Mr. Cushing, Attorney-General, to Mr. Van Dyke, United States attorney, Philadelphia.
September 12, 1855.
Sir: In reply to your letter of the 10th instant, on the subject of the indictments pending against persons charged with recruiting for the military service of Great Britain, I have the honor to make the following observations:
Mr. McKeon has been advised of the desirableness of conferring “with you personally, either by himself or his assistant, in regard to new *evidence, to which he may have access, and which can be useful to you. [224]
I suggest the propriety of trying only a part of the cases now, especially if you fail to convict in some leading case. But the most important consideration is this:
This Government has, of course, addressed to that of Great Britain such demands of public redress and satisfaction in the premises as the national honor requires. But the government of Great Britain, with extraordinary inattention to the grave aspect of its acts, namely, the flagrant violation of our sovereign rights involved in them, has supposed it a sufficient justification of what it has done to reply that it gave instructions to its agents so to proceed as not to infringe our municipal laws, and it quotes the remarks of Judge Kane in support of the idea that it has succeeded in this purpose. It may be so. Judge Kane is an upright and intelligent judge, and will pronounce the law as it is, without fear or favor. But if the British government has, by ingenious contrivances, succeeded in sheltering its agents from conviction as malefactors, it has, in so doing, doubled the magnitude of the national wrong inflicted on the United States.
[225] *This Government has done its duty of internal administration in prosecuting the individuals engaged in these acts. If they are acquitted by reason of a deliberate undertaking of the British government, not only to violate, as a nation, our sovereign rights as a nation, but also to evade our municipal laws, and that undertaking shall be consummated by its agents in the United States; when all this shall have been judicially ascertained the President will then have before him the elements of decision as to what international action it becomes the United States to adopt in so important a matter.
I am, very respectfullv,
James C. Van Dyke, Esq.,
United States Attorney, Philadelphia.