Earl Russell to Mr. Mason.
Sir: In reply to your letters of the 24th and 29th ultimo, I have to state to you that Mr. Acting Consul Magee failed in his duty to her Majesty, by taking [Page 810] advantage of the presence of a ship-of-war of her Majesty at Mobile to transmit specie to England. This transaction had the character, in the eyes of her Majesty’s government, of aiding one of the belligerents against the other.
Laying aside, however, this question of the conduct of Mr. Acting Consul Magee, of which her Majesty is the sole judge, I am willing to acknowledge that the so-styled Confederate States are not bound in any way to recognize an authority derived from Lord Lyons, her Majesty’s minister at Washington.
But it is very desirable that persons authorized by her Majesty should have the means of representing at Richmond and elsewhere in the Confederate States the interests of British subjects who may be, in the course of the war, grievously wronged by the acts of subordinate officers. This has been done in other similar cases of states not recognized by her Majesty, and it would be in conformity with the amity professed by the so-styled Confederate States towards her Majesty and the British nation if arrangements could be made for correspondence between agents appointed by her Majesty’s government to reside in the Confederate States and the authorities in such States.
I am, &c.,