Earl Russell to Lord Lyons.
My Lord: I have received and considered, in communication with the law officers of the crown, the further correspondence respecting the case of the Chesapeake enclosed in your despatch of the 1st of February.
The observations which you make in that despatch on the tenor of Mr. Seward’s note of the 18th of January, which forms one of its enclosures, appear to her Majesty’s government to be well founded; but as the case would seem to be disposed of by the judgment of the colonial court, directing that the Chesapeake and her cargo should be restored to the owners, there is less necessity for dwelling on the erroneous views which Mr. Seward puts forward in his note.
Mr. Seward can hardly be ignorant that, so far as the extradition of the men, whom he assumes to have been pirates, is concerned, it would have been improper, and was in fact impossible, for the government of Nova Scotia to proceed otherwise than in the course pointed out by law; neither can Mr. Seward seriously intend to suggest that the provincial government, charged with the duty of vindicating her Majesty’s territorial rights, when those rights had been invaded in a manner for which the government of the United States have found it necessary to apologize, could have adopted or ratified the unauthorized exercise of power over the persons found on board the Chesapeake by which the invasion of her Majesty’s rights was accompanied and aggravated.
I am, &c.,