merchant-ships of the United States, and to burn and destroy them until our maritime commerce was swept from the ocean. [See Mr. Cob den's speech in the House of Commons, May 13, 1864.] Our merchantvessels were destroyed piratically by captors who had no ports of their own [see Earl Russell's speech in the House of Lords, April 26, 1864] in which to refit *or to condemn prizes, and whose only [302] nationality was the quarter-deck of their ships, built, dispatched

to sea, and, not seldom in name, still professedly owned in Great Britain. [See the evidence in regard to the transfers of the Georgia, and of the Shenandoah.]

"The Queen's Ministers excused themselves by alleged defects in the municipal law of the country. [See Earl Russell's constant pleas of want of sufficient proof to convict criminals] Learned counsel either advised that the wrongs committed did not constitute violations of the municipal law, or else gave sanction to artful devices of deceit to cover up such violations of law. [See the decision as to the Florida; as to the Alabama until she was ready to sail; as to the rams; and as to the oper ations at Nassau, Bermuda, and Liverpool.] And, strange to say, the courts of England or of Scotland, up to the very highest, were occupied month after month with juridical niceties and technicalities of statute construction in this respect, [see the Alexandra case,] while the Queen's Government itself, including the omnipotent Parliament, which might have settled these questions in an hour by appropriate legislation, sat with folded arms, as if unmindful of its international obligations, and suffered ship after ship to be constructed in its ports to wage [303] war on the United States. [See the decision of the Cabinet, communicated to Mr. Adams, February 13, 1863, and Lord Palmerston's speech in the House of Commons, March 27, 1863.]

"When the defects of the existing laws of Parliament had become apparent, the Government of the United States earnestly entreated the Queen's Ministers to provide the required remedy, as it would have been easy to do, by a proper act of Parliament; but this the Queen's Government refused. [See the account of Lord Russell's interview with Mr. Adams, February 13, 1863.]

"On the present occasion, the Queen's Ministers seem to have committed the error of assuming that they needed not to look beyond their own local law, enacted for their own domestic convenience, and might, under cover of the deficiencies of that law, disregard their sovereign duties toward another Sovereign Power. Nor was it, in our judgment, any adequate excuse for the Queen's Ministers to profess extreine tenderness of private rights, or apprehension of actions for damages, in case of any attempt to arrest the many ships which, either in England or Scotland, were, with ostentatious publicity, being constructed to cruise against the United States. [See the evidence as to the [304] Florida, the Georgia, the Alabama, the rams, the Bermuda, the Tallahassee, the Pampero, the Rappahannock, the Laurel, and other vessels.]

"But although such acts of violation of law were frequent in Great Britain, and susceptible of complete technical proof, notorious, flaunted directly in the face of the world, varnished over, if at all, with the shallowest pretexts of deception, yet no efficient step appears to have been taken by the British Government to enforce the execution of its municipal laws or to vindicate the majesty of its outraged sovereign power.

[The Alabama, the Florida, the Georgia, and the Shenandoah escaped. The rams were seized, but never condemned; no guilty party was ever punished; Bullock and Prioleau were never interfered with.]

"And the Government of the United States cannot believe-it would conceive itself wanting in respect for Great Britain to impute-that the Queen's Ministers are so much hampered by juridical difficulties that the local administration is thus reduced to such a state of legal impotency as to deprive the Government of capacity to uphold its sovereignty against local wrong-doers, or its neutrality as regards other Sover

eign Powers. [Contrast with this the course of the British Gov[305] *ernment and Parliament during the Franco-German war.]

"If, indeed, it were so, the causes of reclamation on the part of the United States would only be the more positive and sure, for the law of nations assumes that each Government is capable of discharging its international obligations; and, perchance, if it be not, then the absence of such capability is itself a specific ground of responsibility for consequences. [This statement probably will not be denied.]

"But the Queen's Government would not be content to admit, nor will the Government of the United States presume to impute to it, such political organization of the British Empire as to imply any want of legal ability on its part to discharge, in the amplest manner, all its duties of sovereignty and amity toward other Powers.

"It remains only in this relation to refer to one other point, namely, the question of negligence; neglect on the part of officers of the British Government, whether superior or subordinate, to detain Confederate cruisers, and especially the Alabama, the most successful of the depredators on the commerce of the United States.

"On this point the President conceives that little needs now to be said, for various cogent reasons:

[306] *"First, the matter has been exhaustively discussed already by this Department, or by the successive American Ministers. "Then, if the question of negligence be discussed with frankness, it must be treated in this instance as a case of extreme negligence, which Sir William Jones has taught us to regard as equivalent or approximate to evil intention. The question of negligence, therefore, cannot be presented without danger of thought or language disrespectful toward the Queen's Ministers; and the President, while purposing, of course, as his sense of duty requires, to sustain the rights of the United States in all their utmost amplitude, yet intends to speak and act in relation to Great Britain in the same spirit of international respect which he expects of her in relation to the United States, and he is sincerely desirous that all discussions between the Governments may be so conducted as not only to prevent any aggravation of existing differences, but to tend to such reasonable and amicable determination as best becomes two great nations of common origin and conscious dignity and strength.

"I assume, therefore, pretermitting detailed discussion in this respect, that the negligence of the officers of the British Government in [307] the matter of the Alabama, at least, was gross and inexcusable,

and such as indisputably to devolve on that Government full responsibility for all the depredations committed by her. Indeed, this conclusion seems in effect to be conceded in Great Britain. [See the preface to Earl Russell's Speeches and Dispatches.] At all events, the United States conceive that the proofs of responsible negligence in this matter are so clear that no room remains for debate on that point, and it should be taken for granted in all future negotiations with Great Britain."

WHEREIN GREAT BRITAIN FAILED TO PERFORM ITS DUTIES AS A NEUTRAL.-THE INSURGENT CRUISERS.

"In the first place, I am sorry to observe that the unwarrantable practice of building ships in this country, to be used as vessels of war against a State with which Her Majesty is at peace, still continues. Her Majesty's Government had hoped that this attempt to make the territorial waters of Great Britain the place of preparation for warlike armaments against the United States might be put an end to by prosecutions and by seizure of the vessels built in pursuance of contracts made with the Confederate agents. But facts which are unhappily too notorious, and correspondence which has been put into the hands of Her Majesty's Government by the Minister of the Government of the United States, show that resort is had to evasion and subtlety in order to escape the penalties of the law; that a vessel is bought in one place, that her armament is prepared in another, and that both are sent to some distant port beyond Her Majesty's jurisdiction, and that thus an armed steamship is fitted out to cruise against the commerce of a Power in amity with Her Majesty. A crew, composed partly of British subjects, is procured separately; wages are paid to them for an unknown service. They are dispatched, perhaps, to the coast of France, and there, or elsewhere, are engaged to serve in a Confederate man-of-war.

"Now, it is very possible that by such shifts and stratagems, the penalties of the existing law of this country, nay, of any law that could be enacted, may be evaded; but the offense thus offered to Her Majesty's authority and dignity by the de facto rulers of the Confederate States, whom Her Majesty acknowledges as belligerents, and whose agents in the United Kingdom enjoy the benefit of our hospitality in quiet security, remains the same. It is a proceeding totally unjustifiable, and manifestly offensive to the British Crown."-Earl Russell's Letter to Messrs. Mason, Slidell, and Mann, February 13, 1865. Vol. I, page 630.

which the United

unwarranted to

The Tribunal of Arbitration will probably agree with Earl Rus[310] sell in his statement to the insurgent agents, that Earl Russell de "the practice of building ships" in Great Britain "to nonces the acts of be used as vessels of war" against the United States, and States complain as the "attempts to make the territorial waters of Great Brit- tally unjustifiable. ain the place of preparation for warlike armaments against the United States" "in pursuance of contracts made with the Confederate agents," were unwarrantable" and "totally unjustifiable."

British territory

val operations of the

British territory was, during the whole struggle, the base of the na val operations of the insurgents. The first serious fight had scarcely taken place before the contracts were made the base of the n in Great Britain for the Alabama and the Florida. The insurgents. contest was nearly over when Waddell received his orders in Liverpool to sail thence in the Laurel in order to take command of the Shenandoah and to visit the Arctic Ocean on a hostile cruise.1

Their arsenal.

There also was the arsenal of the insurgents, from whence they drew their munitions of war, their arms, and their supplies. It is true that it has been said, and may again be said, that it was no infraction of the law of nations to furnish such supplies. But, while it is not maintained that belligerents may infringe upon the rights which neutrals have to manufacture and deal in such military supplies

in the ordinary course of commerce, it is asserted with confidence [311] that a neutral *ought not to permit a belligerent to use the neu

tral soil as the main if not the only base of its military supplies, during a long and bloody contest, as the soil of Great Britain was used by the insurgents.

1 Vol. III, page 461.

The systematic operations of the insurgents a violation of the duties of a neutral.

It may not always be easy to determine what is and what is not lawful commerce in arms and munitions of war; but the United States conceive that there can be no doubt on which side of the line to place the insurgent operations on British territory. If Huse had been removed from Liverpool, Heyliger from Nassau, and Walker from Bermuda; or if Fraser, Trenholm & Co. had ceased to sell insurgent cotton and to convert it into money for the use of Huse, Heyliger, and Walker, the armies of the insurgents must have succumbed. The systematic operations of these persons, carried on openly and under the avowed protection of the British Goveenment, made of British territory the "arsenal" of which Mr. Fish complained in his note of September 25, 1869.1 Such conduct was, to

say the least, wanting in the essentials of good neighborhood and should be frowned upon by all who desire to so establish the principles of International Law, as to secure the peace of the world, while protecting the independence of nations.

It is in vain to say that both parties could have *done the same [312] thing. The United States were under no such necessity. If they could not manufacture at home all the supplies they needed, they were enabled to make their purchases abroad openly, and to transport them. in the ordinary course of commerce. It was the insurgents who, unable to manufacture at home, were driven to England for their entire military supplies, and who, finding it impossible to transport those supplies in the ordinary course of commerce, originated a commerce for the purpose, and covered it under the British flag to Bermuda and Nassau. Under the pressure of the naval power of the United States, their necessities compelled them to transport to England a part of the executive of their Government, and to carry on its operation in Great Britain. They were protected in doing this by Her Majesty's Government, although its attention was called to the injustice thereof. This conduct deprived the United States of the benefit of their superiority at sea, and to that extent British neutrality was partial and insincere. The United States confidently submit to the Tribunal of Arbitration that it is an abuse of a sound principle to extend to such combined transactions as those of Huse, Heyliger, Walker, and Fraser, Trenholm & Co., the well-settled right of a neutral to manufacture and *sell [313] to either belligerent, during a war, arms, munitions, and military supplies. To sanction such an extension will be to lay the foundation for international misunderstanding and probable war, whenever a weaker party hereafter may draw upon the resources of a strong neutral, in its efforts to make its strength equal to that of its antagonist. From the Queen's Proclamation of neutrality to the close of the struggle, Great Britain framed its rules, construed its laws ity for the ansur and its instructions, and governed its conduct in the interest of the insurgents. What could tend more to inspirit them than the news that on the eve of Mr. Adams's arrival in London, as if to show in the most public manner a purpose to overlook him, and to disregard the views which he might have been instructed by his Government to present, it had been determined to recognize their right to display on the ocean a flag which had not then a ship to carry it? How they must have welcomed the parliamentary news,3 on the heels of this proclamation, that the effect of this recognition would be to employ British subjects in warring upon the commerce of the United

Continuing partial

gents,