Mr. Mason to Earl Russell.—(Received September 4.).
My Lord: I have had the honor to receive your lordship’s letter of the 19th of August ultimo, in reply to mine of the 24th and 29th of July ultimo. I shall transmit a copy of your lordship’s letter to the secretary of state at Richmond.
The despatches of Mr. Benjamin (full copies of which I have by his direction furnished to your lordship) certainly evince no disinclination to permit any person accredited by her Majesty’s government as its consular or other agents to reside within the Confederate States, and as such to be in communication with the government there. They explain only (and certainly in terms of amity) how it has resulted that the government of the Confederate States has felt itself constrained to prohibit in future any direct communication between such agents and her Majesty’s minister resident at Washington—a prohibition which I understand from those despatches is equally extended to all like agents of foreign power and their ministers at Washington. All communications to or from such agents are in future to be made through vessels arriving from or despatched to neutral ports.
That it should have become necessary to impose this restriction is, I am sure, a matter of regret to the president of the Confederate States, but the circumstances which have called it forth are under the control of foreign governments, and not under the control of the president.
In regard to the suggestion in your lordship’s letter that it would be “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,” which, as your lordship states, “has been done in other similar cases of states not recognized by her Majesty,” under arrangements for correspondence between agents appointed by her Majesty’s government to reside in the Confederate States and the authorities in such States, I can only say that if it be your lordship’s pleasure to make this proposition in such form as may be agreeable to her Majesty’s government, and not at variance with the views expressed in the despatches of Mr. Benjamin, I do not doubt it would receive the favorable consideration of the government at Richmond, and I should be happy in being the medium to communicate it.
I have, &c.,