complain of, unless ito 
 involve one of the laws of nations, and then only to that 
 extent and on that exclusive ground ; or unless the fail- 
 ure, on the part of the neutral, to enforce obedience to them, 
 indicate a substantial departure from that impartiality which 
 is of the essence of neutrality. 
 
 So far, therefore, as such foreign nations are concerned, 
 these Neutrality Acts, or Enlistment Laws, are of imperfect 
 obligation. But, as these laws are founded in the comity of 
 nations, and for the purpose of preserving friendly relations 
 with each of them while they are at war among themselves, 
 and in a sense of duty and interest, dictating the maintenance 
 of an impartial neutrality, — and as they are on the side of 
 peace and humanity, in opposition to piratical greed, seeking 
 gain in the woes and misfortunes of others, and to voluntary 
 injury to a friendly neighbor, — they certainly involve a high 
 moral obligation, on the part of the government enacting 
 them, to see them faithfully enforced. And a failure so to en- 
 force them in flagrant cases, or connivance in their violation, 
 or obvious indifference to their execution, when manifest 
 opportunities present themselves, is good cause of complaint, 
 alienation, and resentment; and such failure, connivance, or 
 indifference, may, under some circumstances, justify an appeal 
 to arms in self-defence, — especially so, where, from the nature 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 3 
 
 of the case and the rehitivc positions of tlie belligoronts, the 
 benefit of such viohition is all on the side of one of them to 
 the damage of the other, and is of great and substantial ad- 
 vantage to the former, and of grievous injury to the other. 
 In such case, the omission to exercise existing means to 
 prevent the injury done to the suflering nation, — where pre- 
 vention could give no just cause of complaint to the other, 
 being a simple enforcement of the laws made for the equal 
 protection of both, — may, in reason, and in the spirit of the 
 law of nations regulating neutrality, be considered an unjust 
 departure from it, and a virtual complicity with the enemy. 
 And the case becomes more aggravated, when not only a great 
 and distressing injury, which might be prevented, is thus 
 permitted against a friendly power, but the nation, by which 
 it is permitted, itself becomes a great gainer by means of it, 
 and so participates with the other belligerent in the benefits 
 of this breach of its own laws. 
 
 Since the above sentences were written, the report of the 
 last debate in the British Parliament on this subject has been 
 received, in which Lord Palmerston, if correctly reported, 
 explicitly admits that '' the American Government have a dis- 
 tinct right to expect that a neutral will enforce its municipal 
 law, if it be in their favor ; " thus conceding the principle 
 as of even broader application that that above claimed. This 
 is a concession of no small moment in reference to pre- 
 vious debates, in which he was understood fully to sustain 
 the Solicitor-General in the position, that the foreign-enlist- 
 ment laws of a neutral nation were municipal laws only, in 
 the enforcement of which the belligerent had no such in- 
 terest as would justify complaint because of the failure to 
 compel obedience to them ; which position the preceding 
 suggestions were intended to contest. 
 
 Now, it is a peculiar and most prominent fact in the 
 history of the present Rebellion, that the rebels (having 
 
4 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 neither ships, arms, nor men for naval warfare, nor a single 
 port where a ship could be constructed and fitted out which is 
 not strictly blockaded, — and being without a single armed 
 vessel of any important force at sea, built, or fitted out, or 
 armed, or manned anywhere within their own asserted terri- 
 torial or maritime jurisdiction, — and having little or no com- 
 merce exposed to capture) have, nevertheless, on the ocean, 
 under their flag, several large, heavily-armed vessels, which 
 were built, equipped, armed, and mainly manned, by English- 
 men, in English ports, or under the protection of the English 
 flag until setting forth upon their piratical career for the 
 plunder and destruction of American shipping; — that the 
 crews of these vessels have in' fact destroyed many hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars by sinking and burning American ships, 
 having no port into which they dare attempt to carry them 
 as prizes for adjudication ; — that many more such vessels 
 are notoriously in process of construction in England, to be 
 fitted out, armed, and manned in like manner, for the same 
 purpose ; — and that this destruction and endangerment of 
 American ships have already diverted a very large part 
 of the carrying-trade, both foreign and domestic, from Ame- 
 rican to English vessels, and are daily tending to increase 
 English commercial prosperity in a ratio at least equal to the 
 injury to the shipping interests of the United States. 
 
 Another hardly less remarkable fact is, that while England 
 is thus industriously and zealously aiding the rebels, and 
 furnishing them the most efficient means which they now 
 possess of maintaining their Rebellion, no other country has 
 furnished a solitary vessel, great or small, or assisted in the 
 furnishing of one ; while three of those countries at the least 
 — France, Russia, and Spain — have abundant means of doing 
 so, though, so far as a selfish interest is involved, no one of 
 them has an equal temptation. 
 
 If this state of affairs be indeed reconcilable with reasona- 
 ble good fiith on the part of the English Government and 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 5 
 
 people, — if these vessels are thus built, equipped, armed, 
 manned, and furnished to the rebels, in such manner and 
 under such circumstances as to involve no breach of the law 
 of nations, and to be in no such contravention of the neu- 
 trality laws of England as reasonably requires the interposi- 
 tion of her Government to prevent it in good faith to the 
 United States, — then it is our duty to acquiesce in the evil, as 
 a misfortune for which we have no cause of complaint against 
 her, and to seek relief only in efforts to capture and destroy 
 them. 
 
 If, on the other ■ hand, these doings are in substantial 
 violation of the law of nations, or in plain contravention of 
 municipal laws made to prevent such interference between 
 belligerents on friendly terms with England, — laws which 
 could be enforced without any just cause of complaint on 
 the part of either of the belligerents, and the enforcement 
 of which, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, is 
 plainly called for by a just impartiality, — then a good cause 
 for complaint, and for claiming full indemnity, will be made 
 out. 
 
 Nor does the law of self-defence stop here. For, if it could 
 be shown that these proceedings were in d.erogation, neither 
 of the law of nations, nor of the existing neutrality laws of 
 England, but that they are nevertheless so injurious, in 
 strengthening the arms of the rebels and in weakening our 
 own, as, unless prevented, to endanger the restoration of 
 our Government to its lawful authority, and put our national 
 life at hazard, — it would then become justifiable by the law of 
 self-preservation, lying at the foundation of all codes whether 
 of international or of civil law, to account those thus furnish- 
 ing essential aid to our enemies as their allies, and so our 
 enemies also, and to declare war against them ; — it being 
 obviously absurd to deny that one who is put on the defence 
 of his life is under any obligation to stand quietly by, and see 
 the enemy, whik^ seeking to destroy it, supplied with the 
 
NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 essential means for doing so by another, and to waive all 
 right of self- protection against them. If that protection 
 be not given by the Government in the control of its sub- 
 jects, it must be sought in the only way left to injured 
 nations. 
 
 20 August, 1863. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 II. 
 
 LAWS OF NEUTRALITY. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 The primary principle of neutrality under tlic law of nations 
 is the strictest impartiality in regard to each of the bellige- 
 rents. " The neutral is justly and happily designated by the 
 Latin expression, in hello medlus. It is of the essence of his 
 character, that he so retain this central position as to incline 
 to neither belligerent." * 
 
 The law of nations prohibits the enlisting of soldiers or 
 sailors in the territory of a neutral nation for service in the 
 army or navy of a belligerent at war with any nation which 
 is at peace with such neutral, and also tlie fitting-out of any 
 military or naval expedition therein for such service ; and the 
 doing of any such act by the neutral, or the suffering it to be 
 done within its jurisdiction, with the consent or connivance 
 of the Government, is just cause of reclamation, — and of war, 
 if satisfaction be not given. All captures made by vessels 
 thus fitted out are in the nature of wrongs, and impose upon 
 the neutral nation the duty of preventing them within its ter- 
 ritorial limits, and of restoring to the injured parties the pro- 
 perty so taken, if found within its jurisdiction.! 
 
 So a capture made by a belligerent ship within, neutral ter- 
 ritory, or by the boats of a vessel lying there, although the 
 actual seizure be made without the territorial ]iB9its..Qf Jhe 
 
 • Phillimore on International Law, vol. iii. § 137. 
 t 5 Wlieuton's Rep. 385, " La Aniistad ile Rues." 
 
 7 Wheaton's Rep. 496, the " Arrogante Barcclones. 
 
 7 Wiieaton's Rep. 520, the "Monte Allegre." 
 
8 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 neutral, is void ; and it is tbe duty of the neutral to restore 
 the captured property, if brought within its jurisdiction, or to 
 make a claim upon the offending belligerent, and to indemnify 
 the party injured. No proximate act of loar is allowed by the 
 law of nations to originate on neutral ground ; and, if so origi- 
 nated, it is a just cause of complaint, and of demand for in- 
 demnity, by the belligerent nation against which it is perpe- 
 trated. 
 
 How far a nation is responsible for such acts committed 
 clandestinely by its own subjects, without its knowledge or 
 connivance or tacit sufferance, does not appear to be dis- 
 tinctly stated. Upon all sound principle, however, it is clear, 
 that, if such acts are breaches of the law of nations, the neu- 
 tral must be responsible for want of reasonable diligence and 
 care on the part of its Government to prevent them, or for 
 failure to make a reclamation of the offending nation in order 
 to indemnify the injured party ; it being the duty of the neu- 
 tral in such cases to intervene, inasmuch as the injured party 
 cannot have redress against its enemy for violation of neutrali- 
 ty, or for injuries inflicted by him on neutral ground. And, 
 if the offending belligerent, from the nature of the case, be 
 incapable of making redress, justice requires that the neutral 
 permitting the injury within its. territories should be imme- 
 diately responsible for full indemnity ; and, if the neutral 
 power be unable or unwilling to protect the belligerent on its 
 territory, the right of self-protection then arises, and justifies 
 him in any measures necessary for self-defence upon the terri- 
 tory of the neutral, and even in a declaration of war. 
 
 But, although it is not permissible, by the law of nations, 
 for the citizens of a neutral nation to furnish, fit out, or equip 
 vessels of war for the service of a belligerent, or to augment 
 the warhke force of a vessel in such service, or to commit 
 any proximate act of war against his enemy within the terri- 
 torial limits of the neutral, it is lawful to sell arms and muni- 
 tions of war to either belligerent, or to the citizens of either, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 9 
 
 to be transported to a foreign port (the seller or purchaser 
 taking the risk of capture by the eneuiy in such transporta- 
 tion), or to sell them in the neutral port in the ordinary course 
 of trade, provided that it is a mere sale of articles in which 
 the neutral has a right of traffic ; and then the subsequent or 
 remote use which the purchaser may make of them, to which 
 he is no party, attaches no wrong to the transaction. But, 
 when delivery is to the enemy in the neutral country, in 
 order and with intent to constitute an augmentation of his 
 warlike armaments about to issue from it, it is an immediate 
 or proximate act of war, which the law of nations does not 
 tolerate, and which no neutral government is justifiable in 
 permitting, or in failing to use reasonable diligence to pre- 
 vent.* 
 
 There is, therefore, no good ground of complaint against 
 
 England because her citizens sell arms and munitions of war 
 
 to the rebels, either delivered to them within her territories, 
 
 ' to be transported by them to ports in their possession, or sent 
 
 for sale at such ports at the risk of the venders. This they 
 
 have a perfect right to do. -^ 
 
 ^~*0n the same principle, it is attempted to be maintained, that 
 subjects of England may build and equip ships of war on con- 
 tract with the rebels, to be delivered in her ports or in their 
 own, or at sea, or in neutral ports, designed for the commis- 
 sion of hostilities against the United States, and that such 
 sale and delivery constitute no offence against the law of 
 nations or her Neutrality Act ; and tlie case of the " Santissi- 
 ma Trinidad," above cited, is confidently relied upon as con- 
 firming this doctrine. But that it falls very far short of doing 
 so, is manifest; as neither was the vessel built, nor was her 
 armament furnished, upon any contract of sale or other agree- 
 ment with the belligerent, nor were they sent out under an}^, 
 but were so sent for sale entirely as a commercial adventure, 
 
 * 7 Wliciitoii's Rep. 283, the " Santissimii TrinidiiJ." 
 2 
 
10 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF ' 
 
 — the vessel being convertible into a merchantman by the 
 mere removal of her armament ; — so that the Jixed intent or 
 purpose of having either used in the commission of hostilities 
 against a friendly nation was wanting. 
 
 Lord Palmerston, in the recent debate above referred to, in 
 which he betrays an ignorance of American history and judi- 
 cial decisions upon this branch of national law in correspond- 
 ence with his generally superficial treatment of the subject, 
 if his speech is correctly reported, seems to place this right 
 of a neutral to sell ships of war to a belligerent upon the ground, 
 that " no distinction can be drawn between ships that may 
 evidently be built for warlike purposes and those that may 
 be eventually applied to warlike purposes." He proceeds to 
 illustrate the position by the convertibility of steam-vessels 
 in the passenger and merchant service, that could readily be, 
 and some of which have been, converted into ships of war; 
 and puts the case of the " Nashville," converted from a pas- 
 senger-ship into a privateer, as an instance. And he con- 
 tinues : " In the same way, a ship might be built in this coun- 
 try, capable of being converted into a ship of war, but with 
 respect to which, while building, it would be perfectly im- 
 possible to prove, by any legal construction, that she was 
 intended for a ship of war, and therefore liable to be interfered 
 with." 
 
 Now, such language as this might have done very well a 
 few years ago, before the invention of Monitors and Tur- 
 reted Rams, when the great distinction betAveen ships of war 
 and merchantmen was the armaments of the former, and the 
 want of them in the latter ; but it is mere trifling with prin- 
 ciples and facts as applied to modern, or what is rapidly be- 
 coming the principal system of modern, naval warfare. 
 
 It is self-evident, that a Monitor or Turreted Ram can never 
 be built, nor be intended to be used, as a merchant vessel, and 
 that, practically speaking, it can never be so employed ; for, 
 if it were physically possible for the hull to be so, its cost, and 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 1 I 
 
 weip^lit, and want of adaptation, would render it impossiMe to 
 anticipate any purchase or employment of the vessel for such 
 a purpose. At the same time, it is manifest that such a vessel 
 is a complete and most formidable engine of war, though she 
 may not have a gun on board. Her bulk, weight, and spec<l 
 under steam, and her armed beak, and power to eject hot water 
 and steam upon the enemy's deck, make her as formidable, 
 without any guns to complete her armament, as she would lie 
 with them, to any merchant vessel, or to any much weaker 
 vessel of war, — with the only exception of being unable to 
 operate at equally long range ; and the commerce of a nation 
 might be swept from the ocean by vessels of this descrip- 
 tion, without a gun on board, as eftectually as by those heavily 
 armed with ordnance. 
 
 If, then, the prohibition, by the law of nations, of the fitting- 
 out or equipping ships of war by a neutral in her own ports 
 to commit hostilities against a friendly belligerent is founded 
 on any principle, it applies to vessels of this description with- 
 out further armament, as well as to those of the ancient model 
 furnished with guns. Nor would England, if at war, for a 
 moment tolerate in any neutral nation the prevarication by 
 which it should be attempted to draw such a distinction, and 
 to claim immunity for furnishing the enemy with such ships 
 of war. 
 
 There is a remarkable dearth of authority and satisfactory 
 discussion in England upon the question, now of such immi- 
 nent importance, of what constitutes such " fitting-out of a 
 naval expedition, or of vessels of war," by a neutral, or in 
 a neutral port, as shall constitute a violation of the law of 
 nations, or of the Neutrality Acts. It is clear, that the mere 
 building and equipping of a vessel of war for sale in a neutral 
 port is no such violation, nor the building for a belligerent of 
 a vessel which may be designed for one of war or for some 
 peaceful service. And, so far as the case of the '' Santissima 
 Trinidad" shall be accepted as authority on a point, which, 
 
12 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 though raised, was not necessary for its decision, it appears 
 that the sending-out by a neutral of a vessel equipped with 
 a warlike armament as a commercial adventure, for sale to a 
 belligerent if he shall see fit to purchase, is no such violation 
 of the law of nations or of our Neutrality Act, — though the 
 doctrine appears substantially inconsistent with the principles 
 announced by the same Court in later cases, and a rigid 
 enforcement of a perfect system of neutrality might seem to 
 require that such an expedition, followed by a sale to the 
 bellisxerent, should be accounted a substantial violation of 
 them, — the mere contingency, that the belligerent might not 
 elect to purchase, being too remote to disprove a real inten- 
 tion to sell to him, and being one so easily feigned. 
 
 Whether the construction and equipment of a ship of war 
 in a neutral port, upon a contract with a belligerent, for de- 
 livery there, with knowledge by the builder of the intention 
 to use her in hostile operations against a power in peaceful 
 relations with the government of the neutral (such knowledge 
 being either necessarily inferable from her not being suscep- 
 tible of any other use than for the purposes of war, or other- 
 wise satisfactorily proved), are in violation of the neutrality 
 act of Great Britain, is a question now pending in her courts. 
 A respectable tribunal has decreed that they are not ; but an 
 appeal has been taken, and the ultimate decision is looked for 
 with great interest. No doubt can be entertained, that, ac- 
 cording to the American decisions under the American Enlist- 
 ment Act, a contrary doctrine obtains in the United States, 
 and that, in an American court, a friendly belligerent would 
 find entire protection against any such designs. 
 
 But, whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the 
 degree of preparation or design necessary to constitute a vio- 
 lation of neutrality, there seems to be no question, that the 
 combined equipment, armament, and preparation of a vessel 
 for immediate hostilities, with the intention of sailing from 
 the neutral port for such purpose, is a violation of the law of 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 13 
 
 nations and of the Neutrality Acts, exposing the guilty parties 
 to the pains and penalties of the law, and tlie vessel to forfeit- 
 ure. " Where the elements of armaments are combined, they 
 come within the provision of the law ; " but, if that combina- 
 tion does not take place until they have left the neutral coun- 
 try and are no longer within its jurisdiction, it is said that its 
 Government cannot interpose. 
 
 Upon the principles above stated, great and most interesting 
 questions are to be solved between the United States and 
 England, — both concerning the various vessels, built in Eng- 
 lish ports, armed, equipped, and mainly manned, by English 
 subjects, and now careering the seas, in the service of the 
 rebels, for the destruction of American commerce, — and con- 
 cerning other formidable vessels of war now in process of 
 construction there for the like service. 
 
 22 August, 1863. 
 
14 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 III. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE NEUTRAL RELATIONS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND 
 THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The true construction, however, of the obhgations of a 
 neutral power, in reference to the fitting-out of ships of war 
 within its jurisdiction to serve against a friendly belligerent, 
 both under the law of nations and its own municipal laws, 
 would seem to have been long ago conclusively settled, at 
 least as between England and the United States, if precedent is 
 of any authority, or if scrupulous fidelity in preventing such 
 proceedings by one party, at the instance of the other, can be 
 considered as imposing upon the latter any reciprocal duty ; 
 nnd this, too, in the application of such obligations to cases 
 where the warlike force depended, as of old, on the armament, 
 and not upon the peculiar construction and equipment of the 
 hull. And it does, indeed, seem passing strange, that such 
 entire ignorance of, or careful abstinence from reference to, 
 not remote history, should characterize all the debates in 
 Parliament, and discussions by the ministerial presses and 
 the courts of law, upon this subject. In contemplating the 
 treatment which this country has received, and is receiv- 
 ing, at the hands of England, in this struggle for national life 
 one is almost driven to the conclusion, that the history and the 
 fate of America, even in reference to the neutral obligations 
 of England towards her, are looked upon as beneath an Eng- 
 lishman's study or consideration ; he seeming to care nothing 
 about either, or his only thought being how to make the most 
 of the complication for his own benefit. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 15 
 
 After the termination of the war of the Revolution, and the 
 acknowledgnient of the United States as an independent 
 nation, and when occasion arose to develop her sense of 
 duty as a neutral under the law of nations, it is gratifying 
 to know, that she commenced her career by the most liberal 
 interpretation of it in reference to her obligations and the 
 rights of others, and has ever since been foremost in the 
 effort to place these upon foundations of the broadest human- 
 ity. The first call made upon her was a crucial test ; for it 
 was made by England, her recent oppressor and enem}', for 
 protection against the violation of neutral relations within 
 her territories by or in behalf of the subjects of France, her 
 ally and friend, by whom she had been aided in the war witli 
 England, and towards whom the United States felt and ac- 
 knowledged the strongest obligations. 
 
 In the great war then raging between England and France, 
 the English Government entertained, very naturally and with 
 good reason, apprehensions that privateers would be fitted 
 out in the United States to prey upon English commerce 
 under the French flag ; and, their apprehensions being com- 
 municated to our Government, President Washington, in 1793, 
 issued a proclamation forbidding all such violations of neutrali- 
 ty, and stating that instructions had been given to the officers of 
 the United States to cause prosecutions to be instituted against 
 all persons who should violate the law of nations, with respect 
 to the powers at war, or any other. The Secretary of the 
 Treasury, Mr. Hamilton, issued instructions to the collectors 
 of the customs, commencing with the following preamble : 
 " It appearing that repeated contraventions of our neutrality 
 have taken place in the ports of the United States, without 
 having been discovered in time for prevention or remedy, I 
 have it in command from the President to address to the collect- 
 ors of the respective districts a particular instruction upon 
 the subject." And he proceeds to direct them to " have a 
 vigilant eye upon whatever may be passing within the ports. 
 
16 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 harbors, creeks, inlets, and waters [of their respective dis- 
 tricts], of a nature to contravene the laws of neutrality ; and, 
 upon discovery of anything of the kind, to give immediate 
 notice to the Governor of the State, and to the Attorney of 
 the Judicial District." * At the same time, the Governors 
 of States were called upon to cause vessels to be arrested, if 
 about to depart on any such service ; and several were so 
 arrested, and prevented from sailing. Prizes, which had been 
 taken by such privateers fitted out, and sailing from ports, in 
 the United States, were restored to the British owners ; and 
 the Government of tiie United States proclaimed, that it held 
 itself responsible to indemnify for such captures. 
 
 All this was done under a sense of duty, as imposed by the 
 law of nations^ no Enlistment Act having then been passed. 
 But, in 1794, Congress, with an earnest desire to preserve the 
 strictest fidelity, enacted a statute on tin's subject, for the pur- 
 pose of compelling the observance of an entire neutrality 
 Avithin the jurisdiction of the United States. And, in the 
 same year, a treaty was made with England, in which one 
 clause provided, that the United States should make indem- 
 nity to British owners for vessels which had been previously 
 captured by privateers that had been fitted out in the United 
 States. This Act of 1794 ivas made immediately after the 
 application of the British Government upon this subject, and 
 for the purpose of insui^ng the immediate observance of a strict 
 neutrality ; as was expressly admitted and stated by Mr. Can- 
 ning in Parliament. — (Canning's Speeches, vol. iv. pp. 52, 53.) 
 And yet we are now coolly told by Lord Palmerston and 
 Earl Russell, that England cannot alter her municipal laws to 
 suit other governments ! 
 
 The Act of 1794 was revised, and a new act passed, by 
 Congress in 1818, containing still more rigorous provisions for 
 the preservation of a strict neutrality, in immediate reference 
 
 * 1 American State Papers, p. 140. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 17 
 
 to the war then raging between Spain and lier Soutli-Aineri- 
 can colonies. And, in 1810, the Englisli Government imitated 
 our example, by the enactment ol'the Statute 59 George IH., 
 constituting tlieir present municipal code upon this subject; 
 — a statute in substantial conformity with that of the United 
 States, and giving, certainly, reasonable ground of expecta- 
 tion, that England was thenceforth to stand pledged to the 
 same faithful and honorable discharge of the duties of neu- 
 trality towards this country as had been practised by us 
 towards her. 
 
 These Neutrality Acts are founded upon the law of nations, 
 and designed to secure its enforcement by remedies consist- 
 ing of provisions, and forms of proceeding, and pains and 
 penalties, necessarily of a municipal nature ; there being no 
 international remedy applicable to cases within the territorial 
 jurisdiction of a neutral nation. The portions most material 
 to the matter in hand are as follows, taken from the English 
 
 ■r Statute- &d George III. : — __„. . 
 
 1 Section 2 provides, that if any subject shall enlist, or agree 
 
 to enlist, as an officer or soldier or sailor, for any warlike pur- 
 pose in any foreign service, or go to any foreign state with 
 a view so to enlist ; or if any person within the kingdom 
 shall attempt to hire or engage any person so to enlist, or 
 to go or agree to embark from his Majesty's dominions for the 
 purpose of being enlisted or engaged ; every such person 
 shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by fine 
 and imprisonment. 
 
 Section 5 provides, that if any vessel in any port of his 
 Majesty's dominions shall have on board any person who 
 shall have so enlisted or engaged to enlist, or be departing 
 with intent to enlist, such vessel, upon information, shall be 
 detained and prevented from proceeding. 
 
 Section 6 provides, that if any master of a vessel shall know- 
 ingly take on board, or any owner shall knowingly engage to 
 take on board, any person so enlisting or intending to enlist, 
 
 3 
 
18 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 he shall forfeit X50 for every person so taken, and the vessel 
 shall be detained until payment of the penalty. 
 
 Section 7 (corresponding substantially with the third 
 section of the statute of the United States of 1818, chap- 
 ter 88, and containing the provisions most material for 
 consideration) enacts, that, " if any person, within any part 
 of the United Kingdom, shall without the leave, &c., &c., equip, 
 furnish, fit out, or arm, or attemid or endeavor to equip, fur- 
 nish, fit out, or arm, or procure to be equipped, furnished, 
 fitted out, or armed, or shall knowingly aid, assist, or be con- 
 cerned, in the equipping, furnishing, fitting out, or arming, of 
 any ship or vessel, tuith intent or in order that such ship 
 or vessel shall be employed in the service of any foreign 
 prince, state, or potentate, &c., &g., as a transport or store- 
 ship, or with intent to cruise or commit hostilities against any 
 prince, state, or potentate, <fec., «fec., with whom his Majesty 
 shall not then be at war ; " '' every such person so offending 
 shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon con- 
 viction thereof, upon any information or indictment, be pun- 
 ished by fine and imprisonment, or either of them, at the 
 discretion of the court in which such offender shall be con- 
 victed ; and every such ship or vessel, with the tackle, apparel, 
 and furniture, together loith cdl the materials, arms, ammunition, 
 and stores, which may belong to, or be on board, of any such 
 ship or vessel, shall be forfeited." 
 
 The verbal differences between these Statutes, introduced 
 into that of England, seem to render it, if anything, more 
 explicit and comprehensive than that of the United States ; 
 and would seem, therefore, to require of English tribunals 
 at least an equally liberal interpretation, in favor of a 
 friendly belligerent, with that adopted by the tribunals in 
 America. 
 
 The next occasion for the elucidation of the principles of 
 our Government on this subject was in the war of 1854-55, 
 between Russia, on one side, and England and France, on the 
 
ENGLAND AND TTIE UNITED STATES. 19 
 
 other. And here, again, the test was a stringent one, as 
 the utmost cordiality had always existed between the Rus- 
 sian Government and that of the United States. 
 
 When that war broke out, the Britisii minister at Washing- 
 ton addressed a communication of the fact to the Executive 
 of the United States, in which he took occasion to say, that 
 " the allied governments confidently trust that the govern- 
 ments of the countries which remain neutral durini:; the war 
 will sincerely exert every effort to enforce upon their subjects 
 or citizens the necessity of observing the strictest neutrality ; 
 and that the United-States Government icill give orders that 
 no privateers, under Russian colors, shall be equipped or 
 victualled in ports of the United States ; and also that the 
 citizens of the United States shall rigorously abstain from 
 taking part in armaments of this nature, or in any other 
 measure opposed to the strictest duties of neutrality.''^ And 
 the United-States Secretary of State, in reply, promised the 
 exercise of all the powers of the Government " to enforce 
 obedience to the neutrality laws." Here, then, we have the 
 British Government, in her hour of need, calling upon that 
 of the United States to take active measures to secure the 
 citizens of the former from all injury by any departure from 
 the strictest duties of neutrality ; and the voluntary assurance 
 given in return, that the laws to compel it should be rigor- 
 ously enforced. 
 
 Nor has it been left to conjecture how the British Govern- 
 ment would think it proper to construe their requisition, or 
 how the United States would interpret their promise to 
 comply with it. During that war, the bark " Maury " of New 
 York, a mere merchant-ship, was fitting out in New York for 
 a voyage to China ; and, a suspicion having arisen in the 
 minds of the British consul and some English residents, that 
 slie was taking in arms and munitions of war, to be used in 
 the service of Russia, and the consul having communicated 
 his suspicions to the British minister at Washington, and he 
 
20 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 having made complaint to the Government of the United 
 States, — though the evidence submitted, on which it was 
 founded, was of the feeblest and most unsatisfactory charac- 
 ter, — the vessel and cargo were immediately seized by 
 oflficers of the United States, without the slightest previous 
 notice to the owners, and were detained until the British con- 
 sul, and those instigating the seizure, were perfectly satisfied 
 that the suspicions were wholl}^ erroneous ; and for these he 
 afterwards made a public apology in one of the gazettes in 
 that city. 
 
 Well might the British Government, on the breaking-out 
 of the war with Russia, have felt apprehensions, and feared 
 the violation of a strict neutrality by the citizens of the 
 United States, or their complicity in such violations, — and 
 well might she have implored the interposition of our Gov- 
 ernment to protect her from them, — if it could then have 
 been anticipated what the principles and conduct of her own 
 Government and subjects would be in like circumstances, 
 when she should stand in the relation of a neutral, and the 
 United States in that of a friendly belligerent. For, if 
 the Executive and people of the United States had then 
 acted upon no higher principles, and in no better faith, in 
 their respect of neutral obligations, than the ministry and 
 people of England have done in this war, the seas would 
 have swarmed with Russian privateers, built and equipped 
 in American ports, or under the protection of the American 
 flag, and her commerce would have been swept from the 
 ocean. 
 
 In the late debate in Parliament, above alluded to, while a 
 studied forgetfulness of this case was observed, — though it 
 was one of great notoriety in England when the suspicions 
 and seizure of the " Maury " were made known there, and is 
 not to be supposed, therefore, to have been forgotten, — 
 an attempt was made by Mr. Laird, a member of the 
 House of Commons, and the principal builder of vessels 
 
ENGLAND AND TUE UNITED STATES. 21 
 
 for the rebels, to justify his conduct and that of the 
 Ministry by a statement, that, during the war with Russia, 
 a vessel named the " America " was built, equipped, manned, 
 and armed in the United States for the Russian Govern- 
 ment, and taken out to the Pacific Ocean under the com- 
 mand of Captain Hudson, an ex-lieutenant of the American 
 Navy, and that the American Government gave orders to its 
 admiral to protect her from search by English and French 
 officers. To this statement. Lord Palmcrston hastened to 
 give his official sanction ; adding, " that the British Govern- 
 ment made complaiid, but that the local authorities found that 
 there was no ground for molesting her ; but that, nevertheless, 
 there ivas the best reason for believing that the ship was 
 destined for the Russian Government, and for naval opera- 
 tions in the Eastern seas, where the Russian Government 
 most needed assistance ; " " that they had reason to believe 
 that other ships were then building in America for the same 
 purpose, and would have been used if the tear had con- 
 tinued; " and that therefore he held, that, on mere ground 
 of international Id^v, belligerents have no riglit to complain, 
 if merchants, as a mercantile transaction, supply one of the 
 belligerents, not only with arms and cannon, but also with 
 ships destined for warlike purposes. 
 
 Now, this story — in all that is essential in it tending to 
 show any justification of the conduct of its author, or of 
 his country, in their conduct as neutrals towards the United 
 States in furnishing armed ships of war, or ships of war of 
 any kind — is a sheer fabrication, as is shown by the official 
 documents, and statements by official authority at Washington, 
 issued immediately upon the publication of that debate in 
 this country. 
 
 By them it appears, that, after the capture of Sebastopol 
 and the virtual ending of tlie Crimean war, a vessel, which 
 may have been built to serve as a steam-tug in the Russian 
 possessions on the North-west Coast (but, if so, the Execu- 
 
22 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 tive Government of the United States had no knowledge 
 of it, and no complaint of it whatever had been made from 
 any quarter), sailed from New York under the command of a 
 master who was named Hudson (and who previously had been 
 a midshipman in the Navy of the United States), and put into 
 Rio Janeiro on her way, in February, 1856 ; — that she was not 
 armed, nor in any manner equipped as a vessel of war ; — :but 
 that, suspicions being excited by the statement of a British 
 sailor (who had shipped there, and had been dismissed two 
 hours afterwards for misconduct) that she had arms concealed 
 under her coal, the British and French officers insisted on 
 the right to search her. This right was denied by Captain 
 Hudson. But he gave his affidavit (with the approbation of 
 the commander of an American frigate then in port), stating 
 that there were no other arms or munitions of war on board 
 than one Minie rifle, one double-barrelled shot-gun, one pair 
 of Colt's revolvers, one pair of pocket pistols, a ten-pound 
 keg of powder, and a bag of No. 6 robin shot ; and that his 
 manifest, exhibited, was in every particular correct. This 
 not appearing to be a supply of arms and ammunition cal- 
 culated to frighten the British and French naval forces in 
 the Pacific, " the affidavit quieted the excitement, and she 
 was allowed to proceed." Now, it is expressly stated, upon 
 official authority, that no complaint of any sort concerning 
 this vessel is on file in any department of the United-States 
 Government from any diplomatic or consular office of Eng- 
 land, France, or any other enemy of Russia ; while the 
 regular official account of the afiair (as given above) from 
 the Minister of the United States in Brazil is on file in its 
 proper place. 
 
 If any complaint was made by the British Government on 
 this subject, as alleged by Lord Palmerston in his place in 
 Parliament, or if his Government were not satisfied, it can, 
 of course, be shown by reference to the British archives, 
 although not found in those of the United States; unless, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STAETS. 23 
 
 indeed, it be tliouglit too condescending to admit or correct 
 a misstatement made by an English Prime Minister, even 
 though of moment in a question affecting the relative good 
 faith of two nations, and possibly their future peaceful 
 relations. 
 
 The probability seems to be, that his Lordship, not having 
 thought it worth while to refresh his memory upon the sub- 
 ject, confounded this case Avith that of the " Maury," above 
 stated, where complaint Avas actually made ; but forgot the 
 other part of it, — that not only did the local authorities find 
 that there was no ground for arresting her, but that the rep- 
 resentative of his Government was satisfied that the com- 
 plaint was not only groundless, but so unwarrantable, that he 
 made a public apology for having caused it to be made. 
 
 It would be but the merest justice, on the part of Lord 
 Palmerston, to specify those other cases of suspicion, spoken 
 of in his speech, allusion to which must have been intended 
 to confirm suspicions that this country had been guilty of 
 violations of neutrality similar to those now complained of by 
 us ; and it is to be hoped that a just sense of the respon- 
 sibility of making such grave charges against another nation, 
 may lead, when the subject is next up, or on some equally 
 prominent occasion, to some specification by which their 
 truth may be tested. 
 
 He cannot be ignorant that such statements, made in his 
 place, go forth to his countrymen, if not to the world, with 
 the force of absolute truth, and produce convictions far 
 beyond the mere literal meaning of them ; and he owes it 
 to a respect for his position, if not to his own reputation 
 as a truth-telling gentleman, not to indulge in those grave 
 suggestions and innuendoes of bad faith against a nation, 
 unless he be prepared to maintain them by satisfactory proof. 
 That proof, if it exist, the people of the LTnited States have a 
 right to demand at his hands. 
 
 As to the other attempt made by Mr. Laird to implicate the 
 
24 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Government of the United States, by charging the Secretary 
 of the Navy with efforts to procure hira to buikl ships of war 
 for its service in the present RebelHon, it is presumed that 
 the official declaration of that officer, that he never made any 
 such attempt, nor authorized any other person to make one, 
 will be considered a sufficient refutation of Mr. Laird's story, 
 founded wholly upon the representations of a correspondent 
 whose name he cannot, or does not, disclose. But, were fur- 
 ther refutation necessary, we have an ample one, if that cor- 
 respondent be, as is supposed, one J. Howard ; who, as Mr. 
 Sedgwick, the Chairman of the Naval Committee of the House 
 of Representatives, in his recently published letter of Aug. 
 9th, 1863, says, "came before the Committee with drawings, 
 specifications, estimates, &c., &c.,from the Lairds, sa^nng that 
 he came at their instance to make these proposals to the Navy 
 Department ; that he was told to go to the Secretary of tlie 
 Navy, which he did ; and afterwards reported to him [Mr. 
 Sedgwick] that Mr. Welles declined entering into any nego- 
 tiation about it, and that Howard was not very well pleased 
 with the result ; that he [Howard] was an agent of the Lairds, 
 and not of the Navy Department ; or, if not an agent, a vol- 
 unteer expecting a commission from Laird ; and was furnished 
 in advance by him with plans, estimates, &c." 
 
 Such are the wretched pretences and baseless fabrications 
 by which it is attempted to sustain the conduct of England 
 in this matter, as justified by the previous conduct of the 
 United States. 
 
 "Were it not for the shortsightedness ever attending in- 
 tense selfishness, and ever its avenging Nemesis, it might 
 have been supposed that England would liave been careful, 
 if not just, in the observance of neutral relations to the United 
 States, — at least, in reference to privateering, — in contem- 
 plation of the possible re-action upon herself in the event 
 of war between her and any other nation. The Japanese, if 
 the threatened war between England and Japan should take 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES, 25 
 
 place, or the Chinese rebels, if acknowledged by the United 
 States as belligerents, would liave better claims upon us for 
 sympathy, and for material aid under a loose construction of 
 our neutral obligations to England, than the rebels had upon 
 her, — to say nothing of tlie breaking-out of a war between 
 her and any other nation ; and it would only need that we 
 should act upon that standard of neutral morality wliich she 
 has adopted towards us, to render any power at war with 
 her, however weak or remote, a most formidable enemy to 
 her commerce. 
 
 25 August, 1863. 
 
26 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 IV. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES IN 
 REFERENCE TO NEUTRALITY. 
 
 The Judicial history of our country has been equally demon- 
 strative of her good faith, — her just appreciation and faithful 
 fulfilment of her duties as a neutral nation, — with the history 
 of the Executive Government. 
 
 Not only have vessels been seized and detained, and per- 
 sons punished, for infractions of the law of nations and of the 
 Neutrality Acts, but decisions have been made by the Supreme 
 Court, based upon the recognition of the broadest principles 
 of international good faith, and in striking contrast with the 
 modern doctrines avowed and acted upon by the Ministers, 
 members of Parliament, and subjects of Great Britain, — and, 
 as is feared, recognized also by one of her respectable judicial 
 tribunals. 
 
 The first important case reported, is that of the " Santissima 
 Trinidad," in 1822. (7 Wheaton's Rep., p. 283.) The facts 
 proved were, that a vessel, built for a privateer, and used as 
 one out of Baltimore during the war of 1812 between the 
 United States and Great Britain, was, after the peace, sold by 
 her owners, and sent by the purchasers, with her armament 
 and a cargo of munitions of war, to Brazil, then at war with 
 Spain, as a commercial adventure, — for sale to the Brazilian 
 Government, if it should see fit to purchase her, but with no 
 previous contract or understanding to that effect, and, as it 
 appears, with no limitation as to the purchaser ; her apparent 
 destination, however, being; to tlie North-west Coast. She 
 
 fA 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 27 
 
 was purchased by private individuals, and afterwards commis- 
 sioned as a Brazilian vessel of war, under the name of the 
 " Independencia del Sud," and sailed on a cruise on the 
 Spanish coast. She afterwards put into Baltimore, and there 
 enlisted an addition to her crew of about thirty men, and 
 procured also another small vessel as a tender (called the 
 " Altravida "), and sailed upon a cruise ; in the course of which 
 she captured the property in question, and brought it into 
 Norfolk, where it was landed for safe keeping in the custom- 
 house store, and was libelled by the Spanish consul in behalf 
 of the original owners. 
 
 The court decreed restitution to them on the ground, that 
 the augmentation of the force of the vessel in Baltimore was 
 " a violation of the law of nations, as well as of our own muni- 
 cipal laws, and, as a violation of our neutrality, by analogy 
 to other cases, infected captures subsequently made with the 
 character of torts, and justified and required a restitution to 
 the parties injured by such conduct ; " and that " it did not 
 lie in the mouth of wrong-doers to set up a title derived from 
 a violation of our neutrality." (p. 297.) 
 
 Another point was made in the case ; namely, that the cap- 
 ture was void, because the '' Independencia " and "Altravida " 
 Avere originally equipped, armed, and manned, as vessels of 
 war, in our ports. 
 
 This point was summarily dismissed, upon the ground, 
 that, though the " Independencia " was equipped as a A^essel 
 of war, " she was sent to Buenos Ayres on a commercial ad- 
 venture, contraband indeed, but in no shajje violating our 
 laws, or our national neutrality ; " and that there was nothing 
 in our laws, or in the law of nations, that forbids our citi- 
 zens from sending armed vessels, as well as munitions of 
 war, to foreign ports for sale ; it being a commercial adven- 
 ture which no nation is bound to prohibit, and which only 
 exposes the persons engaged in it to the penalty of confis- 
 cation. 
 
28 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 This opinion (delivered in the broad and sweeping language 
 which was somewhat peculiar to the learned judge who pro- 
 nounced it, and which leads American lawyers ever to scan 
 his decisions with care, and with constant reference to the 
 facts upon which they purport to be founded,) may perhaps 
 seem broad enough, at first view, (and appears to have been 
 so understood in England) to cover the case of the sending- 
 out of an armed ship to the belligerent upon a contract of 
 sale, and so to reach the cases of the vessels furnished by 
 Englishmen to the rebels. 
 
 But it is the universally established rule of construction, in 
 the courts of England and in this country, that the language 
 of the court, however broad and general, is to be limited by 
 the facts to which it is applied, and that it establishes no doc- 
 trine beyond that necessary for the decision of the case limited 
 to them. Now, the facts proved in this case were, that the 
 vessel was not sent to Brazil under any contract with the 
 Brazilian Government, but only with instructions to sell her 
 to it if a suitable price could be obtained ; and, in point of 
 fact, she was sold to private individuals there, and was sub- 
 sequently sold by them to the Government, — a very material 
 distinction, and one expressly recognized by the same court 
 in a subsequent case. 
 
 This case, therefore, so far as it is authority on this point, 
 only establishes the doctrine, that the equipping of a vessel 
 for war in a neutral port, and the sending her out for sale to 
 the port of a belligerent as a commercial adventure, to be sold 
 to the belligerent government if it shall elect to purchase her 
 after her arrival there, (the neutral owner taking the venture 
 of any such sale, and the risk of capture and confiscation, by 
 the other belligerent, as contraband, on the voyage to such 
 port,) is not a violation of the law of nations or of our muni- 
 cipal laws. But, even to this extent, the case is not of a 
 very conclusive character, as the point, though presented, was 
 not material to the decision of the case, nor that on which it 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 29 
 
 depended, and might, with perfect propriety, have been left 
 untouched, and so the decision of it comes very nearly within 
 the class of obiter dicta, which are of no authority in future 
 decisions. 
 
 This is the decision so constantly and tauntingly referred 
 to by the English press and Parliament, as fully justifying 
 British subjects in supplying the rebels with ships of war ; 
 and was the decision supposed to have been particularly 
 referred to in the judgment in the recent case of the 
 "Alexandra," which was decided in favor of the owners, and 
 against her confiscation, on the broad general ground, that a 
 neutral has the right to furnish ships of war, as well as 
 munitions of war, to a belligerent. With how little reason it 
 can be thus cited, and how entirely short it falls of justifying 
 that judgment, is evident enough, but will presently be more 
 particularly considered. 
 
 The next case is that of the '' Gran Para," — decided by the 
 same court at the same term, and reported in the same vol- 
 ume (7 Wheaton, p. 471), — of striking importance, as show- 
 ing the fidelity of our courts in looking behind shams in 
 order to protect other nations from violations of our neutral 
 obligations, but entirely overlooked, or perhaps happily 
 " remembered to be forgotten," in the English discussions of 
 the subject. 
 
 That, too,' was a case of libel for the restitution of property, 
 consisting of a large amount of gold and silver coins plun- 
 dered from Portuguese vessels by a privateer cruising under 
 a commission from the Oriental Republic, on the ground that 
 the captures were illegal, as made in violation of our neu- 
 trality laws. 
 
 This vessel was built in Baltimore for the purposes of war, 
 and, after being launched, was purchased by one Daniels, 
 who enlisted a crew of about' fifty men, and took on board into 
 her hold an armament and munitions of war, entered as out- 
 ward cargo. She cleared for Teneriffe, but proceeded directly 
 
30 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 to Buenos Ayres, where the crew was discharged. But, he 
 having obtained a commission to cruise against Spain, a crew 
 was enb'sted, consisting chiefly of the same persons ; and she 
 sailed on a cruise, under the command of Daniels. On the 
 next day after sailing, he produced another commission from 
 the chief of the Oriental Republic to cruise against Portu- 
 gal, and returned that from the Brazilian Government, and 
 subsequently made the captures in question. It was asserted 
 in defence, that, — as she was not commissioned as a privateer 
 when she sailed from Baltimore, and did not attempt to act as 
 one until she reached the river La Plata, Avhere a commission 
 was lawfully obtained and her crew was enlisted, — if she 
 had committed any offence against our neutrality laws at the 
 time of sailing from Baltimore or on the passage (which was 
 denied), it was deposited at the end of that voyage ; and that 
 her subsequent cruise could not be connected with the trans- 
 actions at Baltimore. 
 
 Chief-Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of the 
 court, after reciting the facts and this defence, used the fol- 
 lowing indignant and decisive language : ^' If this were to be 
 admitted in such a case as this, the laws for the preservation 
 of our neutrality would be completely eluded, so far as their 
 enforcement depends on the restitution of prizes made in vio- 
 lation of them. Vessels completely fitted in our ports for 
 military operations need only sail to a belligerent port, and 
 there, after obtaining a commission, go through the ceremony 
 of discharging and re-enlisting their crew, to become per- 
 fectly legitimate cruisers, purified from every taint contracted 
 at the place where all their real force and capacity for annoy- 
 ance ivere acquired. This would indeed he a fraudulent neu^ 
 trality, disgraceful to our own Government, and of which no 
 nation ivould he the dupe. It is therefore very clear, that 
 the ' Irresistible ' was ai'med and manned in Baltimore, in 
 violation of the laws and of the neutral obligations of the 
 United States ; " — the court thus declaring it to be equally 
 
ENOLAXD AND THE UNITKD STATES. 31 
 
 an offence against our Neutrality Acts and the law of 
 nations. * 
 
 Can we suppose that this venerable and great judge would 
 have used language any less severe and reproachful of his 
 countrymen, if the case had been one of a vessel built, and 
 fitted out, in all points except her armament, munitions, and 
 crew, for a vessel of war, in New York, on a contract with a 
 belligerent government with whom England was at war, and 
 having her crew engaged in New York, and her armament 
 and munitions all furnished, or made by contract, there, and 
 all shipped there in vessels under the United-States flag, 
 with an arrangement to meet her on the high seas, or on 
 some remote neutral coast, there to be united, all being under 
 the protection of the American flag until so united, and until the 
 production of a commission from the belligerent government 
 authorizing her, from that moment, to plunder and destroy 
 English commerce wherever it could be found ? Or can we 
 suppose that England would suffer herself to be the dupe in 
 such a game ? 
 
 It is to be observed, that, upon the principles upon which 
 both of these cases were decided, the vessels would have been 
 confiscated if seasonably detected and prosecuted, — the judg- 
 ments being rendered upon the same section of the Neutrality 
 Act which provides for a forfeiture of the vessel ; but no 
 complaint against them appears to have been made by 
 either the Spanish or Portuguese consul or minister, nor 
 was any notice whatever communicated to the officers of 
 our Government while the vessels were within its jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 The next case, and one still more impressive, as exhibiting 
 the perfect good faith with which our neutrality laws have 
 been enforced, and which, if imitated by other nations, would 
 leave little room for complaint or international questions upon 
 the subject, is that of U. S. v. QuincT/ (in 1832), ^ Peters- 
 Rep. 445. This was an indictment under tlic third section 
 
32 NEUTRAL EELATIONS OF 
 
 of the Neutrality Act of 1818, corresponding substantially 
 with the seventh section of the Act of 59 George III. ; the 
 principal difference being the substitution in the latter of 
 the word " or " for " and," rendering its provisions, if any 
 change was thereby made, even more comprehensive than 
 those of the American statute. 
 
 The facts proved were, that a Baltimore pilot-boat, named 
 the " Bolivar," was purchased and fitted out, by the defendant 
 and one Armstrong, with sails and masts larger than those 
 required for a merchant vessel, and was altered so as to enable 
 her to carry passengers, and by making a port-hole for a gun ; 
 — and that she sailed for St. Thomas, having on board provis- 
 ions, thirty-two casks of water, one gun carriage and slide, a box 
 of muskets, and thirteen kegs of powder ; a bond having been 
 given by the alleged owners not to commit hostilities against 
 any people at peace with the United States. After her arri- 
 val at St. Thomas, Armstrong had no funds to arm and equip 
 her, and it was uncertain whether he could get any. She 
 was, however, there fitted out as a privateer, and sailed to St. 
 Eustatia (having changed her name to " Las Daraas Argen- 
 tines"), and thence on a cruise under command of the defend- 
 ant. Armstrong went in her, and on the voyage he stated, that, 
 if the vessel went privateering, it would be under the Buenos- 
 Ayrean flag ; and that he had procured a commission for the 
 " Bolivar," from an agent of the Buenos-Ayrean Government 
 at Washington, for $800. She captured several vessels, — 
 Portuguese, Brazilian, and Spanish ; and certain coin in ques- 
 tion was taken from one or more of them. 
 
 The first point made in defence was, that, as the " Bolivar," 
 when she left Baltimore and when she arrived at St. Tho- 
 mas, was not armed, or at all prepared for war, or in a 
 condition to commit hostilities, the verdict must be for the 
 defendant. To which it was replied, that, if he was con- 
 cerned in the fitting-out of the " Bolivar " as a privateer, 
 witJi the intent that she should he employed as such in the ser- 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 33 
 
 vice of a foreign people, to commit hostilities against tlio 
 subjects of a power at peace with the United States, the 
 defendant was guilty of the offence charged, altliougii 
 the equipments were not completed within the United States, 
 and the cruise did not actually commence until men were 
 recruited, and further equipments made, in the West Indies. 
 The court decided, that it was not necessary that the jury 
 should find, or believe, that the " Bolivar," when she left 
 Baltimore and when she arrived at St. Thomas, and dur- 
 ing the voyage, was armed, or in a condition to commit 
 hostilities, in order to find the defendant guilty; but that, if, 
 when she left Baltimore, the owners or equippers had no pre- 
 sent intention of using her as a privateer, but intended to go 
 to the West Indies to endeavor to raise funds to prepare her 
 for a cruise, — or if, when she sailed, they had no fioSed intention 
 to employ her as a privateer, but only a Avish so to employ 
 her, the fulfilment of which depended upon their ability to 
 raise funds for the purpose of arming and preparing her for 
 war, — then the defendant was not guilty; that the offence 
 charged consisted iwincipally in the intention with ivhich the 
 preparations luere made; that it was necessary that it should 
 be found to have existed before she left the United States, 
 and must be a fixed intention, not conditional or contingent, 
 depending on some future arrangement ; that it was a ques- 
 tion exclusively for the jury, and the material point decisive 
 of the question was, whether the adventure was of a commer- 
 cial or a warlike character, — thus recognizing the distinction 
 taken in the first-cited case of the " Santissiraa Trinidad." 
 It was further decided, that " collectors are not authorized 
 to detain vessels, although manifestly built for warlike pur- 
 poses, and about to depart from the United States, unless 
 circumstances shall render it prohahle that they are intended 
 to be employed by the owners to commit hostilities against 
 some foreign power at peace with the United States, — thus 
 allowing all tlie latitude necessary for commercial purposes; " 
 
34 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 but tliat, if the, intention existed when she sailed, the defeat of 
 such intention hy what might afterwards take place would not 
 purge the offence, — it not being necessary that the intention 
 should he carried into execution in order to constitute the 
 offence. 
 
 27 August, 1863. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 35 
 
 V. 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF ENGLAND. 
 
 We have thus an entirely authoritative and well-defined 
 exposition of the construction put upon the law of nations, in 
 regard to the duties of the United States as a neutral nation, 
 by its Executive Government, its Legislature, and its highest 
 Judicial tribunal ; — that the discharge of these duties is not 
 to be limited or influenced by any selfish interests, nor by 
 any tenderness towards our own citizens, but that they are 
 to be fulfilled upon the broadest principles of disinterested 
 good faith and upon the highest principles of honor. 
 
 We find, that, in the beginning of our national career, the 
 Executive Department, proceeding only upon the law of nations 
 and unaided by legislative enactments, under the guidance 
 of him who more than any other is venerated as the Founder 
 of the Republic, established that system of perfect and impar- 
 tial neutrality and non-interference with other nations, which 
 was the pole-star of our foreign policy, and we trust will ever 
 continue to be so ; — that it held, that the law of nations not 
 only prohibits the rendering of assistance by organized arma- 
 ments to a belligerent at war with a power in friendly relations 
 to us, but requires of the neutral government careful and 
 Jealous caution to prevent the inception and preparation of any ; 
 — that it caused vessels, suspected of being intended for such 
 purposes, to be arrested and detained, and the completion 
 of their designs to be frustrated ; — that it restored to the 
 original (British) owners, prizes captured by armed vessels 
 
36 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 fitted out in ports of the United States, which had eluded its 
 vigilance ; and held itself responsible to make indemnity for 
 others which it could not restore. And all this, though the 
 belligerent complaining, or claiming protection, was our recent 
 oppressor and adversary in deadly war, and his enemy, in 
 whose behalf these enterprises were undertaken, had been 
 our earnest and faithful friend and ally in the struggle against 
 him, imposing upon us the debt of the profoundest national 
 gratitude. 
 
 We find, that the Legislature, sympathizing with the Execu- 
 tive in these lofty views of national duty, and, listening to the 
 complaints and apprehensions of England, came promptly 
 to its aid, and armed it with a stringent code of laws, not 
 only for the punishment, but for the effectual 2^revention, of 
 violations of our neutral obligations, — a code so ample and 
 satisfactory, that, with some few amendments subsequently 
 made, it was afterwards substantially adopted by the English 
 Government as its own. 
 
 And, finally, we find, that the Judiciary, in the same spirit, 
 have construed and applied both the law of nations and the 
 Neutrality Acts upon the broadest principles of good faith, in 
 favor of all nations (the weakest as well as the strongest), 
 and with unflinching severity upon our own citizens ; estab- 
 lishing it as a crime against both the law of nations and our 
 statutes, — not only to send from an American port a vessel 
 equipped and armed as a privateer or vessel of war, immedi- 
 ately to prey upon the commerce of a friendly belligerent, un- 
 der a commission already on board when she sailed, or put 
 on board on the high seas or at a neutral port, — but also 
 a crime to send out such a vessel to the enemy of that bel- 
 ligerent, although going under our own flag in the guise of 
 a mercantile adventure, with no design to commit hostilities 
 on her passage to his port, nor until after having been commis- 
 sioned there and while sailing under his flag (provided that 
 she left our port on a contract of sale with the enemy, or with 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 37 
 
 a fixed intention on the part of her owners so to use her) : — 
 and not only thus ; but a crime against the statute, to send 
 from a port in our country, to the enemy of such belligerent, 
 a vessel unarmed, and in no preparation to commit hostilities, 
 and with no expectation of committing any until after her arri- 
 val in such enemy's port, and her being equipped and armed 
 and commissioned there (if such fixed intention to have her 
 so equipped, armed, commissioned, and used, existed at the 
 time of her departure from the United States): — and not 
 stopping there ; but a crime also, to commence the preparation, 
 eqwip)ping, or fitting out of a vessel for such hostile purpose, 
 with* the /jjecZ intent so to use her, although such prepara- 
 tion be not completed, and no injury be inflicted upon any 
 one ; — the fixed intent, proved, and coupled with any act done 
 in furtherance of it, being held to taint both the vessel and 
 her owners with the crime, and to expose these to the pains 
 and penalties of the law, for its perpetration, and the vessel 
 to confiscation. 
 
 Such is the construction put by the Executive and Judicial 
 departments of the Government of the United States upon 
 the law of nations, and upon our Enlistment Act corresponding 
 with that of England, and such are our nation's understanding 
 and practical performance of her duties as a neutral, alike to 
 the most powerful and to the weakest of nations. By requisi- 
 tions upon her public ofiicers faithfully to fulfil their duties of 
 inquiry and observation, and by such a construction of the 
 Enlistment Act, she is not only enabled to punish breaches 
 of her neutrality already consummated in wrongs done to a 
 friendly nation, hut essentially to p)revent them ; to interpose, 
 and frustrate the incipient attempt to violate her laws ; to nip 
 it in the bud, before it shall have brought forth the bitter 
 fruits of national jealousy, alienation, and resentment, — to 
 end, perhaps, in the dire calamity of war. 
 
 How striking the contrast between this construction of a 
 law, and of duty under it,— enabling the Government at once 
 
1 
 
 38 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 to place its hand upon the vessel and her offending owners on 
 reasonable suspicion of the intended crime against a friendly 
 nation, and to hold them for a judicial investigation of their 
 real purpose, and condemning the one to forfeiture, and the 
 other to punishment, upon proof of the first act done with a 
 fixed hostile intention against such nation, — and that con- 
 struction, hitherto adopted by the English Government, of 
 the same law, imposing the same duties ; by which construc- 
 tion the obligation to arrest the vessel is confined to the time 
 when she shall have become completely equipped and armed, 
 and prepared for the commission of immediate hostilities, ready 
 to slip out of port upon any false pretence, or in a dark ni'ght ; 
 and no duty is acknowledged of interference, even then, by 
 the voluntary action of Government officers, nor until satisfac- 
 tory proof of the hostile character and destination of the ves- 
 sel, in authentic form, with red-tape precision, shall have been 
 obtained by the neutral stranger in her land (if one happens 
 to be there having knowledge of the facts), and presented to 
 them with a respectful craving for their interference ! 
 
 How wretchedly abortive any such system must be as to 
 any substantial prevention of the violation of neutral rights by 
 a nation, whose rulers, and portions of whose people, are in 
 sympathy with one of the belligerents, and in mental hostility 
 to the other, would need no proof, even if experience had not 
 so signally shown it. The perfect facility with which the 
 Rebels have obtained in England mighty ships of war (openly 
 built for their service by men in high public stations, boasting 
 of their agency in the business), and some of them by open 
 subscriptions by her merchants, — vessels in themselves 
 powerful engines of war, without further arms, but entirely 
 fitted to receive great armaments (also there made for them, 
 and sent out, to be put on board of them, in vessels under the 
 English flag), and with crews consisting mainly of English- 
 men, enlisted in England (or who had agreed there to enlist), 
 and taken in the same or similar vessels to the place of rendez- 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 39 
 
 vous ; — and the perfect impunity, not only from legal inter- 
 ference, but from any rebuke in public opinion, (if not indeed 
 the extensive public approbation with which all this has been 
 done,) — will constitute a conspicuous page in history upon 
 England's sense of neutral faith in the latter part of the nine- 
 teenth century, and not the less as in contrast with the good 
 faith exhibited by the United States towards her, in her hour 
 of need, in earlier portions of it ; to say nothing of her seem- 
 ing insensibility to the duties and honorable observance of 
 reciprocal obligation. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Neutrality Laws of England 
 would afford a perfectly effectual remedy against any such 
 violations, or intended violations, of neutral relations, if they 
 should be administered and applied in the manner in which 
 precisely similar laws always have been and arc applied 
 in the United States. 
 
 Another very important English statute, bearing upon the 
 subject of her ability to protect the United States from these 
 piratical plunderers and destroyers (issuing from her ports, 
 and furnished with their crews and means of destruction from 
 her workshops and naval reserves), if she had the disposition 
 to do so, is the Act of 17 and 18 Victoria, chap. 104, being 
 the Merchants' Shipping Act, which, in sect. 103, provides as 
 follows : — 
 
 '' If any person uses the Britisli flag and assumes the British 
 national character on board any ship owned in whole or in part 
 by any person not entitled by law to own British ships, for 
 the purpose of making such ship ap)pear to he a British ship, 
 such ship shall he forfeited to her Majesty, unless such as- 
 sumption has been made for the purpose of escaping capture 
 by an enemy or by a foreign ship of war in exercise of some 
 belligerent right. 
 
 " And, in order that the above provisions as to forfeitures 
 may be carried into effect, it shall be lawful for any commis- 
 sioned officer on full pay in the military or navcd service of 
 
40 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 her ]\Iajesty, or any British officer of customs, or any British 
 consular officer, to seize and detain any ship which has either 
 wholly, or as to any share therein, become subject to forfeiture 
 as aforesaid, and to bring her for adjudication before the 
 High Court of Admiralty," &c., &c. 
 
 And section 4 provides, that no such oflScer shall be civilly 
 or criminally liable for any seizure made on reasonable 
 grounds. 
 
 Now, it is notorious that many, if not most, of the captures 
 of the merchant vessels of the United States have been made 
 by the rebel privateers under the British flag, used to decoy 
 them witliin reach, or to prevent their attempting to escape ; 
 and that in some, if not in numerous, cases this flag has been 
 kept flying, not only when guns were fired, but until after the 
 capture was completed. Yet these same privateers have 
 entered English ports, where these facts cannot but be well 
 known, and perhaps with the victims of their deception on 
 board ; but, instead of being seized and brought to trial by 
 her Majesty's military or naval ofiicers on full pay, or her 
 vigilant officers of the customs, they have been received by 
 them with military and naval salutes, and their officers have 
 been feasted, and treated with the most distinguished consid- 
 eration, — as great as could be accorded to her Majesty's most 
 friendly allies. These vessels are still liable to forfeiture : and 
 greater confidence might be felt in England's intention to 
 preserve an impartial neutrality, if, instead of saluting, feasting, 
 and complimenting those who thus abuse her flag in order to 
 entrap the citizens of a friendly nation in treaty with her, she 
 would require her officers to administer her laws made for 
 their protection, instead of thus affiliating with the violators 
 of those laws. It may be a serious question for future settle- 
 ment, whether the implied permission of such prostitution 
 of tlie English flag to the injury of a friendly nation, deduci- 
 ble from the failure to enforce her own laws made to prevent 
 it, is not in itself a just cause of complaint as a substantial 
 
ENGLAND AND Till] UNITED STATES. 41 
 
 violation of tlie impartial neutrality demanded by the law of 
 nations. 
 
 Having thus considered the law of nations, and the muni- 
 cipal laws of England and America, touching their mutual 
 relations as neutrals, and the history of those relations up 
 to the commencement of this Rebellion, it remains to ex- 
 amine the manner in which they have been regarded by 
 England in this struggle. It is needful, however, to premise 
 another important law of nations, which, though it has no 
 peculiar relation to neutrality, is important in its application 
 to this inquiry, and about which there is no controversy ; 
 namely, that the flag of a nation extends her municipal laws 
 and jurisdiction wherever it lawfully waves, excepting while 
 within the territorial jurisdiction of a friendly foreign power : 
 so that a vessel on the high seas, or anywhere not within 
 such local jurisdiction, and all persons and things on board 
 of it, are under the government and protection of such 
 municipal laws (unless these laws be in terms otherwise 
 limited), and are liable to punishment or forfeiture for any 
 violation of them, precisely in the same manner as they 
 would be if the vessel were in one of her harbors. 
 
 29 August, 1863. 
 
42 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE " ALABAMA " AND THE " GEORGIA." 
 
 In applying the principles of the law of nations and of the 
 Enlistment Acts to the transactions upon which the questions 
 in hand arise, it is proposed to pass by instances of unfriendly, 
 not to say hostile, conduct on the part of English officials in 
 the colonies (who are rarely known to exhibit themselves 
 in any manner not believed to be acceptable to their masters 
 at home), and to confine the discussion to the prominent cases 
 of the gunboats the " Oreto," now the "Florida," the "290," 
 now the "Alabama," the "Japan," now the "Georgia" or 
 " Virginia," and others of the like kind ; of the iron-plated, tur- 
 reted Rams in process of construction ; and of the "Alexandra," 
 now on trial ; — all being enterprises originating and carried 
 on in conspicuous places in England, and under the immediate 
 eyes of her Ministers of State and of her naval and custom- 
 house officers, and with little or no serious attempt at con- 
 cealment. 
 
 Precise knowledge of all the circumstances of each case 
 cannot, of course, be expected, as enterprises of this charac- 
 ter are always under greater or less degrees of falsehood and 
 concealment : though, in the cases mentioned, it must be 
 admitted, that no more of these was practised than some 
 regard for decent appearances made necessary ; the enter- 
 prises seeming to be in popular favor, and considered unob- 
 jectionable, to say the least, by public Ministers and officers, 
 until they were imperatively called upon to interfere. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 43 
 
 The most conspicuous of tliese cases, and the ones that 
 constitute the best test of the doctrine contended for in 
 England, are those of the " Ahibama " and the " Georgia ; " 
 and, fortunately, about tliem the facts seem to be indis- 
 putable. 
 
 The " Alabama," a very powerful war-steamer, was built by 
 Mr. Laird, a member of the House of Commons, at Birkenhead, 
 opposite to Liverpool, on a contract with agents or officers in 
 the rebel service, or persons perfectly well known by him as 
 designing her for that service. It was commonly reported 
 (and no contradiction is known to have been made), that she 
 was built in part, if not Avholly, by a subscription of British 
 merchants and capitalists. 
 
 After she was launched, and while fitting for sea in the 
 port of Liverpool, the American Minister, on the 23d of June, 
 called the attention of Earl Russell to the fact, that she was 
 believed to be fitting out for the especial and manifest object 
 of carrying on hostilities by sea, and was to be commanded 
 by an insurgent agent. On the 25th, Earl Russell referred 
 the matter to the proper department ; and, on the 1st of July, 
 the commissioners reported, that " there loas no attempt on the 
 part of her builders to disguise, ivhat loas most apparent, 
 that she was intended for a vessel of war ; " '' that she had 
 several poicder-canisters on hoard,^^ but, " as yet, neither guns 
 nor carriages ; " that the current report was, " that she had 
 been built by a foreign government, which was not denied by 
 THE Messrs. Laird, but that they did not appear disposed to 
 reply to any questions respecting the destination of the vessel 
 after she should leave Liverpool ; " that they, the commis- 
 sioners, had no other reliable information ; and that, having 
 referred the matter to their solicitor, " they concurred with 
 him in opinion, that there was not sufficient ground to warrant 
 the detention of the vessel, or any interference on their part." 
 (Mess. & Doc. 1862-3, pt. i. pp. 128-130.) 
 
 Mr. Adams caused further evidence to be collected, and 
 
44 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 procured the written opinion of an eminent lawyer, one of 
 the Queen's counsel, (in which he stated, that " it appeared 
 difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement of the 
 Foreign Enlistment Act, which, if not enforced on this occa- 
 sion, is little better than a dead letter,") and transmitted 
 them to Earl Russell, again urging the arrest of the vessel. 
 (Mess. & Doc. 18G2-3, pt. i. pp. 149-153). But, before any 
 effort to arrest her, she had sailed. The delay in making the 
 arrest was attributed to a sudden malady of the Queen's 
 Advocate, which made it necessary to call for the opinion of 
 other persons ; and this had not been received until after the 
 vessel had departed. (Mess. & Doc. 1862-3, pt. i. p. 163.) 
 
 Earl Russell afterwards informed Mr. Adams, that orders to 
 arrest her had been sent to Queenstown and to Nassau. She 
 took good care, however, not to go to either of those places, 
 and NEVER since has been there ; the reasons for which, until 
 better known, may well be imagined. She left Liverpool witli- 
 out any register or clearance. The want of them is conclusive 
 evidence that she did not leave England as a British vessel, 
 or as entitled or designing to be so accounted (however largely 
 British merchants or capitalists might be interested in her), 
 but as in the service of a foreign government. Off Point 
 Linas, she received an addition to her crew of about fifty men 
 from an English vessel, and proceeded directly to Terceira, a 
 Portuguese island, one of the Azores. She was there joined 
 by the British barque " Agrippina," which had brought from 
 the Thames the principal part of her guns and stores. While 
 these were transhipping on board the " Alabama," the Portu- 
 guese authorities interfered to prevent such an abuse of a 
 neutral port, but were told that the " Alabama " was merely 
 relieving the " Agrippina," which was in danger of sinking. 
 Soon afterwards, the English steamer "Bahama" arrived direct 
 from Liverpool, whence she had cleared as for Nassau, with 
 Captain Serames and fifty additional men, and the residue of 
 the guns and stores. LTpon this, the Portuguese authorities 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 45 
 
 peremptorily ordered them all oil". They went to a remote and 
 secluded part of the coast, where they completed the tran- 
 shipment. Captain Semmes then took command of the " Ala- 
 bama," ran up the rebel flag in place of the ensign of England 
 (which till then had floated over her), read his commission, and 
 hiunched forth on his cruise for the plunder and destruction 
 of American commerce. The case of the " Virginia," or 
 " Georgia," is understood to be substantially similar, except- 
 ing that the place of rendezvous was at some agreed point ofl" 
 the coast of France. 
 
 If this be neutrality, what is war, or complicity in war? 
 If an English-built, English-armed, and English-manned vessel 
 of war can be thus furnished to a belligerent by English 
 subjects, from English ports, and under the English flag, 
 fully completed for her work of devastation, to be launched at 
 once upon the commerce of a friendly nation in alliance with 
 England (without the shi2) or the arms or the men having been 
 in any other than English ports, or under any other controlling 
 jurisdiction than that of the English flag') , and not be accounted 
 a violation of the laws or duties of neutralit}^, what is neu- 
 trality but a name ? or what such pretended neutrality but 
 war in disguise? Far better would it be for the honor of 
 England, if she intends to maintain this position, at once to 
 abandon the pretence of neutrality, and avow herself the ally 
 of the insurgents ; or to disclaim it as a national obligation, 
 and abolish the Foreign Enlistment Act 'from her Statute- 
 book. 
 
 Happily, we are not constrained to believe that such a doc- 
 trine will be eventually recognized by her judicial tribunals, 
 or her honest and inteUigent people, however apparently sanc- 
 tioned by those now in authority in her national councils, or 
 by some of her ship-builders, merchants, and capitalists, ready 
 to aid in the plunder and destruction of the commerce of a 
 friendly people, and to endanger the peace of two great 
 nations, if only it be for a valuable consideration. 
 
46 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 As above stated, it is universally conceded, that the fitting- 
 out of vessels of war in a neutral port, for hostilities against a 
 friendly belligerent, is, by the law of nations, a breach of neu- 
 trality. If, then, the " Alabama" had sailed from Liverpool in 
 the condition in which she left the coast of Terceira, there 
 could be no question that such a violation had taken place. 
 But it is contended, that, as the combination of the arms, am- 
 munition, and crew, with the ship, did not take place within 
 any port of her Majesty's kingdom or dominions, the case 
 does not fall within the law of nations or the Foreign Enlist- 
 ment Act ; and Chief-Baron Pollock, in pronouncing judgment 
 in the case of the " Alexandra," volunteered the opinion, 
 that, if the " Alabama " sailed without her armament and 
 crew, and they were united with her elsewhere, she would 
 not be considered as within the provision of the act. It 
 does not appear, however, that the learned judge had knowl- 
 edge of the facts, and of the inception of this combination 
 on the soil of England in the manner above stated ; or that, 
 upon knowledge of them, he would have uttered such an 
 opinion: for on what 'principle does the case, as it stands, 
 differ from that which would have been presented if the union 
 had taken place in the port of Liverpool ? Every act done, 
 from the laying of her keel to the consummation of her equip- 
 ment as a ship of war on her war path, was commenced in 
 England, on English soil ; loas inchoate there; and only com- 
 pleted elsewhere ; 'and, even there, was so completed under the 
 municipal jurisdiction of her national flag. The intention was 
 formed on English territory ; the essential acts of building 
 the ship, of making and preparing the arms and ammunition, 
 of shipping them, and of engaging the crew, were cdl done 
 there; and the transpoi'tation to the place of union was the 
 only act remaining to be done. 
 
 It seems trifling with all sound principles of jurisprudence 
 and good faith to say, that deeds of this description were not 
 done in England because their final object was not attained 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 47 
 
 on her soil ; though even that was attained under tlie pro- 
 tection of her flag. If the combination had taken place at 
 the mouth of the Mersey, or anywhere one foot within a 
 line three miles from the English coast, the violation of neu- 
 trality would be undeniable. But can it in principle make 
 any difference (all the antecedents and the hostile intents and 
 objects being the same, and all the acts designed for the 
 end being thus in process of completion, and with no inter- 
 vening foreign jurisdiction), whether it be made a few feet 
 within, or a few feet without, that line ? And, if not, what 
 real difference can the addition of a few miles make, no foreign 
 jurisdiction intervening ? 
 
 But it is not upon general principles only, however obvious, 
 that the decision of this question must depend, nor upon any 
 judicial judgment which England can ignore. Her greatest 
 judge. Sir William Scott, the pre-eminent expounder of the 
 law of nations in its application to maritime cases, whom all 
 the world holds in respect, has determined it in the case 
 alluded to in the second of these articles (pp. 7, 8); in which 
 case it was decided, that a capture on the high seas of a 
 vessel belonging to a friendly belligerent, made by the boats 
 of her enemy from a cruiser lying within neutral territory, 
 was illegal and void, as constituting a breach of neutrality. 
 (^Tioee Gebroeders, 3 Robinson's Rep. 162.) 
 
 In that case, four Dutch ships had been captured by the 
 boats of a man-of-war of the enemy, lying within the territorial 
 limits of Prussia ; and the Prussian consul claimed restitution, 
 on a suggestion that it was a capture made within the protec- 
 tion of the Prussian territory : he contending, that although 
 the act of capture itself might not take place within the neu- 
 tral territory, yet that the ship to which the capturing boats 
 belonged was actually lying within the neutral limits ; and 
 therefore, that, wherever the place of capture might be, the 
 station of the ship was in itself sufficient to affect the legality 
 of the capture. 
 
48 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 The opiniou of that great judge is in language so explicit 
 and comprehensive, so remarkably pertinent, to the case 
 under consideration, and so instructive, that it must be given 
 in full ; although the doing so may seem to extend this article 
 to an otherwise unreasonable length. 
 
 " It is said that the ship was, in all respects, observant of 
 the peace of the neutral territory ; that nothing was done by 
 her, which could affect the right of territory, or from which 
 any inconvenience could arise to the country within whose 
 limits she was lying, inasmuch as the hostile force which she 
 employed was applied to the captured vessel lying out of the 
 territory. But that is a doctrine that goes a great deal too 
 far. I am of opinion, that no use of a neutral territory for 
 the purposes of war is to be permitted. I do not say, remote 
 uses, such as procuring provisions and refreshments, and acts 
 of that nature, which the law of nations universal)}^ tolerates ; 
 but that no proximate acts of war are in any manner to be 
 allowed to originate on neutral ground : and I cannot but 
 think that such an act as this, that a ship should station her- 
 self on neutral territory, and send out her boats on hostile 
 enterprises, is an act of hostility much too immediate to be 
 permitted. For, suppose that even a direct Jiostile use should 
 be required to bring it within the prohibition of the law of 
 nations : nobody will say that the very act of sending out 
 boats to effect a capture is not itself an act directly hostile, — 
 not complete indeed, but inchoate, and clothed with all the 
 characters of hostility. If this could be defended, it might as 
 well be said, that a ship lying in a neutral station might fire 
 shot on a vessel lying out of the neutral territory. The 
 injury, in that case, would not be consummated, nor received 
 on neutral ground ; but no one would say that such an act 
 would not be an hostile act, immediately commenced within 
 the neutral territory. And what does it signify to the nature 
 of the act, considered for the present purpose, whether I 
 send out a cannon-shot which shall compel the submission of 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 49 
 
 a vessel lying at two miles' distance, or whether I send out a 
 boat armed and manned to effect the very same thing at the 
 same distance ? It is, in both cases, the direct act of the 
 vessel lying in neutral ground. The act of hostility actually 
 begins, in the latter case, with the launching and manning 
 and arming the boat, that is sent out on such an errand of 
 force. 
 
 " If it were necessary, therefore, to prove that a direct and 
 immediate act of hostility had been committed, I should be 
 disposed to hold, that it was sufficiently made out by the facts 
 of this case. But direct hostility appears not to be neces- 
 sary ; for whatever has an immediate connection with it is 
 forbidden. You cannot, without leave, car;y prisoners or 
 booty into a neutral territory, there to be detained, because 
 such an act is an immediate continuation of hostility. In the 
 same manner, an act of hostility is not to take its commence- 
 ment on neutral ground. It is not sufficient to say, it is not 
 completed there. You are not to take any measure there 
 that shall lead to immediate violence ; you are not to avail 
 yourself of a station on neutral territory, making, as it were, 
 a vantage-ground of the neutral country, — a country which 
 is to carry itself with perfect equality between both bellige- 
 rents, giving neither the one or the other any advantage." * 
 
 Now, the fitting-out of a vessel of war, to be used in hos- 
 tilities against another nation, is confessedly a breach of 
 neutrality, because virtually an act of war. And if, as this 
 case decides, " no 'proximate acts of war are in any manner 
 to he allowed to originate on neutral ground," by what logic 
 can it be argued, that the inception and entire preparation of 
 cdl the elements of a ship of war on neutral ground, and the 
 sending them forth under the neutral flag, to he united on 
 the high seas, for the immediate prosecution of hostilities, are 
 not proximate acts of war so originating ? And if sending 
 
 • The Italics, in this Opinion, are by the Court. 
 
 7 
 
50 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 out boats to effect a capture beyond the territorial limits is 
 " in itself an act directly hostile (not complete indeed, hut 
 inchoate, and clothed with all the characters of hostility "), how- 
 can it be maintained, that sending out a vessel entirely pre- 
 pared to receive all her implements and means for war, and 
 the sending of these in other vessels, to be united at a given 
 place on the high seas, there to be employed at once in hostili- 
 ties, are not '' inchoate acts, clothed with all the characters of 
 hostility" ? If the vessel herself were, by means of her con- 
 struction, enabled to commit hostilities, and should commit 
 them on her way to the place of rendezvous, or if the vessels, 
 each carrying a portion of her intended armament, were so to 
 commit them, — »in pursuance of a previous intention so to do, 
 if opportunity should occur, — each case would be one of 
 undeniable breach of neutrality. And how can their doing 
 so in combination on the high seas, in pursuance of such 
 intention, be any the less a violation of it? The illustra- 
 tion of the shot fired from a ship in a neutral station, upon 
 a vessel lying outside, is so perfectly in point, that further 
 illustration seems entirely superfluous. 
 
 But the great doctrine of this case goes far beyond what is 
 necessary to prove, that the finishing of these vessels was an 
 undeniable breach of neutrality. The Court, after deciding 
 that the transaction complained of was a direct and immediate 
 act of hostility, if that were necessary to be proved, pro- 
 ceeds to decide, that " direct hostility appears not to he neces- 
 sary, for luhatever has an immediate connection with it is 
 forbidden ; " and that " an act of hostility is not to take its com- 
 mencement on neutral ground. It is not sufficient to say, it 
 is not completed there. You are not to take any measure 
 there that shall lead to immediate violence." If, then, the 
 fitting-out of a ship of war in a neutral port is confessedly 
 a violation of neutrality, surely the building of her, and the 
 making and supplying of her arms and munitions of war, 
 and the engaging of her crew there, and shipping them there, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 51 
 
 to be taken to her, must constitute a couimencement of it. 
 It falls, indeed, very little short of a perfect consummation 
 of it ; and all the acts are measures intended for, and so 
 leading to, immediate violence. If any one of these vessels 
 had sailed from Liverpool fully armed and equipped, but 
 with no intention to commit hostilities until after reaching 
 the longitude and latitude of the appointed place of rendez- 
 vous on the high seas, such postponement of the intention 
 could not relievo her from the charge of a breach of neu- 
 trality when she sailed. And what difference can it make, 
 whether she arrived there thus equipped, or under an ar- 
 rangement to receive her equipment, also made in England, 
 and sent out in English vessels, to join her there, and there 
 to commence hostilities ? The intent, the purpose, and the 
 consequences are precisely the same in both cases. 
 
 The Court, in pronouncing the opinion in that case, pro- 
 ceeded to say, " You are not to avail yourself of a station on 
 neutral territory, making, as it ivere, a vantage-ground of the 
 neutral country, — a country which is to carry itself with 
 perfect equality between both belligerents, giving neither 
 the one or the other any advantage." If the Ministers and 
 judicial tribunals of England were under the inspiration of 
 such doctrines as these, we should have less cause for present 
 complaint or future apprehension. 
 
 3 September, 1863. 
 
52 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE "ALABAMA," THE " GEORGfIA," AND THE "FLORIDA." 
 
 The cases of the " Alabama " and the " Georgia " have thus 
 far been considered by themselves, because of the peculiar 
 circumstances bj which they are distinguished (as being 
 completely equipped ships of war while under English juris- 
 diction), and which, independently of the principles and 
 arguments applicable to the cases of the " Florida " and 
 the "Alexandra," constitute them, as is believed, palpable 
 breaches of neutrality, not only according to American decis- 
 ions, but to a leading one in England, and to the most obvious 
 application of familiar rules of the law of nations. It is to be 
 borne in mind, however, that they fall still more clearly within 
 the principles and rules (now to be considered) applicable 
 to the case of the " Florida," the facts of which seem, upon 
 first impression, of a less decisive character ; and that the 
 same reasoning which leads to the conviction, that the latter 
 presents an instance of breach of neutrality, would, a fortiori, 
 prove the former to do so. 
 
 The facts about the " Florida " are somewhat obscure, she 
 being the first privateer furnished to the rebels, and more 
 concealment having been practised concerning her than seems 
 to have been thought necessary in subsequent similar under- 
 takings. Enough are known, however, to be the subject of a 
 clear application of the law of nations and of the Foreign 
 Enlistment Act, upon the principles and rules of law which 
 are recognized in the courts of the United States, and the 
 
ENGLAND AND TIIK UNITED STATES. 53 
 
 benefit of which in former times, when England was tlie l^el- 
 ligerent and America tlie neutral, the British Government 
 claimed of the United States. 
 
 This vessel, the " Florida," was built in Liverpool as a 
 gunboat, or vessel of war, for the rebel service, pierced 
 for six guns, and completely fitted in that port, as a vessel 
 of war, for the reception of her armament, munitions, and 
 crew, under the name of the " Oreto." She lay there for 
 some time, her character and destination as a rebel privateer 
 being matters of public notoriety; when, the American Minis- 
 ter having called attention to her as a vessel designed for 
 hostilities against the United States, an inquiry was ordered, 
 which terminated, however, in a report which indicates it to 
 have been a miserable sham. She cleared for Palermo and 
 Jamaica with a crew of fifty-two or fifty four men, but sailed 
 directly to Nassau, an English colonial port in the West Indies. 
 Whether she had taken in her armament and cargo on the 
 English coast before she arrived at Nassau, or received them 
 there, is uncertain, the evidence being conflicting. The col- 
 lector at Liverpool represented, in his written answer to the 
 inquiry ordered, that it was reported that she was to receive 
 her armament at Nassau, where it had been sent in another 
 vessel ; thus indicating the general, not to say official, knowl- 
 edge of her character and destination. 
 
 She arrived at Nassau, and was temporarily arrested ; but 
 soon sailed with her armament and a cargo of munitions of 
 war for Mobile ; which port she succeeded in entering, and 
 from which she afterwards emerged upon the career of devas- 
 tation in which she has been so signally successful. When 
 she changed her name, or the commander received or read 
 his commission on board, does not appear ; nor is the time of 
 either material, as will presently appear. 
 
 The main facts in this case, material for immediate consid- 
 eration, are, that she was built in England as a vessel of war 
 for the rebel service, and sailed from the coast of England, or 
 
54 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 from one of her colonial ports, armed and wholly or in part 
 manned as a privateer, for a rebel port ; whence, after having 
 landed there a cargo of munitions of war, she sailed on her 
 cruise. 
 
 The prominent facts in each of the cases of the "Alabama," 
 the " Georgia," and the " Florida," appear to bring it so 
 clearly within the letter and the spirit of the Foreign Enlist- 
 ment Act and the law of nations, as a gross breach of neu- 
 trality, that it seems superfluous to adduce further argument 
 in illustration of this. 
 
 If the persons who built these vessels, or procured them 
 to be built, in England, and to be fitted in all points for sea 
 as ships of war (excepting their armaments and crews), in- 
 tending them for the rebel service ; who procured their 
 armaments and munitions of war there, and engaged their 
 crews there, in whole or in part, with the above intent ; and 
 who then united them on the high seas, while still under the 
 English flag, to launch instantly upon their hostile expedi- 
 tions, — were not persons who, within any part of her Majes- 
 ty's dominions, " equipped, furnished, fitted out, or armed," 
 li QY procured to be equipped, furnished, fitted out, or armed," 
 " or aided, or assisted, or were concerned in, the equipping, 
 furnishing, fitting out, or arming, of any ship or vessel, with 
 the intent or in order that sucli ship or vessel should be em- 
 ployed in the service " of a foreign power, " with intent to 
 cruise and commit hostilities " against any other power, with 
 which " her Majesty was not then at war," — then it would 
 seem difiicult, if not impossible, to frame any description that 
 would embrace them, and the Statute would seem little bet- 
 ter than a worthless, empty pretence. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, that, in the American Statute, the 
 words are, '' fitted out and armed," and " fitting out and 
 arming," &c. ; and it is reasonable to suppose, that the 
 substitution of the word " or " for the word '' and " in this 
 passage in the English statute, which was enacted subse- 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 55 
 
 qnently to that of the United States, was intended to obviate 
 any construction requiring both fitting out and arming. 
 
 As before remarked, in the Court of the United States it 
 has been emphatically decided, not only that the vessel need 
 not be completed, or armed, or prepared for war, within the 
 territory of the United States, in order to constitute an in- 
 fraction of the Foreign Enlistment Act, but that, if she sailed 
 ivitJwut being armed, or at all prepared for loar, and in no 
 condition to commit hostilities while on her way to her ])ort of 
 destination, the owners or equippers intending, when she 
 sailed, that she should thereafter be employed as a privateer 
 in the service of a foreign people to commit hostilities 
 against the subjects qf a power at peace with the United 
 States, it constituted a violation of the statute. Under this 
 decision, it is manifest that any one of the three vessels above 
 named would be adjudged guilty of such a violation at the 
 moment of sailing, even though she should not have a gun or 
 any fighting crew on board, nor intend nor expect to procure 
 any until after arrival at a Confederate port. 
 
 But we are not obliged to rest on American decisions only; 
 for (although none upon this point appear to have been 
 made in the courts of England until the recent one in the 
 case of the " Alexandra," from which an appeal has been 
 taken, and which, therefore, is of no present authority) the 
 political history of England upon the subject (referred to in 
 the Third Number of this series of papers), and the recent 
 conduct and language of her Ministers, seem to show a simi- 
 larity of construction of the law and of neutral duties under 
 the Foreign Enlistment Act. And, as these questions pertain 
 quite as much to the domain of politics as to that of judicial 
 decision, the practice of the Government may well be ac- 
 counted a satisfactory exponent of the doctrine by which 
 they are to be solved, and especially so where such practice 
 has been coincident in the two nations between which the 
 questions arise. 
 
56 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Now, from this history we learn, that, as far back as the 
 years 1793-94, England invoked the interposition of our 
 National Government to prevent the fitting-out of privateers 
 for the service of France in the war then pending between 
 them ; that our Foreign Enlistment Act was passed in con- 
 sequence of that application, in order to enable our Govern- 
 ment faithfully to fulfil our neutral obligations (which Act, 
 subsequently amended, was afterwards adopted almost verba- 
 tim by England, showing an entire similarity in the views of 
 the two Governments upon the subject) ; and that England, 
 in 1854—55, wlie^i at war with Russia, claimed of the Govern- 
 ment of the United States the application of her Enlistment 
 Act in accordance with the construction put upon it by the 
 courts of the United States, and this to a merchant vessel, not 
 built for war, nor armed, nor equipped, nor in process of being 
 ftted out, as one, any further than being supposed to have taken 
 a few guns into her hold ; thus showing, that, up to that 
 period, England understood neutral obligations and duties 
 under the Foreign Enlistment Act precisely as they had been 
 always understood and practised in America. 
 
 And, in these very cases of the " Florida " and " Alabama," 
 we find that the English Government, acting under the ad- 
 vice of its professional counsel, gave orders for the arrest of 
 the one in Nassau, and the other in Liverpool (though too 
 late to be of service) ; thus proving, that it is not, in the 
 opinion of the law-officers of the Crown, essential that the 
 vessel should be fitted out, equipped, and armed before leav- 
 ing port, in order to bring her within the provisions of the 
 act. 
 
 Now, upon these facts and these principles of law, we 
 maintain, that each of the vessels was, and, ever since she 
 left England, has continued to be, and now is, subject to 
 seizure and confiscation for violation of the law of nations and 
 of the English Foreign Enlistment Act, in every port within 
 her territorial jurisdiction in which such vessel has been, or 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 57 
 
 now is, or in which she may arrive, unless exempted by the 
 limitation contained in the 10th section. 
 
 It is important to bear in mind, that, in order to prove a 
 vessel subject to forfeiture, it is not necessary to convict the 
 builder, or the party fitting out and arming her, of any viola- 
 tion of the Act ; for, if each of the parties thus concerned could 
 be shoAvn to be innocent of intending her use in hostilities 
 against the friendly belligerent, and to have furnished or 
 executed his portion of the work as a fair mercantile trans- 
 action, untainted with any such design, — nevertheless, if the 
 parties for whom the work was done or the materials were 
 furnished, or if those who owned her when she was about to 
 sail from England, had such intention, the crime attached to the 
 vessel, and she became subject to forfeiture as if herself guilty 
 of it. If, therefore, it could be shown that Laird, the builder 
 of the " Alabama," and Miller and Sons, the builders of the 
 " Florida," and Fawcett and Co., the engineers and iron-found- 
 ers who furnished their engines and guns, were innocent of 
 any intention to have these vessels used in hostilities against 
 the United States, the use actually made of them would con- 
 clusively prove that the owners for whom they were built and 
 armed had that design, and it would thus render the vessels 
 subject to forfeiture at the time of sailing, although the real 
 owners might never be discovered. 
 
 But it may perhaps be contended, that, if these vessels 
 were guilty of breaches of neutrality when starting upon 
 their respective cruises, which might have subjected them 
 to forfeiture if seized at that time, yet the offences Avere 
 deposited at the end of those first cruises ; and, conse- 
 quently, that they ever since have been, and are now, 
 exempted from any such liability. 
 
 To this, however, it seems a satisfactory answer to say, 
 that, in the cases of the " Alabama " and the '' Georgia," wliich 
 have never entered any rebel port, nor been within any terri- 
 tory under the rebel jurisdiction, the cruises upon which they 
 
58 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 orio-inally started have never ended or been so terminated. 
 All their entries into neutral ports have been for brief and 
 temporary purposes, for supplies and refreshment, to enable 
 them to continue their cruises; and they have never been 
 in any port with any design of such termination. If insur- 
 ance had been effected (as probably was done by some of 
 the British owners) on either vessel when she sailed, " during 
 her cruise,''^ or '' during the cruise on which she is about to 
 sail," it is obvious that such temporary resorts to neutral 
 ports for refreshment or repairs could not be accounted any 
 termination of it. 
 
 In the case of the " Florida," this point, however, might be 
 made with more appearance of reason by claiming that her 
 first voyage had terminated at Mobile, where, as is supposed, 
 her name was changed, and her character as a privateer 
 openly avowed. But, as she was tainted with the intention 
 of crime when she sailed from Liverpool and Nassau, and 
 went to Mobile, not for the purpose of terminating that 
 oifence, but merely to land her cargo, and to acquire more 
 effectual means for its perpetration, such temporary delay, 
 or rather interposition of a port, for obtaining greater effi- 
 ciency, ought not in principle to be accounted any depositing 
 of the original defence. 
 
 Happily this point is not left in doubt, if the decisions of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States upon this branch 
 of national law are entitled to the respect and confidence 
 professed for them abroad as well as at home. It was the 
 main point in the case of the " Gran Para " (7 Wheat. Rep. 471) 
 above cited (No. IV., pp. 29-31, to which the reader is referred), 
 in which the facts were more favorable for such a defence than 
 those of the " Florida ; " and in which the Court, in passing 
 judgment upon it, used the indignant language before quoted, 
 that the doctrine, that the vessel could be thus '' purified 
 from every taint contracted at the place where all her real 
 force and capacity for annoyance were acquired, would 
 
. ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 59 
 
 indeed be a fraudulent neutrality, disgraceful to our own 
 Government, and of which no nation luould he the dupe." 
 
 This case is also directly decisive of the point, if should it 
 be made, as above suggested, in behalf of the "Alabama " and 
 the " Georgia," and if it be thought deserving of further con- 
 sideration than has already been given to it. 
 
 If, then, those vessels are privateers only, it is not per- 
 ceived why the English Government has not a perfect right 
 to seize and confiscate them whenever they come within her 
 jurisdiction. What may be her obligations to do so, will 
 presently be considered. 
 
 5 September, 1863. 
 
GO NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 VIII. 
 
 England's position in relation to the rebel privateers, 
 or ships of war, and the suppression of their depre- 
 DATIONS. 
 
 But it may be contended, that if these vessels, when priva- 
 teers only, are thus subject to seizure and confiscation in any 
 British port in which they may be or arrive, yet, if any one 
 of them is sailing under a commission from the rebel authori- 
 ties as a public or national ship, she is exempt, the insur- 
 gents having been acknowledged as a national belligerent. 
 
 It is true, that, in the intercourse of nations, a distinction 
 exists between public and private ships of war, in regard to 
 the consideration to be given to them by foreign governments 
 when within their respective local jurisdictions. This point, 
 also, was raised and passed upon by the Court in the prolific 
 case of the " Santissima Trinidad," among the many other points 
 not material for the decision of the case. The capturing ves- 
 sel had been sent out to Buenos Ayres for sale, as a mercan- 
 tile adventure, and purchased of the original vendees by the 
 Brazilian Government. But no bill of sale to the latter was 
 produced ; and the question raised, principally upon that de- 
 fect in the evidence, was, whether, notwithstanding this defect 
 of proof, her character as a public ship was established by 
 the production of her commission as one. The Court ruled 
 that it was so ; — " that, in general, the commission of a public 
 ship, signed by the proper authorities of the nation to which 
 she belongs, is complete proof of her national character ; " — 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. Gl 
 
 that, " SO far at least as foreij^n courts are concerned, it imports 
 absolute verity, and the title is not examinable;" — and that 
 "the property must be taken to be duly acquired, and cannot 
 be controverted," this being " a rule founded in public con- 
 venience and policy." And, upon the facts in that case, the 
 rule, and the application of it, seem alike reasonable, — it being 
 one in which no question existed, between the neutral and the 
 belligerent, as to the lawfulness of the title by reason of any vio. 
 lotion of the laws of the neutral in obtaining it, but only a ques- 
 tion between the belligerent claimant and the captor upon the 
 technical form of proof. But it surely would be carrying this 
 doctrine altogether too far, to maintain that it binds the neu- 
 tral nation to respect a title because so vouched, when it was 
 obtained by the captor in gross violation of her own laws, or 
 in defiance of her obligations to the other belligerent, expos- 
 ing her to complaint or reclamation ; and still more so, when 
 such violation and exposure were not by a merely temporary 
 intrusion upon her territory, and when not the title only, but 
 the whole ship, armament, and crew, were procured by an un- 
 lawful appropriation of her military resources and an illegal 
 tampering with her own subjects. If the vessel, for which 
 sanctity of title as a public ship was thus claimed, had been 
 one belonging to the neutral, forcibly taken on the high seas, 
 to be converted into such foreign public ship under a commis, 
 sion in the hands of the captor, and had afterwards arrived in 
 one of her ports, whether by choice or necessity, it would 
 seem absurd to contend that the neutral was precluded from 
 reclaiming it because the commission was conclusive proof 
 that the title had been lawfully obtained. And it is not per- 
 ceived why the same reasons do not apply with equal force 
 to denial of the right of a neutral to confiscate a vessel, to 
 which the belligerent, claiming it, could have no title but tliat 
 acquired by contravention, and in fraud, of her own laws and 
 of her obligations to other parties, — the breach of which 
 laws attached to the vessel the ri^-ht of confiscation from her 
 
62 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 birth. Surely, to carry this doctrine of the inviolability of a 
 commission, as proof of title, to such an extent, would be to 
 convert a rule, founded in the comity of nations, upon the 
 basis of mutual regard, and of the understood reciprocal ob- 
 servance of their respective duties and obligations, into a 
 shield for the violation of those duties, and for the perpetra- 
 tion of offences derogatory alike to the dignity and the safety 
 of the neutral thus called upon to obey it. 
 
 This reasoning, if correct, also disposes of another objec- 
 tion which might occur, founded on the rule, that a public ship 
 is exempted from the local jurisdiction of other nations ; for 
 if she is not to be regarded as one, so as to exempt the alleged 
 title to her from investigation, such question must be tried 
 in the local courts of the neutral. 
 
 But if this doctrine be not maintainable to the extent of 
 giving the judicial tribunals of a neutral nation jurisdiction 
 over a national ship of war, or one entitled to similar privi- 
 leges, under such circumstances, nevertheless, as this exemp- 
 tion from the local jurisdiction of any sovereign power is 
 founded wholly on the implied consent of such power to such 
 exemption, it may be revoked or rescinded for good cause at 
 any time ; and surely no better cause could be assigned or 
 imagined for its revocation, than that the ships in question 
 had been obtained in violation, not only of the rights and of 
 the municipal laws of such power, and in derogation of her 
 majesty, and to the endangerment of her peace with another 
 nation, but were also persistently guilty of gross and defiant 
 breaches of the law of nations.* 
 
 If it be asserted, that the proper remedy of the neutral in 
 such a case is a declaration of war against the offending 
 belligerent, and the capture of the vessel as prize, the an- 
 swer is, that, although the neutral might have a clear right 
 to take that course, she is not bound to do so, and expose 
 
 * The Schooner " Exchange" v. M'Faddon and others, 7 Cranch's Rep. 116. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. G3 
 
 herself to the evils of war, if her interest demands, or she 
 prefers, the quiet assertion of her rights, and the vindication 
 of her neutral obligations, in the manner suggested. Es- 
 pecially may she with propriety and honor do this where 
 she is the stronger power, and pan thus vindicate her dignity 
 and her sense of duty without such exposure; — and this is 
 the precise position of England in her relations to the parties 
 in this war. 
 
 The question is not unfrequently raised, whether, under 
 the peculiar circumstances, these rebel ships can be properly 
 considered as regularly commissioned, and so entitled to be 
 recognized as public ships or as privateers, or whether they 
 are to be deemed merely private sea-rovers, with no claim to 
 recognition as regularly commissioned ships of war ; — in 
 which case, they would fall within the British naval regula- 
 tions, established by the King in Council, and published in 
 1826, which provide, that, " if any ship or vessel shall be 
 taken, acting as a ship of war or privateer, without having 
 a commission duly authorizir^g her to do so, her crew shall 
 be considered as pirates, and treated accordingly." 
 
 That insurgents, shut up within the territories they have 
 usurped ; — who have no means within themselves of con- 
 structing and equipping a single ship of war ; — every one of 
 whose ports is strictly blockaded ; — whose only means 
 of having such a ship upon the high seas is by procuring her 
 to be built, equipped, and manned by the subjects of a neu- 
 tral power; — and whose only opportunity of investing her 
 with the appearance of lawful authority is by a commission 
 sent to her abroad through some agent skulking out of one 
 of her remote harbors or creeks in the dead of night, or 
 under the cover of a storm, — that such insurgents should 
 thus be able to have a fleet of war vessels, not one of which 
 has ever been within their territorial jurisdiction, and should 
 have them recognized as national ships by the neutral gov- 
 ernment whose subjects created, armed, and manned them ; 
 
64 NEUTRAL EELATIONS OP 
 
 whose recognition has saved them, if any thing has, from 
 being accounted freebooters and pirates ; and whose commer- 
 cial interests their raids of devastation upon the commerce of 
 a friendly nation tend very greatly to promote, — all this con- 
 stitutes certainly an anomaly in the history of the law of nations, 
 of purely English invention in the latter part of the nineteenth 
 century, and of which England is entitled to the sole credit. 
 Whether, under the law of nations, a valid title can be thus 
 acquired, or the character of a national or regularly commis- 
 sioned private-armed ship can be thus impressed upon a ship 
 so circumstanced, are questions, which, it is believed, remain 
 to be judicially determined. But, whatever may be the decis- 
 ion, it must be allowed, that, diplomatically considered, such a 
 state of facts has, upon first impression, the aspect of a very 
 sinister neutrality; and it may not be too wide a departure from 
 charity to suggest the apprehension, that — if the tables were 
 turned, and England were at war with the self-styled Confed- 
 erate States, and the citizens of the United States were thus 
 furnishing privateers and ships of war to prey upon her com- 
 merce — the masters and crews, if captured, and standing 
 before an English court, might find themselves uncomfortably 
 near to a personal application of the above-mentioned British 
 naval regulations. 
 
 But there is another and broader view, in which this matter 
 is to be considered, and which, if not misapprehended, pre- 
 sents the honor and good faith of England towards the United 
 States in a very questionable shape. 
 
 If the positions above taken be correct, — if these vessels 
 would be liable to seizure and confiscation for violation of the 
 Foreign Enlistment Act of England, unless protected by their 
 commissions as public ships or privateers ; and if they are 
 protected by such commissions, — then it follows, that their 
 immunity from seizure and confiscation is derived wholly 
 from, and is dependent upon, her recognition of the insur- 
 gents as belligerents. 
 
 I 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. (j5 
 
 Now, that recognition was not in the nature of a treaty or 
 compact, express or implied, which neither party coukl re- 
 voke without the consent of the other, and the continuance of 
 which was stipulated for by particular terms, the violation of 
 which terms alone could justify a departure from it. On the 
 contrary, it was a mere act of grace and favor, which England 
 was under no obligation to grant, and has the right to revoke 
 at any time for good cause ; and it was, in its nature, conditional 
 upon the observance by the rebels of the laws of nations, and 
 of good faith towards herself. And, since the rebels had at- 
 tempted to withdraw from their allegiance to the United 
 States as integral portions of that nation, without announcing 
 any intention to change the obligations imposed upon them 
 by the law of nations under which they had previously lived, 
 this recognition must have been upon the implied condition 
 of their continued observance of those obligations. 
 
 It cannot, it is supposed, be doubted, that a mere recog- 
 nition of insurgents as belligerents by a neutral power is 
 revocable at any time before the acknowledgment of them 
 as an independent nation, upon conviction that their rebellion 
 must be a fruitless struggle, and that the interests of the 
 neutral and of other nations require their return to their 
 allegiance ; and, if this be so, it seems equally clear, that such 
 a recognition must be revocable upon proof that the rebels 
 are violating the law of nations, or the laws and neutral rights 
 of the power by whom they were so recognized, in such a 
 manner as to endanger her peace, or impair her credit and 
 respectability, as not faithfully observant of her neutral 
 obligations. That the rebels have thus grossly violated the 
 laws and neutral rights of England, and exposed her to just 
 complaints on the part of the United States (and it may be to 
 just claims for indemnity), as well as to discredit in the eyes 
 of other nations, in the obtaining of these vessels and their 
 crews as above shown, is evident from facts not suscep- 
 tible of denial, and is conceded by her Government in the 
 
 9 
 
QQ NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 orders given to arrest them. Upon this ground, then, the 
 revocation of the recognition would not only be plainly 
 justifiable, and give no reasonable cause of complaint to the 
 insurgents, but seems to be demanded by a proper sense of 
 self-respect, in the vindication of her own laws and of her 
 national majesty, and the maintenance of an honorable neutral 
 position toward the United States. ' 
 
 There is, however, as is believed, another and much more 
 grave reason for the revocation of this recognition by Eng- 
 land, which is demanded alike by regard for her honor, her 
 professions of loyalty to the law of nations, her posture as at 
 the head of the naval powers of the world, and the false posi- 
 tion in which she is placed in her relations to the United 
 States by the crimes of the insurgents. 
 
 As above stated, that recognition must have been upon the 
 implied condition, that the rebels, as an acknowledged belli- 
 gerent, would conform to the law of nations as generally 
 understood, and as avowed and acted upon by England and 
 by the United States. By one of those laws, now almost uni- 
 versally insisted upon by all nations, and entirely settled by 
 statute and judicial decision in England and in the United 
 States, neutral goods on board an enemy's vessel are exempt 
 from confiscation, and, although the vessel may be con- 
 demned, the cargo is to be restored to the neutral owner ; 
 and conversely, although an enemy's goods on board of 
 a neutral vessel may be condemned as good prize, the vessel 
 is not liable to confiscation, but must be restored.* 
 
 A cargo, therefore, belonging to English subjects on board 
 of an American ship captured by the rebels, is not subject 
 to confiscation as prize of war ; but the ownership remains 
 unchanged, and entitled to protection in the same manner as 
 if it were in a neutral or English ship, excepting only the 
 
 * 1 Kent's Com. pp. 128-131; Wheaton's Elements of International Law, part 4, 
 ch. 3, ^ 21, 22. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 07 
 
 losses and inconveniences necessarily to be incurred in taking 
 the vessel into port for adjudication ; and any voluntary 
 appropriation or destruction of such property (with the 
 knowledge that it is neutral), not made necessary by the 
 capture of the vessel, or by the means proper for subjecting 
 her to adjudication, must therefore, upon principle, be ac- 
 counted piracy, and punishable as such, in the same manner 
 as if committed on board of a neutral or British ship. 
 
 Another of the laws of nations, believed to be now gener- 
 ally recognized and acted upon, and certainly established as 
 between England and the United States (as appears by their 
 statutes and judicial decisions), is, that the ownership of 
 enemy's property captured at sea is not changed, and does 
 not vest in the captor, by the mere seizure, but remains in 
 abeyance until sentence of condemnation, as lawful prize, 
 by a court of competent jurisdiction ; which court, with a 
 few occasional exceptions, under treaties or arrangements 
 with allies, can only be lawfully held in the country of the 
 captors; — it being considered essential to common security 
 on the highway of nations, that this shield should be inter- 
 posed to protect travellers upon it from the unlicensed free- 
 booting, and miscellaneous open and secret plunder, which 
 would otherwise ensue under pretences of hostile capture, 
 and of which the rebels have already furnished notorious 
 examples. 
 
 This law is thus laid down by Chancellor Kent, for whom 
 English lawyers and jurists are accustomed to profess high 
 respect : " But, by the modern usage of nations, neither the 
 twenty-four hours' possession, nor the bringing of the prize 
 infra presidia, is sufficient to change the property in the case 
 of a maritime capture." " Until the capture becomes invested 
 with the character of prize by a sentence of condemnation, 
 the right of property is in abeyance, or in a state of legal 
 sequestration. It cannot be alienated or disposed of ; but the 
 possession of it by the government of the captor is a trust for 
 
G8 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 the benefit of those who may be ultimately entitled. This 
 salutary rule, and one so necessary to check irregular conduct 
 and individual outrage, has been long established in the Eng- 
 lish Admiralty ; and it is noiv everywhere recognized as the law 
 and practice of nations" (1 Kent's Com. 100, 102). 
 
 In the case of Jecker v. Montgomery, (13 Howard's Rep. 516,) 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, speaking of the Act 
 of Congress which requires captured vessels to be brought 
 within the jurisdiction of a prize-court in the United States, 
 say : " This act merely enforces the performance of a duty 
 imposed upon the captor by the law of nations, ivhich, in all 
 civilized countries, secures to the captured a trial in a court of 
 competent jurisdiction before he can finally he deprived of his 
 property y It is not unworthy of remark, that England was 
 herself mainly instrumental in the introduction of this hu- 
 mane modification of the ancient law, which held that the 
 capture vested an immediate title. 
 
 The appropriation or destruction, therefore, of private 
 property belonging even to an enemy, captured at sea, with- 
 out previous adjudication and condemnation as prize, is in 
 utter defiance and gross violation of one of the most salutary 
 and important of the laws of nations, established for their 
 mutual security on their great highway ; and is a wrong, 
 which every civilized nation is bound, not only to resent, hut, 
 if possible, to prevent. 
 
 Now, it is notorious to the whole world, that the rebels are 
 carrying on this parricidal war in utter and avowed defiance 
 of this law ; — that, having no ports into which they can take 
 vessels captured by them for adjudication, they, after plunder- 
 ing from their cargoes all that can be taken on board of 
 their own ships, immediately burn or sink the captured vessels 
 with the remainder ; — that this is done by the orders and 
 under an arrangement of the Rebel Government, by which 
 it has agreed to pay to the captors one-half part of the value 
 of all vessels and cargoes, belonging to citizens of the United 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. G9 
 
 States, thus destroyed ; — and that such destruction has, in 
 repeated instances, involved that of neutral property. 
 
 It does, indeed, seem marvellous, that this gross and public 
 defiance of one of the most sacred laws of war has been suf- 
 fered to pass unchallenged, and without protestation, or 
 attempt at suppression, by the self-styled Mistress of the Sea, 
 whose assumption of that position might reasonably seem to 
 demand of her some watch and ward over the observance of 
 its laws, and especially of one, of which she was the principal 
 author. And this, while she knows, that from her own ports 
 and by her own citizens were furnished all the moans and 
 opportunities for these outrages, and that they arc perpe- 
 trated principally by her own subjects, and often under her 
 own flag ; perpetrated, too, not in behalf of honest men 
 struggling to free themselves from tyranny or oppression, 
 but by rebels seeking the subversion of the freest govern- 
 ment the sun ever shone upon (of which they had themselves 
 almost entire political control), in order to substitute a des- 
 potism founded on chattel-slavery. Above all, it is marvel- 
 lous, that, when a word from her of revocation, or threatened 
 revocation, of her recognition of them as a lawful belligerent, 
 would instantly suppress these atrocities, or render their future 
 perpetration impossible, — instead of uttering that word, she 
 receives the perpetrators with open arms into her ports, with 
 national salutes and ofiicial feastings, and with all the mani- 
 festations of sympathy with their cause, and their brigandism, 
 which could be bestowed upon the Bayards and Sidneys in a 
 noble warfare for the dearest of human rights. 
 
 That the rebel leaders should have the audacity to proclaim, 
 and act upon, such a system of warfare (tlieir whole career in 
 the Rebellion having been one of reckless violation of all laws, 
 human and divine), is not to be wondered at ; but that other 
 nations should acquiesce in it, can only be accounted for by 
 sympathy with them, in seeming forgetfulness that ere long 
 the poisoned chalice may be presented to their own lips. In 
 
70 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 future wars of England or France, whose sympathies with 
 the insurgents render them conspicuous as apparently justify- 
 ing their conduct, what right will they have to deny, that 
 merchant vessels and cargoes, captured at sea by the enemy, 
 may be lawfully burned or destroyed at sea, without previous 
 condemnation as lawful prizes, — after their acquiescence in 
 this mode of warfare (if not implied approval of it) by the 
 rebels ? 
 
 But a still graver question concerning England's position 
 here presents itself Although this destruction of American 
 ships and cargoes may not be accounted such a violation 
 of the law of nations as to subject the perpetrators to punish- 
 ment as guilty of piracy, it seems, nevertheless, quite clear, 
 that the like needless destruction of British vessels or car- 
 goes, under pretence of hostility to the United States, must 
 be so accounted. 
 
 That such destruction has been perpetrated is univer- 
 sally known. In several instances, valuable cargoes, or 
 parts of cargoes, belonging to English subjects, have been 
 burned, with the vessels containing them, because of the in- 
 ability of the captors to remove them into their own ships, 
 and their determination to destroy all American shipping 
 which should fall in their way. A notable instance is within 
 the immediate knowledge of the people of this city ; being 
 the case of the ship '' Nora," belonging to Messrs. George B. 
 Upton and Son, eminent merchants of Boston, which was 
 burned at sea by the rebel commander and crew of the 
 '' Alabama," with a valuable cargo belonging exclusively to 
 British subjects, and regularly documented as such, and about 
 the ownership of which there could be no reasonable pretence 
 of doubt. Now, to regard this transaction in its true light, 
 we have but to ask. What would have been the course of the 
 British Government, if the captured ship had belonged to a 
 subject of the Rebel Government, and Capt. Wilkes, or the 
 commander of any United-States cruiser capturing her, had 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. • 71 
 
 thus burned both ship and cargo on the high seas, for the sake 
 of destroying a rebel ship? Let the conduct of that govern- 
 ment in the case of the " Trent " give answer. No one can 
 doubt, that instantly, upon reception of the news, every availa- 
 ble ship-of-war would have been despatched in search of the 
 " pirate " (as such he would have been denounced); and fleets 
 and armies would have been instantly sent to Canada and the 
 American coast, ready to enter upon instant hostilities, unless 
 ample reparation should be at once made by the Government 
 of the United States, with a humiliating apology that should 
 render further similar outrage impossible. 
 
 But, strange to say, we hear nothing of the sort in these 
 instances of equal wrong to the subjects of England, and 
 equal injury and insult to her national majesty. The English 
 gazettes, so loud in denunciation of the United States on the 
 most trivial occasions, are, so far as is known here, quite 
 silent about them, excepting, perhaps, in a passing notice of 
 the events of the day. No Ministerial or Parliamentary pa- 
 triotism or zeal seems to have been aroused, as was the case 
 in an imagined, but, as it proved, wholly unintended, wrong 
 by the United States ; and no reclamation has been made, or 
 apology demanded, or security required against future perpe- 
 tration of similar outrages, so far as the American public is 
 informed. 
 
 How is all this to be accounted for ? What explanation 
 can be given ? Will it be suggested, that the Rebel Govern- 
 ment has compensated the owners of these cargoes, and so 
 quieted their complaints, and rendered interference on the 
 part of the Government needless, so far as money is con- 
 cerned ? Supposing that to be so (though of this we have 
 no e'vidence), is this all of England's duty in such a matter? 
 Is the recovery of money all that she owes to her own dignity 
 and self-respect, and all that she owes to the world? Is she 
 to condone piracy committed upon her citizens in gross viola- 
 tion of a sacred law of nations, which, if observed, would 
 
72 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 have prevented it, and in gross disregard of her dignity and 
 defiance of her majesty as a nation ; — or is she to suffer it to 
 be condoned, that the pirates may go unscathed, and unshorn 
 of their power to depredate upon the commerce of a friendly 
 nation ? And will she still welcome them to her ports with 
 open arms and national honors, and proffer to them all the 
 facilities for their warfare against a friend, which she could 
 extend to the most honored and favored of allies, engaged 
 in the best cause ? Alas for the pride and glory of Old Eng- 
 land, the land of our fathers, if this be so ! and alas for the 
 sanctity and purity of national law, if this be the manner of 
 its observance and enforcement by the Mistress of the 
 Seas!* 
 
 Having thus considered the power and opportunities which 
 England has of putting an end to the rebel depredations upon 
 American commerce by the use of means of which the rebels 
 could have no reasonable ground of complaint, because founded 
 on their own crimes against her municipal laws and the law 
 of nations, we propose, in the next Number, to consider what 
 may be her obligations so to use them. 
 
 * If the owners of the British cargoes thus destroyed have been compensated, as is 
 supposed, out of the proceeds of the Confederate loan, it may excite a smile to 
 reflect with what skill the traitor financiers succeed in filching money out of the pock- 
 ets of one class of her Majesty's sj'mpathizing subjects, by worthless paper, to repay 
 their plunderings of the pi'operty of another class. 
 
 9 September, 1863. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATER. 73 
 
 IX. 
 
 ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO SUPPRESS THE DEPREDATIONS 
 OF THE REBEL PRIVATEERS, AND SHIPS OF WAR. 
 
 It having been thus shown (as is believed), that England 
 has the right and the power to suppress the depredations of 
 the rebel privateers, and ships of war, upon the commerce 
 of* the United States, by seizure and confiscation of them, as 
 subject to forfeiture or condemnation for violations of her 
 Foreign Enlistment Act, and of her neutrality, by the manner 
 in which they have been obtained, armed, and manned, and 
 of her Shipping Act, by the abuse of her flag, and for their 
 piracies upon her own subjects, and other violations of the 
 law of nations ; — it having also been shown, that she may 
 justly revoke her recognition of the insurgents as belligerents, 
 because of such infractions of those Acts, and of her neu- 
 trality in reference to the United States, and the consequent 
 endangerment of her peaceful relations with that power ; 
 because of their constant, defiant violation of one of the most 
 important of the laws of nations, of which England herself 
 was the chief author ; and because of their repeated piracies 
 upon her own subjects, against Avhich that law Avas intended 
 as a protection, and which, if observed, it would effectually 
 prevent ; — and it having been shown, moreover, that by this 
 revocation the rebels would be deprived of their chief, if not 
 of all their essential, resources for naval Avarfaro, and of im- 
 munity of the crews of their vessels from punishment under 
 
 10 
 
74 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 the statutes of the United States and the law of nations, — it 
 remains now to inquire, What are her obhgations to exercise 
 these powers? 
 
 It is indeed very strenuously maintained by recent writers 
 in England, in their zeal to vindicate her conduct and reputa- 
 tion in this war, that any violations of neutrality are offences 
 only against the neutral, of which the belligerent against 
 whom they are committed has no right of complaint ; and 
 that the Foreign Enlistment Act is a purely municipal regu- 
 lation, with the infringement of which such belligerent has 
 no concern, and the enforcement of which he has no right to 
 require. And such, at one period, seemed to be the doctrine 
 of the immediate Goverinnent of England, as avowed in Par- 
 liament and by the English press. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true, that the violation of the neutrality 
 of a nation is an offence against her alone, and that the in- 
 jured belligerent has no cause of complaint merely because 
 such a violation has taken place : for he clearly has none 
 against his enemy, who, as to him, may rightfully attack him 
 wherever he may be reached ; nor any against the neutral na- 
 tion merely because her rights have been violated, for that 
 may be entirely without her fault or her ability to prevent it. 
 And it is equally true, that Foreign Enlistment Acts are merely 
 municipal regulations, made for the purpose of enabling 
 nations having them to prevent or to punish violations of their 
 own neutrality only ; mere instruments or means of preserv- 
 ing it, which foreign nations cannot take in hand for their 
 own protection, and of violations of the provisions of which, 
 merely as such, they have no right to complain. 
 
 But, notwithstanding all the learning and ability employed 
 in maintaining these theses, they are, for the most part, mere 
 abstractions in the practical application of the rules of duty 
 to the faithful observance of neutral oblis-ations. 
 
 A neutral nation has not only rights which may be violated 
 by belligerents, and the violation of which is to her as a mere 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 75 
 
 persoual wrDng, but sliu is also under obligations towards 
 each of the belHgcrents, which it is her duty to fulfih 
 
 The preservation of strict and iiui^artial neutrality is a 
 fundamental duty universally acknowledged ; and no one, 
 it is presumed, will deny that it forbids the neutral to permit 
 or suffer military or naval expeditions or armaments to be 
 fitted out from its territory by its own subjects, or by one 
 belligerent to be used against the other, or any other viola- 
 tion of its neutrality by Avhich either of them may be injured, 
 and which it can reasonably prevent. Such permission or 
 sufferance is virtual connivance with the enemy, and converts 
 the professing neutral into his ally, whom the offended bellige- 
 rent may justly treat as such. 
 
 Every duty involves the obligation to use all reasonable 
 means, within the power of the obliged, to perform it ; and in 
 so far, therefore, as the possession of one of these Foreign 
 Enlistment Acts gives to the neutral nation the means of pre- 
 serving a faithful neutrality, just so far she is bound to use 
 them ; and a voluntary omission to do so is a neglect of, or 
 departure from, that duty, and a cornesponding failure to ob- 
 serve her neutral obligations ; and, although the belligerent, 
 injured by such omission, may not have any cause to complain 
 of the violation of the Act as an offence against himself, he may 
 reasonably and justly complain that the permission to violate it, 
 implied by such failure to enforce it, was a departure from 
 the observance of the obligations of the neutral, which he had 
 a right to require. 
 
 It is obvious that the duty to preserve a faithful neutrality 
 must be exactly commensurate with the ability to do so ; 
 that a weak nation may be excusable for not preventing 
 or not punishing breaches of it, when the failure to do so 
 by a stronger one, with greater facilities, would be highly 
 censurable, and would constitute just cause of complaint, and 
 even of war, on the part of the belligerent injured. It is 
 equally clear, that these means of observing a faithful neu- 
 
76 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 trality must be correspondent also with the civilization, the 
 military and naval power, and the resources in jurisprudence, 
 of the neutral nation, and that these are to be accounted among 
 her facilities for the fulfilment of this duty ; and, further, that 
 she would be criminally neglectful of such duty in not provid- 
 ing the reasonable means which they place within her reach ; 
 and, finally, that some such municipal regulations are essential, 
 if not the only, means for the protection of the rights of the neu- 
 tral nation from secret or open violation, and for enabling her 
 faithfully to fulfil her obligations to other nations at war. 
 What defence would it be to England, France, or the United 
 States, if charged with a breach of neutral obligations, or the 
 sufferance of violations of the nation's neutrality by a bellige- 
 rent, to plead that she had no code of laws adequate to her 
 own protection, or to enable her to prevent such violations 
 by other nations upon her own territories? 
 
 It seems clear, therefore, upon principle, that the United 
 States have* a just right to require that England should avail 
 herself of her Foreign Enlistment Act to prevent acts of 
 hostihty prohibited by the law of nations from being com- 
 mitted within her dominions against the United States ; and 
 that a failure so to apply it should constitute reasonable 
 cause of complaint, and might, if carried to a certain extent, 
 and under some circumstances, justify claims for indemnity, 
 or a declaration of war. 
 
 This conclusion is equally clear upon recurrence to the 
 history of the Foreign Enlistment Acts of England and 
 the United States, and of the principles upon which they 
 were professedly founded. As before shown, the Act of the 
 United States was passed at a time when they stood in a 
 position requiring the most faithful observance of neutral 
 obligations towards France and England, then at war ; and this 
 was done upon the application of the English Government, as a 
 means of enabling that of the United States effectually to fulfil 
 them. It had its origin, therefore, confessedly and eminently, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 77 
 
 in an acknoioledgcd ohlirjation on the part of a neutral to other 
 nations, as a means of preservuuj an impartial neutrality, 
 and was applied in constant and strict conformity with sueli 
 obligation. It was afterwards amended, and adopted by 
 England almost without change, thus implying a coincidence 
 of opinion and intention as to its meaning and purposes ; and 
 England, at a period long subsequent to her adoption of it, 
 claimed of the United States its application for her protec- 
 tion, and the claim was allowed. If ever, therefore, a fair 
 claim could exist in behalf of one government upon another 
 for the interposition of such a means of defence against 
 violations of its neutrality, the United States has that claim 
 on England ; and more emphatically may it be demanded 
 when they seek it, not against a foreign enemy in an ordinary 
 warfare, but against traitors and rebels, seeking the over- 
 throw of their Government for the establishment and per- 
 petuation of the most accursed institution that ever afflicted 
 or degraded a civilized people. 
 
 Another and very strong claim which the Government of 
 the United States has upon that of England for the inter- 
 position of the law in the present case, is that these violations 
 of her neutrality, productive of such extensive and serious 
 injuries, are not perpetrated so much by the enemy within 
 her borders as by her own people. For, hoAvever it might be 
 urged that offences committed against the riglits of a neutral 
 by either of the belHgerents are wrongs against the neutral 
 only, of the sufferance of which the other belligerent has no 
 lawful cause of complaint, no such defence can be taken 
 where the offences are substantially perpetrated by the sub- 
 jects of the neutral power; and so, if permitted or connived 
 at when means of prevention exist, become her own, and for 
 them she is justly accountable ; and no case, it is thought, can 
 be imagined, in Avhich a stronger claim, founded on this 
 ground, could be made, than one by the United States against 
 England. 
 
78 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Upon these principles and historic facts, it seems clear 
 that England is under solemn national obligations to enforce 
 her Foreign Enlistment Act for the protection of the com- 
 merce of the United States from the depredations of rebel 
 privateers, and ships of war, that are now in process of con- 
 struction within her territories, or are roaming the seas. 
 Nor is there wanting striking proof of her own recognition 
 of these obligations in past times, when her own interests 
 prompted it, or her sense of duty was unimpaired by jealousy 
 or ill-will. A notable proof of the holy horror and indigna- 
 tion with which, in the war of Independence between her 
 and the United States (her revolting colonies, or rebels, as 
 she termed them), she contemplated the supplies of arms and 
 ammunition, and the fitting-out of privateers, and vessels of 
 war, in French ports, to aid her rebellious subjects, — cor- 
 responding with singular exactness with the aid furnished in 
 England to the insurgents in this war, — maybe seen by 
 perusal of the '' Memoire Justificatif," setting forth the justi- 
 fying causes for war against France (in the 22d vol. of the 
 British "Annual Register" for 1799, p. 404). Mutatis mu- 
 tandis, it might serve with equal propriety as grounds for 
 a declaration of war by the United States against England at 
 the present moment. 
 
 The most impressive proof, however, and a truly honorable 
 one, of England's recognition of this duty, took place under 
 the Duke of Wellington's administration, in 1828 or 1829, in 
 the celebrated case of the Portuguese expedition to Terceira. 
 In the contest between Donna Maria, as Queen of Portugal 
 (so recognized by Great Britain and the principal powers of 
 Europe), and the usurper Don Miguel, a large number of her 
 subjects embarked in vessels from Plymouth, ostensibly 
 bound for Brazil, but in reality for the Island of Terceira, 
 which had remained faithful to her ; and, it being suspected 
 by the English Government that they were bent upon a mili- 
 tary expedition to that island, it despatched a naval force to 
 
ENGLAND AND THE INITKD STATES. 70 
 
 intercept them, and prevent their landing; and this was (U)ne 
 by force of arms, the shedding of blood, and the taking of 
 life. The English fleet not only fired upon the transports, 
 killing at least one man, but seized them, and carried them to 
 a great distance at sea, and then returned to stand guard 
 over the island, and prevent the landing of the men. The 
 ground taken by the administration was, '' that, the ex|)edi- 
 tion having fraudentlij evaded the English jurisdiction, and 
 started from England in violation of the Enlistment Act, the 
 English Government was entitled to pursue and seize the s/n^js 
 beyond her Jurisdiction." It is true, great opposition was 
 made in Parliament to the legality and propriety of the pro- 
 cedure ; but the Government was honorably sustained, and 
 it stands a proud record of England's sense of her duty as a 
 neutral. But the Government of England was then in the 
 hands of a great man, who knew how to assert and defend 
 her honor, in diplomacy and in the performance of her neu- 
 tral duties, as well as on the field of battle. 
 
 Upon the principles of that decree, it is England's duty 
 now to send out and seize these destroyers, burning and 
 plundering in violation not only of her own laws, but of the 
 law of nations ; instead of which, she receives them with 
 open arms of friendly hospitality into her ports. How 
 strikingly dependent upon the character of an individual 
 Minister is the honor, and sometimes even the destiny, of a 
 nation ! 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States recognizes this 
 doctrine as well settled in the courts of this country. In 
 the case of the " Marianna Flora " (1 Wheaton's Rep. p. I), the 
 Court says, " that American ships offending against our laws, 
 and foreign ships, in like manner, offending ivithin our jmns- 
 diction, may afterwards be pursued and seized iqwn the ocean, 
 and rightfully brought into our courts for adjudicaiioii,^^ — a 
 doctrine obviously essential to the vindication of national 
 sovereignty and the protection of those against whom such 
 
80 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 offences were intended, and one which England will not be 
 slow to respect when a returning sense of duty, or of national 
 honor, shall prevail in her national councils. 
 
 It is gratifying to perceive, that the principle that a bel- 
 ligerent, injured by violations of neutral territory or rights, 
 may rightfully expect that the neutral government will en- 
 force its laws for their prevention (of late so vehemently 
 denied in England), has been already, in some measure, 
 admitted by the British Ministry, as appears by the speech 
 in Parliament by Lord Palmerston, before mentioned. And 
 it may be hoped, that, when the subject of the gross viola- 
 tions of her neutrality, which have been committed within 
 her jurisdiction in this war, come to be more generally 
 known and understood, a popular sense of justice and 
 self- respect will demand that the principle • shall be a}> 
 plied. 
 
 It may be, however, that the right to seize and confiscate 
 the rebel ships, under the Enlistment Act, may be barred as to 
 those which have been twelve months at sea, under the limi- 
 tation in the tenth section, if that shall be adjudged to apply 
 to an information against the vessel as well as to an action or 
 suit for penalties against persons guilty of violating its pro- 
 visions. 
 
 But a revocation by England of her recognition of the 
 rebels as a belligerent power — demanded, as it seems to be, 
 in vindication of her own laws and of the law of nations, 
 which they have so flagrantly and defiantly outraged, and in 
 vindication of her national sovereignty against the piracies 
 committed upon her own subjects (which must continue to 
 be committed so long as their career at sea remains un- 
 checked) — would be the most effectual means of suppressing 
 these depredations. And surely a people have little right to 
 require to be acknowledged as belligerents at sea, who have 
 no means of rendering the taking of property by them there 
 lawful, under the subsequent proceedings made essential to 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 81 
 
 that end by the hiws of nations, but can only carry on 
 marine warfare in open and avowed and necessary violation 
 of them. 
 
 This recognition was in itself a signal departure from a just 
 neutrality, as being inconsistent with the strict impartiality 
 which that demands. For it gave to the rebels what they 
 had not before, — a national sto^ws, — to which they had not 
 become entitled by lapse of time, or by any public proof of 
 reasonable ability to maintain themselves ; and more especially 
 it gave to British subjects the privilege of enlisting in their 
 service and supplying their needs, with immunity from the 
 liability of being accounted pirates by the Government of the 
 United States (as they otherwise might have been under her 
 statutes and with her rights against rebels in arms), the fear 
 of which would have probably prevented the disposition of 
 Englishmen to enlist in rebel privateers ; while, at the same 
 time, it substantially took from the United States the power 
 to enforce those statutes even against American citizens. 
 
 And followed, as this recognition immediately was, by 
 its natural fruits, in the extensive embarkation of British 
 capital and British seamen in privateering enterprises against 
 the commerce of the United States, — and considering the 
 manner in which these have been tolerated, if not encouraged, 
 by both the ministry and the people, — it requires no small 
 stretch of charity to believe that it was not dictated by 
 friendly yearnings, at least, towards the rebel cause. But, 
 whatever the motives that led to it, a swift retribution fol- 
 lowed ; for it proved to be the means of preventing the acces- 
 sion of the United States to the Convention of Paris, of 1856, 
 by which privateering was proposed to be abolished : and so 
 England lost the opportunity of taking from the United States 
 their present most formidable weapon in naval war, and of 
 preventing the ruinous consequences to her commerce, to 
 which, in case of war with the United States, she would 
 always be exposed. In view of the necessities to which the 
 
 11 
 
82 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OP 
 
 United States may be driven in the maintenance of their 
 national h'fe, many, if not most, of her citizens will regard the 
 escape from this surrender of so formidable a weapon for self- 
 defence as at least a very fortunate, if not Providential, 
 event. 
 
 Nor is it to be forgotten among the unhappy peculiarities 
 of the position in Avhich England has placed herself by her un- 
 friendly, not to say hostile, disposition towards the United 
 States in this struggle, that it is owing solely to her interpo- 
 sition of an obstacle in the way, that they have not become a 
 party to the convention. When this proposal for the abolish- 
 ment of privateering was first made, the United States readily 
 acceded to it, upon condition that the right to capture private 
 property on the sea by public ships of war should also be 
 prohibited ; thus extending to property at sea the same 
 exemption from plunder, which is generally allowed, by mo- 
 dern civilization, to property on land. But England, having 
 a vastly greater number of public ships of war than any other 
 nation, and unwilling to surrender this advantage (though 
 founded on a species of warfare which will soon be abolished, 
 as little better than piracy, when she shall have one or more 
 rivals on the ocean), refused the amendment. 
 
 Soon after the Rebellion broke out, however, the Govern- 
 ment of the United States renewed negotiations with Eng- 
 land and France upon the subject, and finally instructed Mr. 
 Adams to signify its willingness to become a party to the 
 convention ; whereupon Earl Russell required, as a condition 
 of England's consent, the interpolation of a clause, to the 
 effect that " her Majesty did not intend thereby to undertake 
 any engagement which should have any bearing, direct or 
 indirect, on the internal differences now prevailing in the 
 United States " ; — a reservation to which it is obvious that 
 the Government of the United States could not assent with 
 any degree of self-respect, or in consistency with its po- 
 sition in reference to the traitors waging war upon it. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 83 
 
 The reason assigned appears to be, that, England having 
 recognized the rebels as a belligerent power, an embarass- 
 ment might arise from any supposed obligation on her part, 
 growing out of the convention, in reference to her treatment 
 of the rebel privateersmen, if required by the United States 
 to consider them as within its operation. 
 
 It is not quite clear how England, by the mere recognition 
 of the insurgents as belligerents, had imposed upon herself 
 the obligation to forego the making of advantageous treaties 
 with other nations upon the most important subjects of 
 national intercourse and law. It would seem reasonable to 
 infer, that any rights- under such recognition must be contin- 
 gent, so far as they might be affected by subsequent treaties 
 or negotiations with other nations not designed to impair 
 them ; or, at the least, that such recognition, being a mere 
 act of grace, revocable for good cause, if not at pleasure, 
 might be so far modified as to meet the difficulty, by requir- 
 ing the rebels (who are notoriously carrying on this species 
 of warfare in atrocious violation of the law of nations, not 
 unmingled with piracy upon her own citizens,) to acquiesce 
 in an arrangement to which she and the other principal 
 nations of the earth had become parties, as one demanded by 
 humanity and the civilization of the age, — or else to lose the 
 benefit of the recognition altogether. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, candor might require us 
 to suppose, that the preservation of good faith with the insur- 
 gents was the only motive of the English ministry for this 
 procedure ; but, in view of the uniformly hostile disposition 
 evinced towards the United States in this struggle, and the 
 very great, not to say essential, importance to the rebels of 
 retaining this means of warfare, it may, without any wide 
 departure from charitable construction, be considered doubt- 
 ful, whether the procedure may not have been quite as much 
 prompted by the conviction, that the dissolution of our Gov- 
 ernment, and consequent destruction of our naval power, was 
 
84 NEDTEAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 80 close at hand as to render its diminution in this way a mat- 
 ter of Httle importance, or by unwilhngness to deprive the 
 rebels of so formidable an engine of war as their English 
 privateers constituted, or by a combination of both in- 
 fluences. 
 
 But, whatever may have been the motive, there must now 
 be added to the other lamentable instances of false position in 
 which England now stands, that of having prevented the con- 
 summation of one of the most beneficent arrangements ever 
 proposed to the nations of the earth for the amelioration of 
 the horrors of war, by shutting the door to it in the face of 
 one of the chief among them in point of. commercial and naval 
 power, — and of doing this, or being compelled to do it, in 
 order not to impair the privileges of a set of rebel despera- 
 does, who, having no ports of their own, but making hers 
 their base of supply and operation, are roaming the seas for 
 the destruction of the commerce of a friendly nation ; while, 
 at the same time, she loses the opportunity of permanently 
 securing herself from the most dangerous species of warfare 
 to which she may ever be exposed. 
 
 14 September, 1863. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 85 
 
 X. 
 
 THE " ALEXANDRA." CONSTRUCTION OP THE FOREIGN 
 ENLISTMENT ACT. 
 
 The discussion has hitlierto been confined to the cases of 
 rebel ships of war, and privateers, which have been built, 
 armed, and equipped in English ports, or under the jurisdic- 
 tion of the English flag, and are now upon the seas, and 
 which fall under the application of various principles of the 
 law of nations, as well as of the Foreign Enlistment Act. 
 There remain to be considered those of vessels of war built 
 in English ports on contract with the rebels, or knowingly 
 for their service, but not finished nor armed and equipped for 
 the commission of immediate hostilities ; which cases are to 
 be examined in reference to the applicability to them of that 
 statute. 
 
 These cases are of peculiar interest, as involving the ques- 
 tion of the power and correspondent obligation of the British 
 Government to interfere with the fitting-out of ships of war 
 in season effectually to prevent their completion ; it being 
 obvious, that if no such right of interposition exist until they 
 shall have been fully armed and equipped, ready to sail at the 
 first opportunity for slipping out of harbor, the law must 
 prove little better than a dead letter, as such seeming com- 
 pletion or departure would never take place until after their 
 escape, or until the moment when escape would be certain. 
 
 The case of the " Alexandra," now on trial, and those of 
 the Turreted Rams in process of completion, are of this de- 
 scription. 
 
86 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 That of the " Alexandra " is simply the case of a ship of war, 
 launched, and quite or nearly prepared to receive her arma- 
 ment, under contract with the rebels, or persons acting in their 
 behalf, and for their service in hostilities against the United 
 States (the contractors knowing of such intended use), and 
 seized, upon an information under the seventh section of the 
 Foreign Enlistment Act, before she was entirely equipped, or 
 had any arms on board. 
 
 No one, reading the evidence, could doubt that the parties 
 engaged in her construction and completion intended her, or 
 were so engaged with the knowledge that she was intended, 
 for the rebel service. The Lord Chief Baron, in his summing- 
 up (if correctly reported in the *' London Times " of June 25), 
 placed the case upon the question, '' whether^ not being armed, 
 the jyreparation of the vessel in its then condition was a viola- 
 tion of the Foreign Enlistment Act ; " " whether, under the 
 seventh section of the act of Parliament, the vessel, as then 
 ])re2Jared at the time of seizure, was liable to seizure." He 
 stated the law to be, that a neutral power may lawfully supply 
 either belligerent with arms and munitions of war ; and that, 
 in his opinion, it may with equal right supply them with ships 
 also ; that " the object of the statute was, that British ports 
 should not be made the ground of hostile movements between 
 the vessels of two belligerent powers, which might he fitted 
 out, furnished, and armed in those pot'ts." And after stating, 
 that, '' if the ' Alabama ' sailed away from Liverpool without 
 any arms at all, as a mere ship in ballast, and her armament was 
 put on board at Terceira," then, in his opinion, " the Foreign 
 Enlistment Act was not violated at all," he closed by saying, 
 " If you think that the object was to furnish, fit out, equip, and 
 arm that vessel at Liverpool, that is a different matter ; but if 
 you think the object really was to build a ship in obedience 
 to an order in compliance with a contract, leaving those who 
 bought it to make what use they thought fit of it, then it 
 appears to me that the Foreign Enlistment Act has not 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 87 
 
 been broken." It is clear, therefore, that his Lordship at- 
 t^tched no importance to the intention of the parties engaged 
 in building or preparing the vessel, although such intention 
 might be to build or equip and arm a vessel of war for the 
 service of the rebels, and on contract with them, provided that 
 such intention did not extend to the Jitting-out and equip- 
 ping of her in a British port. The Attorney-General seems 
 to have endeavored to bring his Lordship's mind to the point 
 upon which he apparently rested his case ; namely, " that 
 if the ship was hiiilt with the intention that it should enter the 
 service of another power, at war with a power with which 
 England was at peace, that Avould be an offence against 
 the statute.'"' But his Lordship, as reported, seemed un- 
 willing to recognize the distinction between such a propo- 
 sition and that involved in a question put to him by the 
 Attorney-General, " Whether it would be unlawful for a ship- 
 builder to build a ship capable of being turned to warlike 
 purposes, with the view of offering it for sale to the bellige- 
 rent," though it is obviously a very different one ; and he 
 must be understood as having, impliedly at least, overruled 
 the point so taken. 
 
 From the seeming want of precision in the statements of 
 the points made by the counsel, and taken or commented 
 upon by the Court, it must be inferred that the case is very 
 imperfectly reported. But, according to this report, the 
 facts may be assumed to be, that the persons who were 
 engaged in the building and preparing of this vessel acted 
 under a contract with the rebels for the building and equip- 
 ping of a ship of war, knowing her to be intended for their 
 service in hostilities against the United States ; and the 
 doctrine of the Court to be, that such building and equipping 
 constitute no offence under the Foreign Enlistment Act, un- 
 less the ship be completed and armed at the time of seizure, or 
 intended to he completed and armed and made ready for immedi- 
 ate hostilities ivithin a British port. It does not appear clearly, 
 
88 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 whether the Court would hold even such intention sufficient, 
 unless the vessel, at the time of seizure, were actually armefl 
 and equipped for sea. But it is of little importance how this 
 may be, as either construction of the statute would render it 
 substantially nugatory : it being evident, that, if she must be 
 armed and equipped for immediate hostilities before she can 
 be seized, she can always escape before such entire comple- 
 tion, or immediately after it, under cover of night, or of a 
 picnic pretence, or other artifice, which it would be easy to 
 contrive, and at which willing officials, from crown-lawyers 
 down to tide-waiters, under a Government sympathizing with 
 the belligerents to be served by such escape, would be ready 
 to wink ; or that such prospective intention, so minute and 
 reaching so far, would rarel}^, if ever, be susceptible of proof, 
 even if existing in the minds of any of the persons engaged 
 in her construction or equipment, while all of them might be, 
 and in all probability would be, kept in ignorance of any such 
 design in the minds of their employers. Nor is this all ; for, 
 if this doctrine be maintainable in the latitude stated by the 
 Court, it would only be needful that the ship, entirely fitted 
 for sea in all but her armament and fighting crew, should 
 proceed to any point at sea three miles and a furlong distant 
 from any port on the English coast, there to receive them 
 from another vessel under the English flag, and then to com- 
 mence her cruise, free from all violation of the Act, or liability 
 under it. How far this would differ in substance from sailing 
 immediately from such port, thus fully armed and equipped, 
 upon her cruise, every man of common sense can judge. Well 
 might the rebels exclaim, as they did in one of their leading- 
 papers in Richmond, in view of such a judgment as this, 
 " The advantages to us which an affirmation of this ' Alexan- 
 dra ' case will afford cannot be overestimated. If they are 
 promptly availed of by our naval authorities, we will be in a 
 position not only to give a death-hlow to the commerce of our 
 enemy, but to strike at some of his Northern cities," &c. 
 
 I 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 89 
 
 " Vessels of the * Warrior ' class tvould promjAbj raise the 
 blockade of our ports ; and would even confer, in this respect, 
 advantages which would soon repay the cost of their construc- 
 tion." The extreme results, promised in the usual style of 
 rebel braggadocio, would not be realized ; but it is not ven- 
 turing too much to say, that under a confirmation of this 
 decision, carried to its full extent, a powerful English navy 
 might soon be at sea, in the service of the rebels, and rendering 
 war by the United States against England, in sell-defence, as 
 necessary as if it were sailing under her own flag. 
 
 It is confidently believed, that the construction thus put 
 upon the act by the Court is in direct opposition to its plain 
 terras, and to the design of its authors, if their purpose was the 
 protection of England's neutral rights and the observance of 
 her neutral obligations, and not merely an unworthy pre- 
 tence. 
 
 The terms of the statute arc these : " If any person within 
 any part of the kingdom, &c., <fec., shall equip, furnish, fit out, 
 or arm; or attempt or endeavor so to do; or procure to he 
 eqicipped, &c., &c. ; or shall knowingly aid, assist, or be con- 
 cerned in the equipping, &c., &c., with irdent or in order 
 that such ship or vessel shall be employed in the service of any 
 foreign power as a transport or storeship, or with intent to 
 cruise or commit hostilities against another foreign power, with 
 whom her Majesty shall not then be at war, — every such 
 person shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, &c., <fec. ; 
 and every such ship or vessel shall he forfeited.''^ 
 
 One of the principal positions taken in the argument of the 
 case, and upon which this construction of the Act appears to 
 have been based, or which seems necessarily implied in it, is, 
 that, in order to constitute an offence under the statute, " the 
 owners of the vessel (at the time of the seizure) must intend 
 to use it against some state or community in friendsliip with 
 her Majesty." The counsel of the claimants, in his argument, 
 stated the point thus : that the seventh section " was directed 
 
 12 
 
90 NEUTEAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 against a person who was supposed to equip, fit out, or own a 
 vessel, with the intention of cruising on his own account, 
 and committing hostilities against a foreign nation ; " '' that it 
 was perfectly competent for any person to build a ship, easily 
 convertible into a ship of war, and sell that ship to any belli- 
 gerent power ; and the fact that the seller knew that she was to 
 be employed as a war vessel had nothing- to do with the question." 
 This language embraces, and must have been intended to em- 
 brace (as otherwise it was inopportune and unmeaning), the 
 case where the vessel was built designedly for a ship of war on 
 a contract with the belligerent. The Court took no exception 
 to this statement of the law, and must be supposed to have 
 sanctioned it, — if it be not indeed necessarily implied, as it 
 seems to be, in the doctrine, that the vessel must be armed 
 and ready for immediate hostilities before any offence can 
 have been committed, and the reasons assigned for it ; and 
 Earl Russell, in his Letter of August 31, to the Emancipation 
 Society, advances the same doctrine, in the language above 
 quoted. 
 
 But, with all the respect due to either tribunal, it is believed 
 that any such doctrine is entirely untenable. The offence 
 created by the statute is not confined to equipping and arm- 
 ing the vessel with intent so to use her, but embraces also any 
 such equipping, &c., with intent or in order that she shall be so 
 employed. 
 
 And that any person, who, in fulfilment of a contract with 
 a belligerent or his agent for the construction, equipment, 
 furnishing, fitting-out, or arming of a ship of war, knoAving 
 that he intends to use her in hostilities against his enemy, 
 does equip, furnish, fit out, or arm her, with intent or in order 
 that she shall be so employed, or does attempt or endeavor to 
 do so ; does procure it to be done, or does knowingly aid or 
 assist or is concerned in so doing, — seems self-evident, upon 
 the plainest interpretation of the terms of the statute, if not 
 upon the only one possible. They do not, in letter or spirit. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 91 
 
 require that the person so contracting, or so employed, or 
 being the present owner, shall himself intend so to use her, 
 but only that she shall be intended to be so used by the parties 
 who may be the owners at the time of the seizure, or by 
 the parties for whom she is being constructed, equipped, or 
 armed, although the legal property may not have passed from 
 the contractor, provided that he knows that she is intended for 
 such use by them; for if his knowledge of such intended uso 
 would not constitute a legal intention on his part, within the 
 statute, that she should be so employed (as it is believed it 
 clearly would), it certainly proves that he was constructing, 
 equipping, or arming her in order that she should be so. 
 
 Further, it is manifest that this doctrine, that the owners 
 at the time of seizure must intend personally so to use her, 
 renders the statute utterly and contemptibly useless ; for, 
 upon such a construction of it, parties might safely contract 
 with the belligerent for the delivery to him of a ship of war 
 fully armed and equipped, ready for an immediate cruise, and 
 with full knowledge of such intended instant use, and hold 
 her thus prepared at a remote place anywhere within the 
 verge of three miles from the seacoast, to be delivered at an 
 opportune moment for making her safe departure certain, 
 — and yet they be all the while guilty of no offence, and the 
 vessel not liable to forfeiture. 
 
 If the framers of the statute had intended that the parties 
 equipping, arming, &c., must design such use of the vessel 
 by themselves, in order to constitute the offence, they would 
 have said, '' with intent so to use said vessel," and not have 
 adopted the so much more comprehensive phraseology, " ivith 
 intent or in order that such vessel shall be so employed." 
 
 Another and a prominent position, taken by the Court and 
 assumed by Earl Russell in his Letter, was, that the vessel 
 must have been actually armed, in order to constitute any 
 offence under the statute : so that no preparation, nor act done 
 for the preparing of a ship of war, although under a contract 
 
92 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 with a belligerent, and with full knowledge of his intended 
 use of her, renders any party concerned guilty of a breach of 
 the statute, or the vessel liable to forfeiture, unless an 
 actual arming shall have taken place. 
 
 In order to sustain this construction, it is manifestly neces- 
 sary to show, that the words " equip," '' furnish," " fit out," 
 " or arm," all and each, mean the same thing; and the Lord 
 Chief Baron, if correctly reported, undertakes to demonstrate 
 this proposition in this manner. He says, that, " according to 
 Webster^ s Dictionary ^ equipping is furnishing with arms ; " 
 and " that furnishing is given in other dictionaries as the 
 same thing as equipping." Whether "fitting out" means 
 also the same thing, is not stated, but it must be presumed 
 to be implied. Perhaps there is a hiatus in the report. 
 
 Now, but for such grave authority to the contrary, one 
 would be apt to conclude, that the mere circumstance, that 
 these several expressive words were thus disjunctively used, 
 was pretty clear proof that some distinction between them 
 was understood and recognized ; else why use any but the 
 single word " arm " ? If arming was to be the only thing 
 provided against, that single word would have sufficed, and 
 have left no room for doubt ; and the others, being mere 
 superfluities, could add nothing to its strength, as being 
 mere synomymes. 
 
 But it is obvious that the " equipping," " furnishing," and 
 " fitting-out " of a ship of war embrace many things besides 
 her arms, and of not less essential importance. She could 
 with no greater propriety be said to be " equipped," " fur- 
 nished," or " fitted out," without sails or steam-engines 
 or other motive power, or without anchors or provisions, or 
 without a crew, than without arms ; and it seems to ordinary 
 common sense, that he who supj)lies, or applies, either of 
 these essential elements of a full " equipment," " furnishing," 
 or " fitting-out," aids or assists, or is concerned in, or at- 
 tempts or endeavors to effect, such equipping, fitting-out, or 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 93 
 
 furnishing, quite as much as ho who supplies, or puts on 
 board, the guns and ammunition. And surely, in construing 
 a statute designed to prevent the perpetration of crimes 
 against the State herself (in derogation and defiance of her 
 majesty as a nation, and tending to impair her faithful obser- 
 vance of her obligations to other nations, and endanger her 
 peaceful relations with them), it must be esteemed within 
 the bounds of a reasonable interpretation to apply this lan- 
 guage of the statute to him who constructs the ship, or fits 
 her, with all the various adaptations and appliances, for the 
 reception and use of her specified armament (all which must 
 be skilfully and carefully fitted with peculiar reference to its 
 nature and use), whether he build her with such preparation 
 or fitting, or, having procured one for the purpose, he so 
 prepare or fit her. Surely he who thus prepares the whole 
 foundation of the superstructure — the ship herself, and all 
 her adaptations to the end designed — may be reasonably 
 accounted as one engaged in equipping, fitting out, or furnish- 
 ing her, or procuring it to be done, or aiding or assisting or 
 being concerned therein. 
 
 But that these words were not intended to be used as beinjr 
 synonymous with " arming," is manifest from the application of 
 them in the same section, and in the same manner, to a store- 
 ship or transport. The language of the statute is, " If any 
 person shall equip, furnish, fit out, or arm, &c., &c., any ship 
 or vessel, with intent or in order that such vessel shall be 
 employed, &c., &c., as a transport or store-sJup, or with intent 
 to cruise, or commit hostilities, &c., &c." Now, although a 
 transport or store-ship may have arms on board, it certainly is 
 no necessary or uniform part of her equipment, furniture, or 
 fitting-out; and the statute in thus placing them and cruisers, 
 or ships intended for hostilities, in the disjunctive relation, 
 plainly recognizes the distinction between them and armed 
 vessels. 
 
94 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Upon a fair construction, therefore, of the statute, in refer- 
 ence to its language and its design, it is beh'eved to demand, 
 that ever^ one who takes part in the preparation of a ship of 
 war for the service of a belligerent in hostilities against a 
 friendly power (knowing of such intended use) is guilty of an 
 offence under it, whether that part be in building or fitting 
 her for that purpose, or in furnishing her motive-power or 
 armament, or any other essential element of her capacity as 
 such ship of war ; — if, indeed, the statute does not also go fur- 
 ther, and demand that every one, knowingly engaged in any 
 preparation of her for such use, be considered thus guilty, 
 although such preparation may not be of a character peculiar 
 to a ship of war, but such as is common for all vessels about to 
 proceed to sea ; the criminal intention connected with any 
 act of equij)j)ing, flemishing, or fitting out, constituting it a 
 crime within the terms of the Act. And such, we are happy 
 to know, is the settled doctrine of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States. In the case of the United States v. Quincy 
 (6 Peters's Rep., p. 445), before cited (in No. IV. )> ^^^ de- 
 fendant was charged in the indictment with " being knowingly 
 concerned in the fitting-out of a certain vessel called the 
 ' Bolivar,' with intent to commit hostilities," &c. ; and, in 
 another count, with intent " that the said vessel should be so 
 employed," &c., <fec. : and the main point of defence was, that 
 the vessel " was not armed, or at all prepared for war, or in 
 condition to commit hostilities, when she left Baltimore." But 
 the Court decided, " that it was not necessary that the vessel, 
 when she left Baltimore for St. Thomas, and during the voyage 
 to St. Thomas, was armed, or in a condition to commit hostili- 
 ties, in order to find the defendant guilty of the oflfence charged 
 in the indictment ; " that " an attempt to fit out and arm is 
 made an off'ence, and that this is certainly doing something 
 short of a complete fitting-out and arming ; " that " to attempt 
 to do an act, does not, either in law or common parlance, imply 
 a completion of the act, or any definite progress towards it, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 95 
 
 but that any effort or endeavor to effect it will satisfy the terms 
 of the law ; " and that " the offence consists principally in the 
 intention with whicli the preparations to commit hostilities 
 were made." 
 
 This case, too, is in point in reference to the true construc- 
 tion of the words " equipping, furnishing, fitting-out, or arm- 
 ing ; " showing that the word " or,^^ thus used, designates 
 arming to be a distinct offence from that of fUting-out, etc. 
 
 Such is the construction put by the Supreme Court of the 
 United States upon substantially the same statute, in the just 
 and generous spirit of interpretation with which it contem- 
 plates the enactment as designed alike for the protection of 
 our own neutral rights and dignity, and for enabling us to 
 discharge our obligations to other nations ; and it seems in 
 striking contrast with that construction, which would narrow 
 its design to the protection of our own selfish interest only, 
 and with a strictness of interpretation that renders it little 
 better than a subterfuge or a pretence. It is to be regretted 
 that the Lord Chief Baron had not the opportunity of consultr- 
 ing the grave authority of such a case, decided by the highest 
 tribunal of the land in which the statute originated, and from 
 which his own Government had adopted it, instead of relying 
 upon a Dictionary, whose amplitude of definition is more com- 
 mendable for its convenience to miscellaneous readers than 
 for philological accuracy. 
 
 There is another class of cases strictly analogous, and con- 
 firmatory of this doctrine, which arose upon the construction 
 of the statute against the Slave-trade Act, 20th April, 1818 
 (ch. 373), passed not long before that which is tlie subject of 
 the present discussion. That statute provides, that " no citi- 
 zen, &c., shall, for himself or any other person, either as 
 master, factor, or owner, build, Jit out, equip, load, or otherwise 
 prepare, any ship or vessel, &c., &c., for the purpose of pro- 
 curing any negro, &c., from any kingdom, &c., to be trans- 
 ported to any place to be held or disposed of as a slave ; " and 
 
96 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 " if any ship or vessel shall be so built, fitted out, equiioped, 
 laden, or otherwise prepared., for the purpose aforesaid," she 
 shall be forfeited. In the case United States v. Gooding 
 (12 Wheaton's Reports, p. 460), the defendant was indicted 
 for fitting out the ship, with intent so to employ her. Among 
 other points taken by the defendant, it was contended that 
 the count charged d, fitting-out in the port of Baltimore, which, 
 according to the true legal interpretation of the words in an 
 indictment, means a complete equiptment ; and that evidence of 
 a partial equipment in Baltimore, and a further equipment at 
 St. Thomas, would not support the charge. On this point, 
 the Court ruled, that, if the vessel sailed from Baltimore for 
 the p)urpose of employment in the slave-trade, her fitment was 
 complete for all the purposes of the Act ; that it was '' not 
 necessary that every equipment for a slave voyage should 
 have been taken on board at Baltimore, or, indeed, any equip- 
 ments exclusively applicable to such a voyage;^' that ''the 
 statute punishes the fitting-out of the vessel with intent to 
 employ her in the slave-trade, however innocent the equipment 
 may be luhen designed for a lawful voyage ; " that " it is the 
 act combined with the intent, and not either separately, which 
 is punishable ; " and further, " that any preparations for a 
 slave voyage which clearly manifest or accompany the illegal 
 intent, even though incomplete and imperfect, and before the 
 DEPARTURE of the vcsscl from port, do yet constitute a fitting- 
 out within the purview of the statute : " and the Court refer 
 to several other cases sustaining this construction of the 
 statute. 
 
 There can, therefore, be no possible doubt, but that, upon 
 the facts understood to be established in the case of the 
 '' Alexandra," as above stated, the Supreme Court of the 
 United States would decree that the vessel had become for- 
 feited, so far as the decision might depend upon the question 
 of her being equipped or fitted out within the purview of the 
 statute. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 97 
 
 It was confidently hoped that this Number would relieve 
 the reader who has followed this discussion from any further 
 tax upon his patience; but its already great length precludes 
 the consideration of one other, and perhaps the main, argu- 
 ment for the defence in the case of the " Alexandra," which 
 remains to be examined. 
 
 19 September, 1863. 
 
 13 
 
98 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 XI. 
 
 FOREIGN ENLISTMENT ACT. THE "ALEXANDRA," AND TURRETED 
 RAMS. LAW OF NATIONS. LIABILITY OF ENGLAND. POSITION 
 OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The main argument, however, upon which the Court relied, 
 in deciding the case of the "Alexandra," seems to have 
 been, that a neutral has the right to sell a ship of war 
 to a belligerent, without any infringement of the Foreign 
 Enlistment Act or of the law of nations. The proposition 
 was thus stated. After reading some passages from Ameri- 
 can law-books, which are not cited in the report, and the 
 pertinency or precise bearing of which cannot therefore be 
 judged of, his Lordship said : " These, Gentlemen, are authori- 
 ties which show, that, when two belligerents are carrying on 
 war, a neutral power may supply, without any breach of 
 international law and without a breach of the Foreign Enlist- 
 ment Act, munitions of war, gunpowder, every description of 
 arms, every thing, in fact, that can be used for the destruc- 
 tion of human beings. Why should ships be an exception ? 
 I am of opinion, in point of law, they are not." "If Birming- 
 ham, or any other town, may supply any quantity of munitions 
 of war of various kinds for the destruction of life, wh37- object 
 to ships ? Why should ships alone be in themselves con- 
 traband ? " "A man may make a vessel, and offer it for 
 sale ; " and, " if a man may build a vessel for the purpose of 
 offering it for sale to either of the belligerent parties, may he 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 99 
 
 not execute an order for it ? That appears to me to be a 
 matter of course." And he concluded, as before recited, by 
 saying : " If you think that the object was to furnish, ft out, 
 equip, and arm that vessel at Liverpool, that is a different 
 matter [meaning obviously the object of the persons then 
 equipping her, to equip her for their own use] ; but if you 
 think the object really was to build a ship in obedience to an 
 order in compliance with a contract, leaving those who bought 
 it to inaJce ivhat use they thought ft of it, then it appears to me 
 that the Foreig-n Enlistment Act has not been broken." 
 
 The prominent point understood to be decided by the 
 Court is, that the builders or owners of a vessel which has 
 been built for a ship of war in a neutral country, and which 
 they are equipping under a contract with a belligerent power, 
 or the citizens of one, or persons in its service, to be delivered 
 in that country, to be used as it or they may see fit (the 
 builders or owners knowing, or having reasonable cause to 
 believe, that it is intended to be used in committing imme- 
 diate hostilities against another power at peace with the 
 neutral), — are not guilty of any offence against the statute, 
 provided that they do not themselves intend to participate in 
 such use. 
 
 The same principle is laid down by an English author (and 
 one of the ablest of those who have written upon questions 
 arising out of the Rebellion) in these terms : " The Enlistment 
 Act is directed, not against the intention of selling, but the 
 intention of making war. It prohibits ivarlike enterprises ; 
 but it does not interfere with commercial adventure. A 
 subject of the Crown may sell a ship of ivar, as he may sell a 
 musket, to either belligerent with impunity ; nay, he may 
 even despatch it for sale to the belligerent port : but he 
 may not take part in the overt act of making war upon a 
 people with whom his sovereign is at peace." Again : " The 
 authors of the Foreign Enlistment Act were not so absurd 
 and illogical as to have forbidden the equipping and arming 
 
100 NEUTEAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 of a sliip for sale, whilst they did not forbid the making and 
 selhng of a park of aitillery." ^ 
 
 The authority which seems to be mainly relied upon as 
 maintaining these propositions, and that doubtless to which 
 the Court alluded, is the case of the " Santissima Trinidad," 
 80 often above referred to. But that it falls far short of 
 establishing any such proposition, is evident upon its 
 facts, and the reasons assigned for its decision. In that case, 
 the capturing vessel had not been delivered to the belligerent 
 within the United States, nor had she been delivered in the 
 country of the belligerent under any contract with him. Up 
 to the time of her sailing from the United States, and until her 
 arrival in Brazil, she was held by her owners as a subject of 
 use or sale, at their entire pleasure, with no fixed purpose 
 beyond that of a mercantile adventure ; and not under any 
 contract with the belligerent, or expectation of sale to him, 
 beyond that existing in the mind of any adventurers, when 
 sending any other articles, contraband of war, to the country 
 of a belligerent, which he may or may not buy, and of the 
 safe arrival of which, free from capture by his enemy, and of 
 the subsequent purchase of which by the belligerent, they 
 take the hazard. And it was upon this precise ground that 
 the Court maintained, that, being a merely mercantile adven- 
 ture, it constituted no violation of the Enlistment Act. The 
 whole reasoning of the Court implies the converse proposition, 
 that, if she had sailed under any contract between the owners 
 and the belligerent, or under any other circumstance implying 
 a ^^ fixed intention " on the part of her owners, at the time of 
 sailing, that she should be employed in his service in hostili- 
 ties against a friendly power, it would have constituted an 
 offence wathin the statute; and the cases of the "Gran Para," 
 and of the United States v. Quincy, are confirmatory of that 
 position. 
 
 The proposition, therefore, that the subjects of a neutral 
 
 * r.etters bv Historicus, no. 168,, 171. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 101 
 
 power may sell a ship of war to a belligerent in the neu- 
 tral country, is not sustained by any judicial decision ; but, on 
 the contrary, is considered to be more or less in direct opposi- 
 tion to every decision that has any bearing upon the subject. 
 
 The argument adduced in support of it is believed to be 
 equally untenable. That argument is, that, inasmuch as the 
 neutral has the right to sell arms and ammunition, or a park 
 of artillery, to the belligerent, he has, by parity of reason, 
 the same right to sell a ship of war. 
 
 Now, if it were true (which it is not), that, by the law of 
 nations and the law of England, it is lawful for a subject 
 of the Crown, in all cases, to sell to a belligerent, in England, 
 arms, artillery, and other munitions of war, and that, if no 
 prohibition had been interposed, it would, for the same reason, 
 be lawful to construct and equip for, or to sell to, him an 
 armed ship of war ; still, the right of the Government to 
 prohibit the construction or equipping or sale of such a ship, 
 while leaving the sale of arms, <fec., unforbidden, is undeniable; 
 and it will not be contended, that, if it should do so, express 
 provisions of the statute, made for that purpose, are to be 
 construed as not having been so intended. And this, we 
 maintain, is precisely what the English Government has done 
 by the Foreign Enlistment Act ; and the reasons for it are 
 seemingly so manifest and imperative, that in all humility, 
 and without the slightest disrespect towards those who main- 
 tain the position in question, it is thought somewhat strange, 
 that such right to furnish arms, and the right to furnish a 
 ship of ivar, should have been considered as parallel cases 
 and founded in equal reason. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, that the great object of the En- 
 listment Act, and the only one, so far as the question in hand 
 is concerned, is to prevent or punish the violation of the law 
 of nations, which prohibits the JiLiing-out of navcd expeditions 
 or enterprises in a neutral country for the service of a bellige- 
 rent in hostilities against a friendly power. 
 
102 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Now, it is very evident, that the mere selling of arms 
 and munitions of war to such belligerent, in a neutral 
 country, leaving to him the venture of transporting them to his 
 own country, or to any other place where he may have law- 
 ful right to use them, or from ivhich he may laivfully issue 
 with them in immediate use against his enemy,. — or a mere 
 contract to deliver them to him in his own country, the 
 vendor taking the risk of their capture as contraband on 
 the voyage, — is but a remote and comparatively harmless 
 act, if suitable provision be made to prevent the uniting of 
 them with a vessel of war in the neutral country ; inasmuch 
 as in neither case can such arms be used in immediate hos- 
 tilities, as parts of any expedition or enterprise fitted out in the 
 neutral country, nor until they shall have become the elements 
 of one rightfully commenced in the belligerent's own country, 
 or under some jurisdiction rendering it lawful ; and so there 
 would be but little danger that such manufacture and sale of 
 them could be made instrumental in any violation of the 
 law. 
 
 But the sale and delivery of a ship of war to the bellige- 
 rent, armed and ready for sea, or the construction or equip- 
 ment of one ready for the immediate reception and use of her 
 armament, is a wholly different transaction ; and, if lawful, is 
 not only far more available for the perpetration of the crime 
 prohibited, than any sale of arms or munitions of war could 
 be, but is sure to he successfully resorted to for that purpose ; as 
 the experience in England, where its lawfulness is asserted, 
 has most abundantly proved. Arms, and munitions of war, 
 cannot carry ships to sea, nor be used in naval expeditions 
 without them ; but ships, fitted for their reception and use, 
 can carry them, a7id would certainly he made to do so, under 
 some subterfuge, concealment, or co-incident arrangement, 
 and so entire naval expeditions would be fitted out to plunder 
 or prey upon the friendly belligerent, if the constructing or 
 equipping of such ships were permitted. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 103 
 
 There appears, therefore, great reason why such ct)nstruc- 
 tion or equipping or sale of a ship of war should be prohibited, 
 while the sale of arms should remain unforbidden, and left to 
 the ordinary course of trade ; the proliibition of the former 
 rendering the allowance of the latter harmless (or not subject 
 to such frequent or dangerous abuse as would reasonably 
 require its suppression), and being all that the necessity of 
 the case can be justly thought to demand ; and, if so, the 
 argument so much relied upon is of little weight. 
 
 But the foundation of this argument Avill not bear exami- 
 nation. It rests upon the unlimited proposition, that the 
 neutral has the right to sell to the belligerent, arnis and 
 munitions of war ; and thence it is inferred, that he must 
 have an equal right to sell ships of war also. But this 
 proposition, in the unlimited terms in which it is stated, 
 is untrue, and is wanting in the elements which alone could 
 make it the basis of such an argument. So far is it from 
 being true, that the neutral has an unqualified right to sell 
 arms and munitions of war to a belligerent in the neutral 
 country, that, in point of fact, the law of nations prohibits 
 any such sale for the purpose of increasing the armament 
 or warlike force of any ship of war belonging to him, which 
 may be within the neutral's jurisdiction ; and this same 
 Enlistment Act, in the section following that prohibiting the 
 equipping, tfcc, of a ship of war, enacts, that if any person 
 shall, ^' by the addition of any equipment for luar, increase or 
 augment, or procure to be increased or augmented, or shall 
 knowingly be concerned in increasing or augmenting, the war- 
 like force of any ship or vessel of war, or cruiser, or other 
 armed vessel, which, at the time of her arrival in any part of 
 the kingdom, was a ship of war or cruiser or armed vessel in 
 the service of any foreign prince," <fec., he shall be deemed 
 guilty of a misdemeanor, and be subject to fine and imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 The object of the statute is the same in both cases, and. 
 
104 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 if interpreted in the manner we contend for, is admirably 
 adapted to effect that object ; namely, the prevention of the 
 fitting-out of naval expeditions in the neutral country, in 
 the service of a belligerent. This was done by the seventh 
 section, forbidding the equipping and fitting-out of ships of 
 war, which, if faithfully carried into effect, would also prevent 
 the use of any arms obtained there for that purpose ; and by 
 the eighth, forbidding the sale of arms in the only other case 
 in which such use could be made of them. 
 
 And surely it must be accounted marvellous logic in juris- 
 prudence to construe a statute, enacted for the purpose of 
 protecting the rights of a neutral nation from violation, and 
 of assisting in the fulfilment of her neutral obligations, in such 
 a manner, as to make the sale of a cannon, a musket, or a cut- 
 lass, to a vessel of war belonging to a belligerent, an offence 
 deserving fine and imprisonment under it, but the equipment 
 or sale of a mighty ship of war for his service an innocent 
 transaction, which it was not intended to reach, and cannot 
 prevent. 
 
 If these views be correct, and if the facts be, that the 
 " Alexandra " was a ship of war in process of construction, on 
 a contract with the rebels, or persons employed by them, to 
 be used in their service in committing hostilities against the 
 United States, it follows that the case falls clearly within 
 the provision of the English Foreign Enlistment Act, and 
 that she should be decreed to be forfeited ; and, if this should 
 be the result of that trial, an end will be put to this agitating 
 and painful question, which has so long and so seriously 
 threatened the peace of the two nations ; and opportunity will 
 be again presented for bringing them into accord in their 
 understanding and appreciation of their reciprocal rights and 
 duties as neutrals. 
 
 If, however, the final decision shall be adverse to these 
 views, although it will be, of course, conclusive as to the 
 construction of the English Enlistment Act upon foreign 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 105 
 
 nations as well as upon English subjects, and upon the per- 
 sonal liability or property involved in the suit, yet, so iar as 
 it may purport to be founded in the law of nations, it will be 
 of no further obligation upon them than its intrinsic con- 
 formity to that law may import. No nation can be bound by 
 the judgment of a court of any other nation upon a question 
 of international law, but may nevertheless insist upon its own 
 interpretation of that law, if at variance with such judgment, 
 even to the ultima ratio regum. If, therefore, the English Ap- 
 pellate Court shall determine that the acts complained of are 
 in violation, neither of their Enlistment Act, nor of the law of 
 nations, while we shall be concluded by the judgment upon 
 the former, we shall be at liberty to deny the correctness of 
 it upon the latter, and shall retain tlie right to insist upon 
 redress for what we deem such violation. 
 
 The case of turreted Rams is, however, of a very different 
 character, and requires no elaborate discussion. They, when 
 completed and equipped for sea, although without arms, are, 
 as has before been stated (in No. IL), powerful and effectual 
 ships of wa?' ; their peculiar construction, their beaks, their 
 motive power, and other capacities for offensive warfare, being 
 sufficient for effective hostilities upon commerce, and upon 
 ordinary vessels of war, without the aid of guns. The pre- 
 paration, therefore, of one such for the service of a belligerent, 
 although unfurnished with arms in the usual meaning of that 
 word, is the fitting-out of a naval enterprise or expedition, 
 and her departure is the departure of one, as truly as would 
 be the fitting-out and departure of a vessel fully equipped 
 and armed as a ship of war in the ordinary mode of equipping 
 and arming hitherto adopted. 
 
 If, therefore, they shall be permitted to be constructed and 
 
 fitted out or equipped in England, and to leave her in, or for, 
 
 the service of the rebels, no doubt is entertained, that a gross 
 
 and palpable violation of the law of nations, in regard to the 
 
 neutral obligations of England to the United States, will have 
 
 14 
 
106 NEUTEAL EELATIONS OF 
 
 been perpetrated, which would justify an immediate declara- 
 tion of war against her. 
 
 It seems impossible that the construction, fitting-out, and 
 preparation for departure, of such vessels, could escape the 
 notice of the Government, unless wilfully blind. The only 
 powers at war, for whose service they could be wanted, are 
 the United States and the rebels. That they are not designed 
 for the United States, is perfectly well known ; and that such 
 ships were not designed for any other nation, could be easily 
 ascertained at the several legations in London. Nothing, 
 therefore, seems wanting to put tlie Government on its guard, 
 and to enable it to interfere, if disposed to do its duty. No 
 pretence that they were building for, or belonged to, subjects 
 of Prance, or were under the shadow of the French flag, 
 could avail to protect them ; for Frenchmen have no more 
 right to build ships of war in England, to serve against a 
 power in friendship with her, than Englishmen or the sub- 
 jects of the adverse belligerent. Their construction and 
 escape, therefore, would seem accounted for only by substan- 
 tial complicity with the rebels. 
 
 It has thus been attempted to show, that the Government 
 of England has, in her Foreign Enlistment Act when faith- 
 fully applied, ample means for suppressing the fitting-out of 
 ships of war for the rebel service, and that it is their duty 
 so to use it. 
 
 But, after all, this is but one, and perhaps the narrowest 
 and least important, view to be taken of a subject of such (it 
 ma}'' well be said) infinite importance, — involving not only, as 
 it may, the continuance of the present peace, but, as it must, 
 the future permanent relations, of two great nations, kindred 
 in blood, religion, literature, devotion to constitutional free- 
 dom, and all that touches the great interests of humanity. 
 
 The Foreign Enlistment Act is merely a municipal law, — a 
 mere instrument or machine constructed for the convenience 
 of the Government, to aid it in the discharge of its domestic 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 107 
 
 duties in reference to its own security, and to its relations 
 with other nations. This statute adds nothing to, and can 
 take nothing from, the obligations of the nation enacting it 
 towards others ; nor is the extent of its efficiency or ineffi- 
 ciency of the least importance in any question between that 
 nation and others, excepting only in as far as it may indicate 
 the disposition to be faithful to them. If it is ample for the 
 protection of their rights against violation of neutral obliga- 
 tions, it is no more than it ought to be. If it is not, it is the 
 fault of the nation enacting it, and relieves her not from one 
 jot or tittle of all she owes to them. 
 
 But there is a higher law, — the law of nations, — with no 
 tribunal indeed for its final decision, no executive authority 
 for its forcible execution, and no code other than that found 
 in the fundamental principles of right and wrong working in 
 the heart of man in all civilized nations, — but acknowledged 
 as the supreme law, which every nation is bound to obey, and 
 the observance of which every one has the right to vindicate 
 and enforce. 
 
 This law, as universally acknowledged, prohibits the fitting- 
 out of naval expeditions in a neutral country, by or for the 
 service of a belligerent, for the purpose of committing hostili- 
 ties against any other power at peace with such neutral. It is 
 therefore one of the laws which the executive government of 
 every nation is bound to sec obeyed or enforced, just as much 
 as if it were a municipal law, enacted by its peculiar legisla- 
 tive authority, imposing upon the executive government the 
 duty of such enforcement. What may be the particular pro- 
 cesses for doing so, may be more or less dependent upon the 
 form of government, or the municipal regulations, of such 
 nation ; but the duty exists, whatever the former may be, 
 and whether there be or be not any of the latter. It is 
 peculiarly, if not solely, the duty of the executive government 
 to see to the enforcement of this law, because it it is a law 
 of nations ; the fulfilment of which duty is demanded of the 
 
108 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 nation ivhich that government represents, and cannot be made 
 dependent, like duties under municipal laws, upon the action 
 of subordinate officials appointed by them for the discharge of 
 those duties. 
 
 Such was the sense of duty, upon this subject, entertained 
 and acted upon by the Executive Government of the United 
 States, under the administration of President Washington, 
 when, before the existence of any Enlistment Act, or of any 
 municipal regulations which could be invoked in its aid, it 
 gave orders for the seizure and detention of vessels under 
 a charge of intended violation of our neutral obligations to- 
 wards England, and for the prosecution of the guilty parties. 
 AVashington and his noble compatriots in the ministry did not 
 think it beneath their dignity, nor beyond their duty, thus to 
 interpose the power of the Government in protection of the 
 good faith and honor of the nation ; nor that they were subject- 
 ing her to humiliation in the subsequent procurement of more 
 efficient means of doing so by the enactment of an Enlistment 
 Act, although England had asked it. But now, after the lapse 
 of two third parts of a century, the Executive Ministry of Eng- 
 land, in cases of flagrant and atrocious violations of this law, 
 already committed against the United States, and in many 
 more, notoriously in progress within her realm, when attention 
 is called to them by the ambassador of the injured power, dis- 
 dainfully disclaims any obligation on its part to interfere, or 
 take upon itself the enforcement of the law, or to act as the 
 magistrate of the nation ; — but seeks to shelter itself under 
 the subterfuge, that the only means for prevention or redress 
 are in the application of one of her municipal regulations 
 upon the subject ; and that this is a matter with which they 
 have no concern, until some party injured, or in behalf of the 
 United States, shall previously furnish them with authentic 
 proof, in due form, of the actual violation of that municipal law, 
 and in a manner exactly within its peculiar provisions, to be 
 by them submitted to certain sub-officials, who are to decide 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 109 
 
 whether or not any interference shall take place. As if Eng- 
 land's whole obligation were founded, not on the laio of nations, 
 but on this particular specimen of her own municipal legisla- 
 tion, and would be fulfilled by a compliance with its provisions, 
 however inadequate they may be to enforce that law, or how- 
 ever impossible they may make such enforcement ; — as if she 
 were under no duty of interference for the protection of her 
 honor and good faith voluntarily, but only when called upon by 
 some interested party invoking such interposition, if there 
 happens to be one within her realm of ability to seek it ; — thus 
 leaving outrages upon a friendly power unprevented and un- 
 punished, if no such party appear, or, if appearing, he have no 
 means of procuring the evidence ; and, to crown all, when 
 urged for the amendment of this municipal law, if ineffectual 
 for the preservation of the nation's faith and honor, contemptu- 
 ously replying, that England does not change her laws to suit 
 the convenience or pleasure of other nations, — as if it were 
 more consistent with her dignity to acquiesce in a violation of 
 her duty to them, than to adopt the means for preventing it 
 upon their suggestion. 
 
 Let the municipal laws of England, and the disposition or 
 ability of her Government, be what they may, the fact is 
 before the whole world, written upon the ocean and upon 
 the face of the skies in the lurid flames of burning ships 
 and cargoes, that — in a great struggle between a long-estab- 
 lished, legitimate, and free government (not only in peaceful 
 relations with her, but with peculiar claims upon her friendship 
 and sympathy) contending for life, on one side — and traitors 
 and rebels seeking its overthrow, on the other — that, in such 
 a struggle, a powerful navy of vessels, built and equipped in 
 her ports, armed with guns and munitions of war manufac- 
 tured by her artisans, and manned by crews from her shores, 
 all united on her soil or under the 9Bgis of her flag on the 
 ocean, and never having been within a rebel port, — an Eng- 
 lish navy in all but the name and the flag, — is now roving 
 
110 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 the seas, burning and destroying American vessels and car- 
 goes, in defiance of the established law of nations, and not 
 without piracies upon her own subjects, and is received 
 everywhere within her realm with friendly, if not dis- 
 tinguished, hospitality. 
 
 To attribute this monstrous anomaly to impotence on the 
 part of the most wealthy and most powerful naval nation on 
 earth, is impossible ; nor is it needful to seek its solution in 
 jealousy or hatred on the part of the Government, or in a 
 desire to break down an anticipated rival in commerce and 
 naval power, or in the deficiency of her municipal regula- 
 tions. It is enough that the fact exists, to prove a grievous 
 wrong to the United States, for which redress ought to 
 be made, whether the fault be that of the nation or of its 
 rulers. 
 
 It is sad to believe, that nothing is to be hoped for from 
 the present Ministry, whose disdainful indifference to the 
 claims of our country, if not their settled hostility to her, 
 has, from the first breaking-out of the Rebellion, been so 
 conspicuously manifested ; but the civilized world is already 
 looking upon the spectacle with indignation, and the honest- 
 hearted English people, when once aroused to a comprehen- 
 sion of the truth, will behold with grief and shame the in- 
 indelible page thus written in their country's history. 
 
 Fortunately, the question of England's duty in this matter, 
 so far as her municipal regulations are involved, has passed 
 from the hands of her Ministry, for the present, into those of 
 her judicial tribunals, upon whose independence, and sense 
 of justice, we have been accustomed to rely ; and nothing can 
 be done on either side until that shall have been decided. If 
 the decision shall be, that the American interpretation of the 
 statute is that which should prevail, and the " Alexandra " 
 shall be adjudged forfeited, all future danger from this source 
 will cease ; and the only remaining question will be that of the 
 indemnity to be made for the injuries already perpetrated, 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. Ill 
 
 which is purely a diplomatic, and cannot be made a judicial 
 question. If, on the other hand, it shall be decided, that the 
 interpretation already put upon that statute by the inferior 
 tribunal is to be sustained, and we are consequently to be 
 left to a continuance of these depredations, and a reliance only 
 upon our own means of self-defence, then will arise the grave 
 inquiry, what measures the honor, the interests, and tlio duty 
 of the United States, as a member of tlie family of nations, 
 will require to be adopted. 
 
 As before stated, the injuries already suffered, and a con- 
 tinued exposure to the repetition of them, would justify a 
 declaration of war against England ; both because of her vio- 
 lation of the law of nations and of her good faith toward 
 the United States, under our construction of them (upon 
 which construction it is equally our right and our duty to 
 insist) ; and because of the necessity of protecting ourselves 
 against such ruinous depredations, even if England were 
 innocent of any wrong in thus furnishing our enemy with 
 the means for our destruction; — and the whole world would 
 doubtless sanction such a declaration. 
 
 But, inasmuch as England will have assumed the position, 
 that she is guilty of no such violation of the law of nations 
 or of her duty towards tlie United States, and will claim that 
 she, too, is acting in conformity to both under her construc- 
 tion of them, and with equal right to such construction, the 
 point of honor is saved, and there will be no necessity of a 
 war to vindicate the dignity or honor of the United States 
 from any avowedly intended wrong or insult ; the existence 
 of which would, of course, render war inevitable, there being 
 no other alternative but national degradation, — never for an 
 instant to be tolerated. 
 
 In this state of affairs, the final adjustment may without 
 dishonor be left to negotiation, and the logic of events, often 
 so much more effective than diplomatic discussion ; the 
 United States, in the mean time, taking measures to place 
 
112 NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 herself upon an equal footing with England in reference to 
 neutral rights and obligations. And this might be done by 
 the repeal of our Foreign Enlistment Act, so far as the neu- 
 tral relations of England and the United States, or English 
 subjects or property, may be concerned, on the ground that 
 her construction of her own statute renders it as substantially 
 nugatory as any repeal could do. Or, if this might be con- 
 sidered an offensive discrimination, the end might be attained 
 by some enactment securing towards England and English 
 subjects and property the same construction of our statute 
 as she adopts of her own, and by giving notice to her, that 
 such enactment is in no hostile spirit, but solely for the pur- 
 pose of self-defence (to remove the ruinous inequality at 
 present subsisting in the construction of the respective muni- 
 cipal enactments of the two countries, by which inequality 
 effectual security is given on the part of the United States 
 against infraction of this nation's neutral rights to the injury of 
 England, while England gives none such in return), and that 
 the enactment will be rescinded, whenever she shall so amend 
 her own Act, or enable her courts to give to it such construc- 
 tion, as shall protect the interests of the United States to the 
 same extent to which those of England are now protected by 
 tliis nation, — and when, also, indemnity shall have been pro- 
 vided for the losses sustained by American citizens by reason 
 of depredations committed by rebel ships of war, or privateers, 
 which have been equipped, fitted out, or armed in England, or 
 under the English flag, in violation of the neutrality which it 
 was incumbent upon her to observe and enforce during the 
 present war. 
 
 No nation on earth has at present a greater interest at 
 stake in the safety of commerce upon the seas than England, 
 or greater reason to desire, that, in case of war between hei 
 and any other nation, the rights and obligations of neutrality, 
 on the part of those not in the conflict, should be rigidly 
 protected and observed ; and she could anticipate no such 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 113 
 
 danger from the failure to observe them on the part of any 
 other nation as from a failure on the part of the United 
 States, whose capacity and opportunities for supplying pri- 
 vateers, and ships of war, to her enemy, would exceed 
 those of any other nation, if not of all others combined. The 
 adoption of the principles and practice of the United States 
 upon this subject, and the very few millions of pounds 
 sterling which it would require for the indemnity suggested, 
 would be a very cheap price at which to obtain the perma- 
 nent security which such an adjustment of this difficulty 
 would give. Hundreds of millions would not compensate for 
 the losses which will, in all probability, accrue to England 
 in her future wars, if the United States are left free to act 
 towards her, without reproach, upon the principles, and in 
 imitation of the practice, hitherto adopted and acted upon by 
 her in this Rebellion. 
 
 But in the present condition of naval warfare and enter- 
 prise, caused by the introduction of steam, enabling two or 
 three armed steamships more effectually to depredate upon the 
 commerce of a nation, than large fleets of sailing vessels of the 
 old fashion could have done, even a consentaneous construc- 
 tion of the present English and American Enlistment Acts, as 
 adopted in the United States, would fall very far short of the 
 means necessary for the preservation of the two nations from 
 the danger of war between them, whenever, one being at peace 
 and the other at war, the latter should suffer injuries from the 
 alleged neglect or violation of the neutral duties of the for- 
 mer. A more stringent limitation of the right or opportunities 
 of neutral nations to furnish ships of war to belligerents, than 
 the law of nations or the Enlistment Acts now provide, is 
 demanded by the increased commerce of the world, — in order 
 that such nations may be better secured from the danger of 
 wars with belligerents, which may be caused by evasions or 
 violations of their neutral rights, — and in order that bellige- 
 rents may be better secured from the machinations, connivance, 
 
 15 
 
I 
 
 114' NEUTRAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 or want of vigilance, by means of which a neutral, under pre- 
 tence of impartiality, may be made a substantial ally of one, 
 to the detriment of the other. 
 
 Such a change iii the present system can only be effected by 
 a treaty between England and the United States, or by a de- 
 claration of the character of that of Paris, in effect establishing 
 a new law of nations in relation to neutrality, to be binding 
 upon all the powers who shall assent to it. 
 
 Without presuming to enumerate the exact extent or nature 
 of the proposed arrangement, or the precise method of secur- 
 ing a faithful observance of it (all which might be readily 
 devised by those familiar with maritime affairs), it may suffice 
 here to suggest, that the basis might be a prohibition upon 
 any neutral nation to build or equip ships of war, or vessels 
 which may be converted into ships of war, for, or to sell them 
 to, any other power, or the subjects of any, at war with any 
 power with which such neutral shall be at peace, — with such 
 provisions for inspection by regular officers, and for bonds, 
 &c., as might be necessary to prevent any undue interference 
 with the right to construct vessels really intended for peace- 
 ful service, but convertible into ships of war, — provisions 
 which might be needful to prevent the prohibition from inter- 
 fering with honest mercantile transactions, while protecting 
 neutral rights, and preserving fidelity to neutral obligations. 
 
 It is believed that the loss, if any, which any commercial 
 nation could be put to by such restriction of this one branch 
 of her manufacturing interests, would be compensated for, a 
 thousand-fold, in her preservation from entanglements in wars 
 between other nations ; while, at the same time, an advance 
 would be made in the dignity and protecting character of the 
 law of nations. 
 
 It is indeed one of the marvels of these times, that the 
 cupidity of two or three ship-builders in England, ready to 
 sacrifice the faith and honor of their country for their personal 
 gain, has been sufficient, under the present system, to bring 
 
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. 115 
 
 two great nations, who ought to be the most strongly united of 
 any on earth, to the very verge of war. 
 
 The principal cause of the present unfortunate relations 
 between England and the United States, next to the hostility, 
 and desire for our destruction as a nation, pervading her land- 
 holding and commercial classes, is the settled belief, with which 
 they have succeeded in inspiring the minds of the people at 
 large, that the dismemberment of our Government is inevita- 
 ble ; — a foregone conclusion which has been too readily and 
 generally adopted, and which renders them comparatively 
 indifferent to the conduct of their own Government, in the 
 confidence that such dismemberment will soon terminate all 
 difficulties, or leave us in no condition to resent any wrongs 
 inflicted upon us. 
 
 But the English people will soon awaken from this delusive 
 dream, and realize the true character of this war on the part 
 of the United States, as one into which they were driven origi- 
 nally in defence only of constitutional law and of national 
 life, against a treason which for atrocity has no parallel in his- 
 tory, but which, in the providence of God, has become a war 
 now also against an infernal institution, founded upon the most 
 cruel wrong and injustice to one race, and productive of none 
 but the most pernicious and demoralizing influences upon the 
 other; — a war, in short, for constitutional law and liberty 
 against despotism and slavery, and one for the success of which 
 every intelligent and true-hearted Englishman must pray. 
 Then will they realize, also, the false position in which her 
 rulers, and those whose iiifluences have guided her counsels, 
 have placed their own noble country, — a position alike false 
 to her traditions as the champion of constitutional law and 
 liberty, false to her honor and her faith as a neutral nation, 
 and false, too, to any just conception even of her material in- 
 terests. 
 
 The people of the United States have no fears nor doubts 
 about the result. Calm in the confidence of their ability to 
 
116 NEUTRAL RELATIONS. 
 
 suppress this Rebellion, resolute in their determination to do 
 it, and assured of the support and guidance of the Great 
 Ruler of nations in their cause, they will fearlessly go forward, 
 come what may, and cost what it may, to the accomplishment 
 of this, as the highest and noblest duty which God in mani- 
 fest providence ever imposed upon a nation. 
 
 25 September, 1863. 
 
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 UEC 04 19/b 
 
 
 M2V 2^ mt 
 
 
 CEC17 1980 
 
 
 DEC 4 1980 
 
 
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 'I'i'J 18 1968 
 
 
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 UCSD Libr.