Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams
Sir: Your despatch of the 1st of December, No. 825, has been received. It is accompanied by letters which have passed between Earl Russell and yourself, supplemental to the long and unsatisfactory correspondence between the United States and Great Britain, upon the subject of the Deerhound. Your answer is approved.
I am well aware that constitutional governments often plead (perhaps necessarily) the want of direct authority by municipal law to perform duties of international obligation, nor am I prepared to deny that the plea is entitled to very conciliatory consideration, especially by other constitutional governments. On the other hand, is it not justly to be expected that the plea, when adopted, will be accompanied by an acknowledgment of the national obligation? and that when that obligation is denied, the plea of want of municipal authority will not be insisted upon? Duplicity in pleading is no more legal in international than it is in municipal jurisprudence. It seems to me also that in your rejoinder you have answered the argument which Earl Russell seeks to derive from ancient collisions between Spain and the United States. If, however, the case were otherwise, Great Britain could hardly expect us to be concluded by erroneous precedents of our own, after she has so entirely abandoned, in her claims in the Trent case, the principles upon which she had conducted maritime war for three fourths of a century.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.