Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch No. 137, the receipt of which has already been acknowledged, is accompanied by a note which was addressed to you by Earl Russell, in reply to your representations concerning the treatment of the United States ship-of-war the Flambeau at Nassau, The approval of the British government of the proceedings of the governor in that place is regarded by the President as unfriendly towards a power that extends unrestricted hospitalities to the naval as well as the mercantile marine of Great Britain in its ports and harbors. The grievance is not sensibly alleviated by the fact that the government of her Majesty are able to reconcile it with a proclamation issued by her Majesty in May last, conceding the [Page 74] rights of a public belligerent to the insurgents in arms against the United States. The explanation obliges us to renew the declaration this government has so often made, that it regards the proclamation itself as unnecessary, unfriendly, and injurious.
The history of the past year is a record of serious embarrassments of legitimate commerce between the two countries, resulting from the concession of belligerent naval rights to a seditious party in the United States which has never had control of a single port or harbor in its own country. It cannot be the desire of the British government either to reduce the commerce heretofore carried on between the two countries so profitably to both of them, or to suffer occasional irritations to ripen into fruits of animosity between them. You will therefore present the inconveniences complained of to the notice of her Majesty’s government as an argument for the revision of that proclamation whenever, in the exercise of your discretion, you shall think such a revision can be pressed for with hope of a candid hearing. The review of our military position, which I submit in a collateral despatch, induces us to hope that such a time is near at hand.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq, &c., &c., &c.