mit. The intention of the Government ought, in our humble judgment, at least, to have been communicated to the American ambassador, who, at the moment when the proclamation was issued, was known to be on the point of arriving in this country. It is said by the apologists of the Government that Mr. Adams would have felt it his duty to protest against the measure; that our Government would then have had to carry it into effect in the face of his protest; and that an aggravated misunderstanding, perhaps an immediate quarrel with the Americans, would have been the result. But the answer to this plea, we apprehend, is that in public and in private life you have to look only to your own actions. Do what is right, and do it with perfect frankness and courtesy towards all who are concerned; and if those with whom you deal persist, nevertheless, in objecting to your decision, and take to violent courses, the blame will rest on them, not on you. No man, no nation, can guarantee himself or itself against unreasonable resentment on the part of others all that he or it can do is to take care that the resentment shall be without reason. A mere defect of manner, however, like a defect of sympathy with the right cause, finds its meet punishment both among men and nations in a loss of esteem and influence, not in a lawsuit or a war. That the recognition of belligerency, even supposing it to have been precipitate, can have done much practical mischief in the way of consolidating and encouraging the rebellion, or that its delay for a few weeks would have made a great practical difference in that respect, is a thing which we can scarcely believe. This seems to us to be a part of the "sixty days" view of the secession, which, though naturally cherished at first from the unwillingness of all hearts to acknowledge the arrival of a great disaster, proved, as we know, in fact to be unfounded. Considering the almost demoniac fury and tenacity with which the South persisted in the struggle long after all hope of foreign assistance, long after all hope of every kind was at an end, posterity will, we are convinced, seek the key to the strength and duration of the Confederacy in causes more deeply rooted and nearer home than the early recognition by a distant nation of belligerent rights which the Confederates were from the first unquestionably strong enough to assert, and which the Federals themselves never practically withheld. The French recognition of belligerency, though it came after ours, was not led by ours; it was a spontaneous and independent act of the French Government. The French were not under so urgent a necessity as we were of determining their maritime relations with the Confederates in American waters. And besides, while the British Government are, generally speaking, honest, straightforward, true to their engagements, but totally wanting in the faculty of conciliation, French Governments in general, and that which sprang from the conspiracy of 1851 in particular, rival the Government which sprang from the Charleston Convention in the address with which they practise all the arts by which good opinions can be won. They have the gift of making rapine itself almost popular; and know well how, out of any alliance or course of joint action in which they may engage, to suck all the advantage themselves and deftly cast all the odium on their partners. Substantially, what has been the conduct of France towards America compared with ours? Did not France in the darkest hour of American distress propose to England a "mediation," which would have amounted in fact to an intervention in favor of the rebels? and was not that proposal rejected by the English Government with the cordial approbation of the vast majority of the English nation? Has not the French Emperor taken advantage of the calamities of the republic to plant in the New World an offset of the upas tree which is blighting with its pestilential shade the political and social morality, not of France only, but of the surrounding nations? The day may come when the Mexican empire may spread the contagion of Imperialism, military aristocracy and political priesthood over American States in whose veins the virus of a kindred malady is not yet extinct; and when American statesmen may know what it is to allow French despotism and sacerdotalism to extend their dominion from shore to shore by taking advantage of the divisions of the Anglo Saxon race, the guardians in both hemispheres of freedom and of truth. Frankness requires us to confess, in connection with this question of the concession of belligerent rights, that we have always been of the number of those who contended that Confederate cruisers ought not to have been allowed to destroy merchantmen uncondemned; and who inclined to think that our Government erred, as the leading maritime Power among the neutrals, in not proposing to the other maritime Powers to protest against a practice which was clearly a relapse into the barbarous times when the end sought in war was not victory, but destruction. | justification for a display of force was afThe answer given was, that Lord Stowell forded on their side? Let them remember had decided that it was lawful to burn an the banquet given to Captain Wilkes at enemy's vessel, without taking her into a Boston, at which the Governor of the State prize-court, rather than allow her to escape. was present. Let them remember the note This answer did not seem to us conclusive. addressed to him by the Secretary of the The great interests of humanity and civili- Navy, telling him that his conduct in zation are not to be given into the hands of seizing these public enemies had been a dead lawyer. Questions relating to them marked by intelligence, ability, decision, are to be decided by the living generation, and firmness, and had the emphatic apon grounds as broad and as substantial as proval of the Department." In that case, the interests themselves. The necessity of as in many other cases, the American Govcarrying prizes into a prize-court is not ernment had reason to complain of the unmerely a security to neutrals, it is a restraint controlled action of too eager subordinates. imposed, in the interest of the whole com- But other Governments and nations must monwealth of nations, upon the destructive be excused for believing that when the Secagency of war. The systematic burning at retary of the Navy has formally approved sea of multitudes of merchantmen by cruis- the act of an officer, it will be necessary ers without a port or prize-court, was a for a foreign Government to show some destate of things far beyond anything that termination in order to get the act reversed. Lord Stowell had experienced, or that he Let the truth be told: we have never concould have foreseen. Such an irruption of versed with a candid and well-informed relapsed barbarism ought to have been ar- American on the subject, who seemed quite rested by the common action of civilized sure that the resolution to insist on her denations. But this concerned all the Govern- mand evinced on the part of England had ments, at least all other maritime Govern- not some influence in enabling the Ameriments, as much as ours. The law, so call-can Government, in the midst of great ed, was in favor of permitting the destruc- popular excitement, to do what, all admit, tion of an enemy's vessel; and if the Con- was required by public law. To the lanfederates were burning Federal property on the sea, the Federals were burning Confederate property by land. Indeed, though the issue has been raised, we are not aware that any sustained charge has been made by American publicists against our Government on this special ground. guage in which our claim was preferred no objection can possibly be taken. It was the most studiously considerate and respectful which courtesy could dictate. On the whole we may heartily thank Heaven on both sides, that we were not led into a quarrel about a couple of slave-drivers, who were as hateful to the mass of the people in England as they were to the Americans themselves, and be content to think as little as possible for the future of this most hateful incident of the past. The affair of the Trent is another grievance which still rankles, though in a less degree. It was an affair in which the British nation had very great reason for reproaching its own Government. The suppression of Mr. Seward's pacific note, and Of the blockade-running, the Americans the positive denial of the fact that such a never professed to complain as a contravencommunication had been received, published tion of public law. Their own people, in the Prime Minister's personal organ, with the same temptations, would have done would have formed the subject of discussion the same. But it was most natural that in Parliament, if Parliament had not been they should be galled by seeing the outlyat the time in a remarkably complaisant ing dependency of a distant nation serving mood. The expedition to Canada, at a as a depôt and a base of operations for season when no military operations could their enemy in a war which imperilled the possibly be undertaken in that quarter, has existence of their nation. It will be well entailed upon this country a waste of sev- if the English people are led some day to eral millions, besides other bad effects. consider whether so offensive and dangerous Undoubtedly the Prime Minister of that a possession as Nassau has any countervailday did exhibit his usual love of displaying ing advantages which make it at all worth military force; and all will admit that any-, our while to retain it in our hands. thing like a gratuitous menace was peculiar- We come to the case of the Alabama itly offensive and unworthy when directed self, on which we will say a few words, not against a nation in distress. But can for the purpose of taking a case of internaAmericans honestly say that no colour of tional law out of the master hands of "His THE CASE OF THE ALABAMA. toricus," but for the purpose of insisting on The first thing, indeed, which it is neces- American citizens had in more than one instance in the war between England and the French revolutionists, and again in the wars between Spain and Portugal and the South American States- indulged to a great extent in the habit of preying on the commerce of a friendly nation under a foreign flag. The existence of this practice, and the dangers which it involved, had thus been brought vividly home to the mind of wisely and honourably taken measures to the American Government, which had prevent its recurrence by increasing the stringency of the law. Of course the Confederates, from the same experience, were familiar with this device, and they hastened, as soon as their own ports were blockaded, to avail themselves of the ports of an unsuspecting nation, for the purpose of carrying on a naval war. To the British Government and nation, unknown. When the first instance of it on the contrary, this offence was practically occurred, in the case of the Alabama, it struck the bulk of our people as a new and monstrous invention of the Confederates and their Liverpool allies. Large public meetings were immediately held to protest against its continuance; great indignation was manifested by the masses of the people; the Government, awakened to the full gravity of the occasion, effectually bestirred itself; and the practice was at once and finally put down. For though other vessels, built in English yards, and manned, unhappily, in part by Englishmen, were used by the Confederates for purposes of war, and under circumstances disgraceful to the Engsuch enterprises, not a single real instance lish adventurers who were concerned in can be shown, after that of the Alabama, in which a ship armed for war was allowed actually to go forth from our ports; while Earl Russell is able to point to several cases in which their departure was arrested, sometimes by the exertion on his part of powers almost beyond the law. increase the stringency of our law. But Mr. Adams complains that we refused to this complaint seems not tenable. state of our municipal law is properly a domestic concern, Foreign nations have onThe ly to see that we fulfil our international obligations. A despot, with no law at all but his own arbitrary will, would be perfectly unimpeachable as against foreigners so long as he caused his subjects practically to abstain from doing wrong to those of other Powers; while, on the other hand, the most perfect municipal law that could be imaagainst the charges of another Government gined would not afford the slightest defence whose subjects, in spite of the existence of that law, had practically suffered wrong. The municipal law is merely the instrument by which each Government restrains its own subjects, for whose acts, not for the stare of the law, it has to answer to other nations. A perfect uniformity of munici this vessel, or arrest her depredations, was, to say the least, quite as great as our remissness in allowing her to leave port. It is difficult to understand how, with such a navy afloat, they can have allowed a single corsair so long to sweep the sea. pal law upon these subjects, indeed, so far from being indispensable, might not be desirable; since a law applicable to the circumstances and general institutions of one country might not be applicable to the circumstances and general institutions of another. It signifies nothing to Mr. Adams, Remissness, however, in the fulfilment of or to his Government, whether we changed a national obligation, though confined to a our law or not. If we executed it, or single instance, and extenuated even in strained it, or even acted in defiance of it, this instance by the novelty of the case, is so as to prevent any more of these vessels a fault, and a fault which, if it can really be from leaving our ports, that is all that he brought home, calls for some kind of reparaand they have a right to require. The tion, which, the greater a nation is, the steam rams were stopped. They were more ready it will be to afford. With restopped, it is true, by an expedient discred- missness Mr. Adams charges us. And from itable to the municipal law, and humiliating the facts set forth upon both sides, many to the majesty of England that of pur- Englishmen believe that there is some chasing them, with the public money, of the ground for the charge-that, unfamiliar offender who had built them. But this is a with cases of this kind, and not sufficiently purely domestic question, not one affecting impressed with the gravity of the subject, Mr. Adams as the representative of a for- our Government did not attend to his warneign Power. If we had wilfully or careless-ings so promptly, or act upon them so vigly allowed the rams to escape from Birken- orously, as it ought. They are confirmed head, we should not have been exonerated in this impression by the reports circulated in the court of international right, though in excuse for the Government of untoward we had been able to state that, by our mu- delays caused by the mental illness of the nicipal law, equipping ships without the Queen's Advocate, and of a betrayal by permission of the State against Her Majes- some treacherous subordinate of the decity's allies subjected the offender to the pen- sion which had been taken at the Foreign alties of treason. But as we did not allow Office to detain the Alabama at Liverpool. them to escape, we should have been per- The truth, however, can scarcely in this, fectly exonerated, though, in addition to any more than in other disputed cases, be paying the builder of the rams for his of- arrived at merely by comparing the asserfence, we had made him a Privy Councillor tions and counter-assertions of the parties and a Knight of the Garter. The improve-to the dispute. It can be arrived at only ment of municipal law for the purpose of by means of a judicial investigation, conbetter fulfilling international obligations is ducted before an impartial tribunal. We a very proper subject of mutual suggestion do not see by what other means an unjust and negotiation, and a strict Foreign En- accusation can be effectually disposed of, listment Act is evidence of good intentions; the character of this country effectually but so long as the obligation is performed, cleared of reproach, or, what is of the highwhether improvement in the means of per- est importance, the rule of right clearly esforming it are adapted or not, no complaint tablished and solemnly recognized by both can be sustained. parties for the future. We are, therefore, very sorry, and we apprehend that there is a general feeling of regret, that both Governments should, as the case now stands, have rejected this mode of settling their dif ference, and determined each to make itself judge, in the last resort, in its own cause. In ordinary life, such a refusal of friendly arbitration to decide a question of right which it is morally impossible that the two parties, though each were the soul of justice and honour, should be able to decide for themselves, would be thought a sure proof of wrongheadedness and folly. Why it is not equally so in diplomacy, diplomacy alone knows. Before the nation and the Government could be roused, however, one vessel had escaped, and, unfortunately, she did great damage to American commerce; though to charge us with the whole extent of that damage would, on any hypothesis as to the history of the vessel short of wilful connivance on the part of our Government, be unreasonable in the highest degree; since we should thus be held responsible not only for our own want of diligence in letting her escape, but for the slackness of the Americans in pursuit. Remissness is the worst fault with which either party can, consistently with any regard for probability and decency, charge the other; and the remissness of the Americans in failing to catch That the British Government were somewhat taken by surprise, and did not know exactly how to deal with the case, appears from the course which they pursued when they learned that the vessel had escaped. They sent out orders to detain her at Nassau, but she did not visit that place; and next time she appeared in a British port, having then entered on her career of depredation, she was hospitably received, and treated as a lawful belligerent. It is impossible, as it seems to us, to reconcile such a course with any intention to do wrong upon the one hand, or any well-settled rule of right upon the other. To hunt the Alabama down as a corsair, which had sailed from our port to prey upon the commerce of our friends, was perhaps the course prescribed to our Government by the highest considerations of public right, by the real justice of the case, and by our interests as a great commercial nation. But this course had not been taken by the American Government in similar cases, nor was it a part of the acknowledged law of nations. We are not aware, even, that the Americans ever demanded that we should take it; though, by putting in a claim for the whole of the damages done by the Alabama, they now seek, in effect, to make us responsible for its not having been taken. Again, to have called the Confederate Government to account for a violation of our neutrality, strictly analogous, and equal in heinousness, to marching troops over our territory for the invasion of our allies, would perhaps have been a just and (considering the vast interests we had at stake) a wise measure, and it was one which, as it seems to us, a really strong English minister would have adopted. But it had not been adopted by the Americans, and therefore they were not in a position to upbraid our Government with its omission. In fact, they had taken up a position which would have made it very difficult for them in any case to require that our Government should hold the Confederates to belligerent duties; for to require that the Confederates should be held to belligerent duties would have been to acknowledge, by necessary implication, that they had been duly invested with belligerent rights. We repeat, however, that if there is any fair ground for suspecting that the English Government was guilty of remissness in the performance of international obligations, even in the slightest degree, and that through this remissness, wholly or in part, a friendly and allied nation has suffered a serious injury, the honour of England not only does not forbid us to submit the matter to arbitration, but requires that we shall do so, in order that by this, the only possible mode, our character for good faith may be cleared to our allies, and before the world. Any arbitrator before whom we might go would, of course, give due weight to the precedents in our favour, furnished by the conduct of the American Government in the case of the Spanish and Portuguese claims, about which Lord Russell and Mr. Adams, as the parties interested, having once given their respective versions of the facts, can do little more than bandy words. Those precedents, as at present set forth, seem to us almost decisive in our favour. The only difference which Mr. Adams succeeds in pointing out between the conduct of our Government and that of his own, to the advantage of his own, is that the American Government consented to improve its law, though not so effectually, it appears, but that the offence continued to be committed after the change. But we did what was, in effect, the same thing - we administered the law more strictly; and whether the offence is prevented by a stricter law, or by a stricter administration of it, or by any other means, is, as we have said before, a matter with which the representative of a foreign nation has no concern. An arbitrator would take care to separate the case of the Alabama, as the issue really before him, from the other cases of Confederate cruisers built in English ports, which are made to cluster round it, and by the seeming connection artificially to deepen its hue, in the polemical despatches of Mr. Adams; but which really belong to a different class. An arbitrator would note, in our favour, the strangeness of the present situation, in which the Confederates themselves, the principal and only wilful offenders, are received back to the privileges of American citizenship, while we, at worst their involuntary abettors, are called upon to bear all the consequences of the offence; so that, literally, the real criminals would be allowed to take part in voting war against other people, for not having been sufficiently active in preventing the commission of their crimes. An arbitrator, taking a large and equitable view of the entire case, would in his own mind trace back the whole of these calamities to their original source; and would pronounce, as we apprehend, that the Americans, who had by their own institutions nursed the sure elements of a great political explosion, ought to be somewhat lenient in heaping blame and inflicting vengeance on their neighbours, who, having also some combus |
