Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch of the 11th of December (No. 554) has been received, and your proceedings therein related concerning the pirate Rappahannock are approved.
[Page 68]I acknowledge also the receipt of your despatch of the 11th of December, No. 555, which is accompanied by a copy of the correspondence which has taken place between yourself and Earl Russell on the subject of the enlistment of pirates and equipment of ships-of-war by British subjects, and their naval operations on the high seas, against the unarmed merchantmen of the United States. The papers you have thus submitted to his lordship prove beyond a possible doubt that a systematic naval war has been carried on for more than a year by subjects of her Majesty from the British island as a base, and there is every reason for believing that unremitted efforts are made to give that warfare increased vigor and extension. It now appears from these papers that the belligerents have a regularly constituted treasury and counting-houses, with agents in London for paying the wages of the British subjects who are enlisted there in this nefarious service. Hitherto remonstrances made by the United States to her Majesty’s government have been held inconclusive and unsatisfactory, because it was said that they were not attended with such clear, direct, and conclusive proofs of the offences complained of, as would enable the government to arrest the offenders, and apply judicial correction to the practices indicated. It seems to the President that this difficulty has now been fully and completely removed. Having recently brought to the knowledge of her Majesty’s government flagrant violations of our national rights of a similar kind attempted in her Majesty’s North American provinces, and having still more recently given to Earl Russell, through your hands, the avowal of all these transactions by domestic conspirators against the United States, it only remains for me to inform you that the President awaits with deep concern a determination by her Majesty’s government of the grave question which you have been instructed to submit to them, namely, whether that government will adopt any new measures to put an end to practices which are not less intolerable to the United States than they are inconsistent with the neutrality which her Majesty has proclaimed and enjoined upon all of her subjects. In writing so earnestly upon this subject, I do not by any means forget that recently her Majesty’s government have taken measures to detain certain vessels which were being built for the purpose of carrying on war with the United States, nor do I overlook the fact that her Majesty’s government have promised due attention to a special complaint which is referred to in this communication. The President does not, in the least, doubt that her Majesty’s government are earnestly and seriously engaged in considering several of such complaints, distinctly and separately. Nevertheless, I trust that I shall not be thought unreasonably importunate in asking you again to press the general subject upon the attention of her Majesty’s government, in the light of the facts now first brought to the knowledge of this department. Alarming events are occurring on our borders, prosecutions are pending in Great Britain. We have been obliged to institute a special naval and military police in the port of New York, which must soon prove as annoying to lawful traders from friendly states as to our own citizens, and thus new irritations are arising, and new controversies are gathering up between the two countries.
On our part we trace all the evils to an unnecessary, and, as we think, an anomalous recognition by her Majesty’s government of insurgents as a naval power who have no pretensions to that title. We desire to know whether, after all its gross abuses and injurious consequences, that concession must remain unrevoked and unmodified. If it must remain, then we desire to know whether her Majesty’s government can apply a cure to these abuses and consequences, or whether we are expected to devise and provide the proper remedies. If the British government is to do nothing, and the United States everything, I know not what security commerce can ever have hereafter against universal practices [Page 69] of privateering and piracy, except that even the lawful trade between friendly countries must be carried on under the protection of ever present and adequate armed force.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.