Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress
Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward
Sir.: I have to acknowledge the reception of despatches from the department numbered from 1551 to 1556, both inclusive.
The most important of these is No. 1551, of the 27th of September, being in reply to Lord Russell’s note to me of the 30th of August. Immediately after receiving it I set about preparing a note to his lordship, framed as much as possible on your language. It was finished just as I received a note from him which must have been drawn out by reason of the doubts expressed here of his real meaning. As it seemed to supersede the necessity of the first inquiry you directed me to make, I at once modified the form of my note to suit it. Copies of the two notes are herewith submitted.
The discussion of the printed correspondence is still carried on with much earnestness. “Historicus” appears twice in the Times, but not with the vigor which formerly marked his papers. The substance of his second letter is sufficiently answered by a writer who signs himself 0, in the News. It is impossible not to believe that the government was precipitated into the act of recognition by its thorough conviction that the separation was complete. They were not roused from the delusion until my conversation with Lord Russell on the 18th of May, in which I communicated to him the substance of your first instructions, opened his eyes to the consequences of running too fast in that path. The verbal understanding with Mr. Dallas had been entirely forgotten. But it was too late to retreat. The pride of opinion, so strong in the national character, was then too fully enlisted to permit of any change of policy. Besides which, the current of sympathy running in the higher classes, and especially in both houses of Parliament, was not to be stemmed by a ministry which never had much strength to sustain it.
In one of the numbers of the Times which I transmit will also be found a leader indicating another change of position, probably demanded by the development of opinion. The first leader was timid, doubtful, and leaning to the acceptance of the proposal of a commission designed to embrace all the disputed claims. This brought on the necessity of a semi-official correction as to the nature of that proposal. It is now followed by an argument in the other extreme, which throws all further discussion out of court. This has been very properly noticed in a leader of the News of this morning, a copy of which is also forwarded.
It is very plain that the matter cannot rest here. The dilemma is an extremely painful one, and no progress appears to be making towards relief. The lapse of time will not contribute to make the case better. We can afford to await the course of events in Europe much more safely than this government.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Enclosures.]
1. Lord Russell to Mr. Adams, October 14, 1865.
2. Mr. Adams to Lord Russell, October 17, 1865.
3. The Times, October 18, 1865.
4. The Times, October 19, 1865,
5. The Daily News, October 19, 1865.
[Page 613]Earl Russell to Mr. Adams
Sir: I have thought it best to wait for the answer to the reference you have made to your government before replying to your last letter. But I observe that you have not clearly understood my proposal for the appointment of a commission.
That proposal is made in the following terms: “Her Majesty’s government are ready to consent to the appointment of a commission, to which shall be referred all claims arising during the late civil war which the two powers shall agree to refer to the commission.”
There are, I conceive, many claims upon which the two powers would agree that they were fair subjects of investigation before commissioners.
But I think you must perceive that if the United States government were to propose to refer claims arising out of the captures made by the Alabama and Shenandoah to the commissioners, the answer of her Majesty’s government must be in consistency with the whole argument I have maintained in conformity with the views entertained by your government in former times.
I should be obliged, in answer to such a proposal, to say: “For any acts of her Majesty’s subjects committed out of their jurisdiction and beyond their control, the government of her Majesty is not responsible.”
I should say, further, that the appointment of a commission for such purpose would not be consistent with any practice usual among civilized nations, and that it is a principle well known and well understood that no nation is responsible for the acts of its citizens committed without its jurisdiction, and out of the reach of its control.
I should have cleared up this point before, but I thought the words, “which the two powers shall agree to refer to the commissioners,” would put an end to any doubt upon the subject.
I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
Mr. Adams to Earl Russell
My Lord: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your note of the 14th instant, explanatory of some portions of a preceding one dated the 30th of August last.
This has reached me just in season to enable me to dispense with the necessity of soliciting precisely that information; for although the government which I have the honor to represent had already understood your lordship’s note as substantially in the same sense, it has instructed me to ask the confirmation of it which has now been supplied.
I am now directed to inform your lordship that the contents of your note of August 30 have received the most careful consideration.
With regard to the reference which you were pleased to make to a friendly remark contained in the note which I had the honor to address to your lordship on the 23d of October, 1863, apparently considering it in the light of a formal proposal for arbitration, I am now desired, in view of the reasons given by your lordship why such a mode of adjustment would not be acceptable to her Majesty’s government, to state that whatever may have heretofore been, or might now be, thought by the President of umpirage between the two powers no proposition of that kind, for the settlement of existing differences, will henceforward be insisted, upon or submitted on the part of my government.
The proposal of some form of commission, made by your lordship, still remains under consideration. To the end that my government may be the better enabled to make a satisfactory reply to it, I am still under the necessity of soliciting more information in regard to the precise nature of the claims which her Majesty’s government is disposed to agree to consider. I am instructed to venture so far as to ask the favor of your lordship to distinguish, as well what among the classes of claims it is willing, and what it would not be willing, to refer to the proposed commission.
I pray your lordship accept the assurances of the highest consideration with which I have the honor to be, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient servant,
The Right Honorable Earl Russell, &c.,&c.,&c.
The Alabama correspondence.
To the Editor of the Times:
Sir: The careful and elaborate discussion contained in the despatches of Lord Russell and Mr. Adams may be said to have exhausted the substantial merits of the question. I shall, however, ask your leave to offer a few observations on the replication of Mr. Adams to the plea recorded by Lord Russell on behalf of English neutrality.
I have frequently on former occasions in your columns expressed my unfeigned surprise that it was thought possible to find occasion of grave complaint in the act of the recognition of the belligerent rights of the southern confederacy. That surprise is certainly not diminished by the arguments to which Mr. Adams is fain to have recourse in support of that complaint.
The American minis‘ter seeks to avoid the stringency of the conclusion derived from the proclamation of blockade of April 19, 1861, by alleging that it was, in fact, nothing moro than a “declaration of intention,” an “assumption of certain acts contemplated but not performed.” Even if this were a correct statement of the fact, it would surely be a singular argument that when a man menaces you with an attack you are not to place yourself in an attitude of defence until the attack has been actually carried into effect. Thus, for instance, a man sends me a formal notice to say that he means to knock me down the next day; if I send for a policeman at once am I to be told that my conduct is “precipitate and unprecedented” because I acted upon a “mere presumption of what was going to be done;” that “there was at the time no certainty that the declaration of intention would be fulfilled,” and that it was “the part of calm statesmanship to postpone acting, at least until something shall have been done to require it,” i. e.,that I am to be knocked down first before I am justified in calling in the police? And though, as a fact, I am knocked down long before the police arrive, am I to be told that this is my own fault, because, if I had not called in the police, “it is not beyond the possibility of belief” that I should never have been knocked down at all ? It is surely not necessary to confute such a line of argument as this. Is it to be contended that, when a government of one country threatens so serious an injury to the interests of another as that involved in the American blockade, the government of Great Britain was not bound, as well as justified, in taking without delay those precautions which were essential to the defence of those interests which, if the threat were carried into execution, would be so seriously imperilled ?
Mr. Adams says we ought not to have assumed that the proclamation of blockade would have been carried into effect. He argues that “it is not beyond the possibility of belief” that the proclamation of blockade would have been left incomplete but for the English declaration of neutrality, “which precluded all chance of avoiding to have recourse to it.” In advancing such an argument Mr. Adams seems to have forgotten his accustomed caution. The truth is that the blockade was made effective a week before the 6th of May, the day on which the English government gave the first intimation of their intention to recognize the belligerent rights of the confederacy. The proclamation of blockade was dated the 19th of April. Mr. Adams complains that the English government assumed that it would be immediately carried into effect. Were they wrong in that assumption ? On the 30th of April the American admiral issued a notice declaring that the blockade had been made, and was effective. This notice led to a correspondence been Mr. Seward and the ministers at Washington representing the various European governments. On the 2d of May Mr. Seward wrote to the Spanish minister:
“In acknowledging the receipt of your note of the 30th ultimo, on the subject of the blockade of the ports in several of the States, I deem it proper to state for your further information—
“1. That the blockade will be strictly enforced upon the principles recognized by the law of nations.
“2. That armed vessels of neutral States will have the right to enter and depart from the interdicted ports.”
Thus on the 2d of May, four days before the English government had begun to speak or “belligerent rights,” Mr. Seward had already designated the nations of Europe as “neutral States.” It is right and natural, it seems, for Mr. Seward on the 2d of May to talk of “neutral States,” but for Lord Russell on the 6th of May to speak of belligerent rights was “precipitate and unprecedented.” On the 9th of May Mr. Seward writes to Lord Lyons, “Having submitted the matter to the Secretary of the Navy, I have now the honor to enclose you a copy of that officer’s reply, from which it will be seen that there am net Jive or six days for neutrals to leave.” An English vessel was captured and condemned by the American courts for loading an outward cargo on the 13th and 14th of May in one of the blockaded ports. And yet Mr. Adams asks us to believe that but for the English declaration of neutrality, which was first announced on the 6th of May, and finally issued on the 13th of May, no measures would have been taken in America to enforce the blockade. The blockade, as we have seen, was in full and active operation in the second week in May. The news even of the intention of the English government to recognize the belligerent rights of the south could not by any [Page 615] possibility have been known in America till the third week in that month. And yet we are gravely told that the actual blockade, so far from being a cause, became actually an inevitable consequence of English policy.” What is this but to reproduce the ancient fable in which the wolf complains of the lamb, which stood below him in the stream, for fouling the springs of which he drank ?
But the real truth is, this argument for the incompleteness of the blockade is not only an anachronism, but a fallacy. Mr. Bemis and other writers in America have labored hard to prove that when the English government determined, to recognize the belligerent rights of the south they did not know of the blockade. As a fact their contention is untrue, for the proclamation of blockade was known in England on the 2d of May, and was expressly referred to by Lord Russell, as one of the elements governing the decision of the English government, in his speech of the 6th of May. The dates consequently show that the American proclamation of blockade might be and was one of the causes of the English proclamation of neutrality, but that the English proclamation could by no possibility have been a cause of the American blockade, which was in actual operation before the declaration of the English government was made in England, and consequently long before it could be known in America.
But it is idle to prolong such a discussion. Plain as the facts and dates are against the American view, their contention would have been equally unsustainable had they been exactly the other way. American writers on this subject seem to reason as if the blockade made the war, whereas, in truth, it was the war which made and justified the blockade. A proclamation of blockade assumes the pre-existence of a state of warfare, which alone justifies such a proceeding. The recognition of belligerent rights depends on the question of the existence of a state of belligerency. Belligerency is a fact the existence of which is to be gathered from observation of the circumstances of the case. It may be difficult precisely to define the limits at which insurrection passes into civil war. The decision of such a question belongs to the province of statesmanship. On the 6th of May, the English government came to the conclusion that the state of things in America was one of civil war. When the propriety of that decision of the English government is challenged by the American government, the answer is conclusive: “You yourselves arrived at the selfsame conclusion on the 19th of, April, and the proof that you did so is that you issued a proclamation of blockade.” No one who understands the real conditions of this question will fail to see that in this point of view the argument is equally complete whether the blockade was known at the time to the English government or even whether it ever was enforced at all. If I arrest a man because from the surrounding circumstances of the case I think he is guilty of a crime, and if subsequently, when my conduct is questioned, it comes to my knowledge that he has confessed his guilt, I may rely on that admission as a proof that my conduct was justifiable, even though I did not know of the admission. The proclamation of blockade was a recorded admission on the part of the American government that in their judgment on the 19th of April, 1861, a state of belligerency existed. The whole source of the fallacies which run through the American reasonings on this question lies in their confounding two wholly different things—the fact of the existence of the war and the evidence of that fact. And yet the masterly judgment of the Supreme Court, cited by Lord Russell in his last despatch, might have sufficiently guarded them from such an error. The judgment states that “the proclamation of blockade is itself official and conclusive evidence that a state of war existed which demanded and authorized a recourse to such a measure under the circumstances of the case.” The state of war, therefore, preceded the blockade, and it was this state of war (of which the blockade was only an admission) which justified and made necessary the English recognition of belligerent rights; for the Supreme Court, after laying down that a state of war existed before the 19th of April, proceeds to affirm that “neutral States are bound to recognize the rights of belligerents engaged in actual war.”
Mr. Adams objects to Lord Russell’s reference to the magnitude of the insurrection as constituting one of the elements in the determination to accord to them belligerent rights; yet what other test can be applied? The difference between insurrection and civil war is, after all, one of degree. It is the test to which the Supreme Court itself appeals.
These are the words of a judgment (pronounced, let it be remembered, by the northern majority of the court:) “This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local, unorganized insurrection.” If it had been, it might have been proper to wait and see whether it was about to ripen into war. But in this case there was neither necessity nor justification for waiting. “For,” continues the same judgment, “however long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprang forth from the parent brain a Minerva in the full panoply of war.”
The birth of Minerva (to whom the Supreme Court happily compares the confederacy) was, no doubt, both “precipitate and unprecedented,” and her reception both by Jupiter and the rest of Olympus was agreeable to her origin. She was “presented” at once as a full-grown goddess, and it is somewhat unreasonable to complain that she was not, like ordinary illegitimate infants in arms, put out to nurse for a season.
It is difficult, indeed, to regard this question seriously, so entirely unfounded and untenable does it appear to the mind of every jurist and every man of common sense. Nevertheless, I believe that Mr. Adams is strictly accurate when he says that—
“I have dwelt at some length upon this original point of difference between the two countries, [Page 616] because it has ever appeared to me the fruitful parent of all the subsequent difficulties, the nurse of a very large share of ill feeling which I cannot deny now to prevail among my countrymen.”
I must urge the same excuse for returning at such length to a discussion which in Europe is justly considered to have been long ago exhausted. But labor is not ill spent in exposing, again and again, errors which, however obvious, are pertinaciously reproduced, and experience unhappily shows that those resentments are not seldom the most bitterly cherished in proportion as they are wholly unfounded.
This letter has grown to such length that I shall have to ask your indulgence on another occasion for some remarks on the later portion of Mr. Adams’s despatch. Your obedient servant,
Temple, October, 16.
The Alabama correspondence.
To the editor of the Times:
Sir: I do not propose to return at any length upon the question of the “precipitate” recognition of belligerent rights. There are, however, one or two matters of fact which have been misconceived in America, and which, as I have omitted to notice them, it may be well to set right.
It has been urged by American writers, and I see the charge is reiterated in England, that the argument derived from the American blockade was an after-thought, and that, whatever may be its logical validity, it did not, in fact, influence the action of the English government in their policy at the date of the proclamation of neutrality. The allegation, if it were true, would be immaterial, but in point of fact it is unfounded. Let us observe what actually occurred. The first date at which this matter came under public discussion was May 2, 1861. The question of the effect of the hostilities in America upon English trade and English shipping was naturally and appropriately brought forward in the House of Commons by the member for Liverpool. The following report of what took place on May 2 is from the Times of May 3:
“Mr. Ewart asked the secretary of state for foreign affairs whether, seeing the possibility of privateering being permitted and encouraged by the southern confederation of the States of America, her Majesty’s government had placed a sufficient naval force, or intended to increase it, in the Gulf of Mexico, with a view to protect British shipping and British property on board American ships; and if privateers sailing under the flag of an unrecognized power could be dealt with as pirates.
“Lord J. Russell said: In answer to the first part of the question of the honorable gentleman, I beg to say that her Majesty’s government has directed that a naval force for the protection of British shipping should be sent to the coast of America. As to the latter part of the question, I will state to the house that the government has from day to day received the most lamentable accounts of the progress of the war in the States of America. Her Majesty’s government heard the other day that the confederated States have issued letters of marque, and to-day we have heard that it is intended there shall be a blockade of all the ports of the south’ ern States. As to the general provisions of the law of nations on these questions, some of the points are so new, as well as so important, that they have been referred to the law officers of the Crown for their opinion, in order to guide the government in its instructions, both to the English minister in America and the commander of the naval squadron. Her Majesty’s government have felt that it was its duty to use every possible means to avoid taking any part in the lamentable contest now raging in the American States, and nothing but the imperative duty of watching British interests, in case we should be attacked, justifies our interfering. We have not been involved in that contest by any act of giving advice in the matter, and, for God’s sake, let us, if possible, keep out of it.”
Is this the language of a government which was inspired by a malignant satisfaction in the misfortunes of its neighbors, or actuated by a sinister desire to take advantage of its troubles? This conversation seems to me to establish conclusively—
1. That at that date the English government had not finally resolved on the course they were about to pursue.
2. That they were determined to be advised as to that course by the judgment of persons versed in the law of nations.
3. That the blockade instituted by the United States, and the admission therein involved on the part of the United States that an actual state of war existed, had then come to the knowledge of the English government, and formed a material element in their consideration of the course to be adopted.
4. That they were determined to act in a spirit of strict neutrality, and to avoid taking part with either side.
[Page 617]5. That the pressing necessities of the case made it urgent that immediate instructions should be given as to the attitude of the English government to the then diplomatic and naval officers abroad for the protection of their own subjects. Accordingly the advice of the law officers was taken without delay. The result of that advice was communicated to Parliament on May 6. On that day Lord J. Russell, in the House of Commons, made the following statement:
“The question has been under the consideration of the government; they have consulted the law officers of the Crown—the attorney and solicitor general and the Queen’s advocate— and the government have come to the opinion that the southern confederacy of America, according to those principles which seem to them to be just principles, must be treated as belligerents.”
It will be observed that there is here no detailed statement of the grounds of this decision; but in a speech delivered in the House of Lords in the course of the present year Lord Russell (March 23, 1865) stated that the American proclamation of blockade formed an important element in the decision thus arrived at. The anti-English writers on both sides of the Atlantic have thought fit to dispute this statement, and to treat the argument derived from the blockade as a recent invention. In this, however, they are distinctly refuted by plain facts and recorded documents. In a despatch addressed to Mr. Adams as early as August, 1861, when the topic was fresh and the discussion in its very earliest stages, Lord Russell writes to Mr. Adams, August 28, 1861:
“Her Majesty’s government, upon receiving intelligence that the President had declared by proclamation his intention to blockade nine States of the Union, and that Mr. Davis, speaking in the name of those nine States, had declared his intention to issue letters of marque and reprisal, and having also received certain information of the design of both sides to arm, had come to the conclusion that civil war existed in America, and her Majesty had therefore proclaimed her neutrality in the approaching contest.”
It is thus clear that the proclamation of blockade of the date of April 19,1861, was known to the English government on May 2, when they first submitted to the law officers the question of the course to be pursued by this country. It is equally clear that that proclamation formed an element in the advice given to the government by its legal advisers on May 6, and that it was relied on from the earliest period of the controversy as a material fact clearly justifying and calling for the action of the English government in their declaration of neutrality. I hope, after this plain statement of facts, we may hear no more of the charge that the argument derived from the blockade was only an “after-thought.”
There is another matter of fact which has been so persistently misrepresented in America that it is proper it should be set right. It has been asserted over and over again that the Confederate States had no cruisers afloat but such as were equipped in English ports, and that our recognition of them as belligerents not only recognized but created their naval force, such as it was. This statement is wholly without foundation. The Sumter and the Nashville were native southern vessels-of-war which were cruising on the high seas, and visited our ports with regular commissions at a very early stage in the contest. Besides these, the confederates had a very powerful navy which defended their own ports, and which was not the less a navy because, from motives of prudence, it did not think fit to leave the shelter of its forts. Is it to be said that the Russian government was not entitled to maritime belligerent rights in the Crimean war because its fleets were shut up in Cronstadt and Sebastopol? I should like to hear the American answer to two questions:
1. If the English government had postponed the proclamation of neutrality, and in the mean time the captain of an English man-of-war had seen the Sumter or the Nashville overhauling a British merchantman on the high seas, or a northern cruiser capturing an English vessel at the mouth of Charleston harbor, what was he to have done ?
2. If the English government had acted upon the assumption which Mr. Adams contends they ought to have made, viz: that the proclamation of blockade would not have been put in force, and had consequently forborne to warn the Queen’s subjects, in their proclamation of neutrality, to respect the blockade, what would have become of the innocent English merchantmen which, in the usual course of trade, would have continued to ply to the blockaded ports? Would they or would they not have shared the fate of the Tropic Queen ?
You justly animadvert on the absurdity of the complaint that a thing which it is not disputed must have been done at some time should have been done too soon. This sort of criticism reminds one of Mr. Fox’s censure on Mr. Burke’s conduct with respect to the French revolution, when he said “Burke was right, but he was right too soon.” I think it would have puzzled Mr. Fox to point out the exact moment at which it would have been for the first time permissible for Mr. Burke to be right. I am disposed to believe Mr. Adams would be equally embarrassed to point out the precise period of the contest at which the proclamation of neutrality would not have been “precipitate and unprecedented.” The truth is, that in matters of this magnitude those who stand afar off are in a better position to appreciate the true proportion of events than those whose vision is limited by a close proximity or distorted by interest and passion. The calm and indifferent bystander arrives by an earlier and a sounder judgment at a knowledge of that reality which a later experience alone forces on the mind of the heated and blinded partisan. The American government, not unnaturally incredulous of the enormity of the struggle in which they were engaged, believed that the [Page 618] insurrection would be put down in three months by a levy of 75,000 militia. The English government more accurately gauged the magnitude of the crisis, and they felt that they could not refuse to recognize that which all the world now admits to have been one of the greatest military contests in which the human race was ever engaged.
We do not taunt them with having been mistaken, nor do we plume ourselves upon having been in the right; but we do protest, in the name of justice and common sense, against being charged with unfriendly conduct because we were unable to partake in their error.
Temple, October 18.
[Untitled]
The safe arrival of the Shenandoah in the Mersey, after a voyage around the globe, in the course of which she has almost ruined an important branch of industry, is calculated to make us consider whether we have done wisely in sanctioning those innovations upon the rules of war, hitherto recognized among nations, which the confederate practices have introduced. This vessel, it will be remembered, bearing at the time the name of the Sea King, was purchased by confederate agents in this country. To avoid the difficulties in the way of her equipment for her new service in either British or French ports, she was sent to sea without armament, and another steamer, the Laurel, was chartered at Liverpool to take out the guns, stores, and crew intended for her service. At Madeira these were transhipped, a confederate commander declared her commissioned as a vessel-of-war, and she then set out on her career of destruction. Once at least in the course of it she came again within our power, for she was obliged to put into Melbourne for repairs and supplies. These were furnished, it is said, only to such an extent as to enable her again to put to sea, but nothing of a belligerent character was allowed to be taken on board, nor was recruiting permitted. The Shenandoah then sailed for the north Pacific, and from that period successive tidings of the havoc she wrought among the American sperm whalers have been received. It is now announced that she nas destroyed not less than thirty-seven vessels, and we ourselves reap some of the results of her ravages in an advance in the price of sperm oil from 70s. to 120s. per tun. On the 5th of August she spoke a Liverpool vessel, and then, her captain alleges, what we find it impossible to believe, he learned for the first time of the downfall of the confederacy, after which he suspended hostile operations and made direct for England. Such is the outline of her history, and it is now for the people of this country to consider the moral which is to be drawn from it in so far as it affects ourselves.
We shall not, looking at it from this point of view, discuss the question of the legitimacy of burning and destroying merchant vessels without any form of legal condemnation. But even if that practice were not open to exception, it may be defended by a very untenable argument. And such an argument is used when the confederate apologists insist that the destruction was a necessity forced upon them by the absence of any port into which the captured vessels could be brought. If this argument is sound, it establishes that a nation not merely which has its ports blockaded, but which has no ports at all, nor any access to the sea whatever, may, on the breaking out of a war, buy vessels at sea, commission them at sea, and send them forth to prey on the commerce of its adversary with all the rights belonging to a legitimate navy. On this principle, whatever petty power in the middle of Germany may choose to declare war against us may with impunity, because inaccessible itself, commission sea rovers to attack our merchantmen on every ocean. But this is nothing more than a legalization of buccaneering, the latest form of which, privateering, has been emphatically condemned by the voice of the civilized world; for it is not public war which would thus be carried on byimpromptu naval officers in extemporized war vessels. The men engaged in it would be subject to no code of regular service, and that last remedy against barbarism in warfare, the exercise of the right of reprisals, would be unavailing where there would, in the nature of the case, be neither regular fleet, nor even merchant vessels, on which reprisals could be put in force. This, then, is the position in which we shall stand in any future war, by recognition of the new doctrine that there may be a belligerent navy established at sea without a port to which it belongs, and commissioned officers where there cannot be a regular service.
Still more inconvenient, however, will be the precedent of the Shenandoah as regards our claims upon neutral nations. By receiving her at Melbourne we admitted that she had acquired belligerent rights. But she had none when she left Liverpool, and it would have been illegal to have attempted to confer them on her there. We admitted then that this illegality was evaded by the fact that what was necessary for her equipment was sent out from Liverpool in a different vessel. This at least is a new judicial doctrine on our part. In a very-similar case the House of Lords, in the year 1840, declared that when it is illegal to send out a certain class of goods in a vessel intended for a particular trade, it is equally illegal to send the vessel from this country without them, but to send them in another ship and transship them in a foreign port. Such intention of evading the law, it was held, tainted the whole proceeding with illegality, and made it impossible to ground any action for breach of contract [Page 619] upon it. But departing from this wholesome and common sense rule, our authorities have now in fact declared that, though it is a breach of neutrality to equip fully a vessel for war in our ports, it is no breach of neutrality to equip her by halves, completing the operation by junction of the halves at a distance from our shores. It cannot fail to be recognized how serious will be the consequences to us of this doctrine. In a war with Russia it will be idle for us again to close the Baltic and the Euxine with our superior fleet; our enemy may buy a dozen fast steamers at New York, despatch their armaments after them in separate vessels, effect the transshipment at sea, and then, hoisting the Russian ensign, claim recognition, on the precedent of the Shenandoah, in every American and European port as legitimate Russian men-of-war. And if Russia may do this, so also, on the principles already admitted, may every state, whether it has a seaboard and a navy or not.
Such are the perils to which our departure from the sound principle that every vessel, commissioned or non-commissioned, must have a port to belong to, and our admission that a fraudulent breach of neutrality is cured by the mere fact of its successful perpetration, expose us. It may, indeed, be hoped that some of these evils may be averted by the measures which government may see fit to take against any British subjects who have formed part of the crew of the Shenandoah. There will be no desire here for vindictive proceedings in respect of a war which has been closed, and in which the victors are only occupied in pardoning. But it is important for us that our own laws should be vindicated. It is right that all our subjects should be made to know that they cannot, at their pleasure, break with impunity through regulations which are laid down with a view to the maintenance of peace and the support of national principle. And it is necessary that we should, by thus enforcing our own municipal laws, prove to foreign peoples that these are not retained in the statute-book merely in mockery of their complaints, but that, while not only able, but anxious to employ every legal power we possess for their protection, we too may, when our need comes, have a claim upon them to put their domestic laws in force for the purpose of saving us from injury.
[From the same.]
THE SHENANDOAH.
Liverpool,Tuesday.
The Shenandoah still retains her anchorage in proximity to the Donegal, and a company of marines are in possession of the late cruiser. We yesterday stated that Captain Waddell and some other of the officers left the ship after the formal surrender, and landed at Liverpool, where they separated. To-day, however, we learn that Captain Waddell, after pledging his word of honor to Commander Fisher, R. N., of her Majesty’s ship Eagle, went ashore, and communicated with a “southern house,” after which, according to promise, he rejoined his ship. In the mean time, however, three of the crew left the ship and escaped to the Che-shire side of the Mersey. It is believed that the crew of the Shenandoah have for some time been short of provisions. A boat-load of fresh beef, vegetables, potatoes, &c., sent off by some charitable southerners, was refused permission to go alongside the Shenandoah, the officers in charge stating that a proper supply of fresh rations would be served out to the men by the Donegal. On board the Shenandoah there are about thirty-six chronometers, together with a number of sextants, cabin furniture, furs, and other articles of value, which are supposed to be part of the proceeds of Waddell’s late raids among the whalers of the arctic seas. In her hold there still remains (in fact all articles are under seal until instructions are received from government) a large quantity of ammunition, together with six shunt guns and a large swivel gun. It is not at all impossible that Within a few days the Mersey may be visited by the Sacramento or other vessels of the United States navy, under the command of Admiral Golds-worthy, whose squadron was last heard of at Toulon and Brest. The vessel is now in charge of Lieutenant Cheek, of her Majesty’s gunboat Goshawk, whom Captain Paynter has placed on board with secret instructions There are a guard of marines, a number of seamen from the Donegal, and a body of customs officers also in possession. There is on board a considerable sum of money, but Captain Waddell has no intention of using this for the ship’s purposes. He has preserved the property as that of the American government. Consequently, he and his officers and men are without pecuniary resources. Several of the crew who remain on board are down with scurvey. The communications between the government and the authorities here in reference to the Shenandoah have been, and are being, carried on by telegraph. The crew are stated to be, for the most part, smart young fellows, and to have the appearance of excellent seamen. They are of mixed nationality, several of them being apparently Americans.