Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Third Session Thirty-seventh Congress

Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.

No. 238.]

Legation of the United States, London, October 10, 1862.

Sir: I have the honor to transmit copies of further notes that have passed between Lord Russell and myself in regard to the outfits in behalf of the insurgents made from the ports of this kingdom.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.

[Enclosures.]

1. Lord Russell to Mr. Adams, October 4, 1862.

2. Mr. Adams to Lord Russell, October 9, 1862.

Earl Russell to Mr. Adams.

Foreign Office, October 4, 1862.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 30th ultimo, enclosing a copy of another deposition, taken before the collector of the port of Liverpool, with reference to the proceedings of the gunboat 290, and further expressing a belief that enterprises of a similar kind are in course of progress in the ports of the United Kingdom; and I have to state to you that, much as her Majesty’s government desire to prevent such occurrences, they are unable to go beyond the law, municipal and international.

I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

RUSSELL.

Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.

Mr. Adams to Earl Russell.

Legation of the United States, London, October 9, 1862.

My Lord: I now have the honor to transmit to your lordship a copy of an intercepted letter which I have received from my government, being the further evidence to which I made allusion in my note to your lordship of the 30th of September, as substantiating the allegations made of the infringements of the enlistment law by the insurgents of the United States in the ports of Great Britain. I am well aware of the fact to which your lordship calls my attention in the note of the 4th instant, the reception of which I have the honor to acknowledge, that her Majesty’s government are unable to go beyond the law, municipal and international, in preventing enterprises of the kind referred to. But in the representations which I have had the honor lately to make, I beg to remind your lordship that I base them upon evidence which applies directly to infringements of municipal law itself, and: not to anything beyond it. The consequence of an omission to enforce its penalties is, therefore, necessarily that heretofore pointed out by eminent counsel, to wit: that “the law is little better than a dead letter,” or result against which “the government of the United States has serious ground of remonstrance.”

I pray your lordship to accept the assurances of the highest consideration with which I have the honor to be, my lord, your most obedient servant,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Right Hon. Earl Russell, &c., &c.