As to the blockade, you will say that by [the] our own laws [of nature] and the laws of nature and the laws of nations this government has a clear right to suppress insurrection. An exclusion of commerce from national ports which have been seized by the insurgents, in the equitable form of blockade, is the proper means to that end. You will [admit] not insist that our blockade is [not] to be respected if it be not maintained by a competent force; but passing by that question as not now a practical, or at least an urgent, one, you will add that [it] the blockade is now and it will continue to be so maintained, and therefore we expect it to be respected by Great Britain. You will add that we have already revoked the exequatur of a Russian consul who had enlisted in the military service of the insurgents, and we shall dismiss or demand the recall of every foreign agent, consular or diplomatic, who shall either disobey the Federal laws or disown the Federal authority. As to the recognition of the so-called Southern Confederacy it is not to be made a subject of technical definition. It is, of course, [quasi] direct recognition to publish an acknowledgment of the sovereignty and independence of a new power. It is [quasi] direct recognition to receive its ambassadors, ministers, agents, or commissioners officially. A concession of belligerent rights is liable to be construed as a recognition of them. No one of these proceedings will [be borne] pass [unnoticed] unquestioned by the United States in this case. Hitherto recognition has been moved only on the assumption that the so-called Confederate States are de facto a self-sustaining power. Now, after long forbearance, designed to soothe discontent and avert the need of civil war, the land and naval forces of the United States have been put in motion to repress the insurrection. The true character of the pretended new State is at once revealed. It is seen to be a power existing in pronunciamento only. It has never won a field. It has obtained no forts that were not virtually betrayed into its hands or seized in breach of trust. It commands not a single port on the coast nor any highway out from its pretended capital by land. Under these circumstances Great Britain is called upon to intervene and give it body and independence by resisting our measures of suppression. British recognition would be British intervention to create within our own territory a hostile state by overthrowing this republic itself. [When this act of intervention is distinctly performed, we from that hour shall cease to be friends, and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain.] As to the treatment of privateers in the insurgent service, you will say that this is a question exclusively our own. We treat them as pirates. They are our own citizens, or persons employed by our citizens, preying on the commerce of our country. If Great Britain shall choose to recognize them as lawful belligerents, and give them shelter from our pursuit and punishment, the laws of nations afford an adequate and proper remedy [and we shall avail ourselves of it. And while you need not to say this in advance, be sure that you say nothing inconsistent with it.] Happily, however, her Britannic Majesty's government can avoid all these difficulties. It invited us in 1856 to accede to the declaration of the Congress of Paris, of which body Great Britain was herself a member, abolishing privateering everywhere in all cases and forever. You already have our authority to propose to her our accession to that declaration. If she refuse to receive it, it can only be because she is willing to become the patron of privateering when aimed at our devastation. These positions are not elaborately defended now, because to vindicate them would imply a possibility of our waiving them. We are not insensible of the grave importance of this occasion. We see how, upon the result of the debate in which we are engaged, a war may ensue between the United States and one, two, or even more European nations. War in any case is as exceptionable from the habits as it is revolting from the sentiments of the American people. But if it come, it will be fully seen that it results from the action of Great Britain, not our own; that Great Britain will have decided to fraternize with our domestic enemy, either ART WRIT. ENG.-13 Leave out. Drop all from this line to the end, and in lieu of it write, "This paper is for your own guidance only, and not [sic] to be read or shown to anyone." without waiting to hear from you our remonstrances and our warnings, or after having heard them. War in defense of national life is not immoral, and war in defense of independence is an inevitable part of the discipline of nations. The dispute will be between the European and the American branches of the British race. All who belong to that race will especially deprecate it, as they ought. It may well be believed that men of every race and kindred will deplore it. A war not unlike it between the same parties occurred at the close of the last century. Europe atoned by forty years of suffering for the error that Great Britain committed in provoking that contest. If that nation shall now repeat the same great error, the social convulsions which will follow may not be so long, but they will be more general. When they shall have ceased, it will, we think, be seen, whatever may have been the fortunes of other nations, that it is not the United States that will have come out of them with its precious Constitution altered or its honestly obtained dominion in any degree abridged. Great Britain has but to wait a few months and all her present inconveniences will cease with all our own troubles. If she take a different course, she will calculate for herself the ultimate as well as the immediate consequences, and will consider what position she will hold when she shall have forever lost the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim. In making that calculation she will do well to remember that in the controversy she proposes to open we shall be actuated by neither pride, nor passion, nor cupidity, nor ambition; but we shall stand simply on the principle of self-preservation, and that our cause will involve the independence of nations and the rights of human nature. I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, Charles Francis Adams, Esq., etc., etc., etc. 8. Study the different versions of the last paragraph of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. They are printed in Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History, Vol. III, pp. 343-344. 9. Notice the ways in which writers acknowledge indebtedness. Some do it as a part of the act of writing, specifying the indebtedness incidentally in the text, some prefer footnotes, others try to make every acknowledgment in the preface, and still others print lists of sources at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book. No one method is best. The matter of importance is that acknowledgment should be made in some way, honestly and cheerfully. CHAPTER VI-EFFECTIVENESS IN COMPOSITION WHEN a writer has written, how is he to measure his success? Is his own opinion to be accepted, regardless of the impression he makes on his reader? Or is the reader's opinion to be taken as final? Or is there some fixed standard of workmanship by which every piece of writing can be judged? We have only to realize that writing is fundamentally communication, in order to see that success cannot be measured in any single, detached way. In every instance there is something which some one is saying to somebody in some manner. For one to affirm, "My writing is clear, because it is clear to me," or " Because I am interested in this, it must be interesting," is just as absurd as for a man who is talking through a telephone to decide for himself that he is speaking distinctly. The person " at the other end" in either case must be considered. Similarly it is impossible for any reader to determine whether a writer has expressed himself with complete accuracy and perfect fidelity to his artistic ideals. Very often readers have been satisfied when the writer could not be, or readers have demanded what the writer could not sincerely give. Finally, it is difficult to see how any particular piece of writing-an editorial, a short story, or an essay can be judged effective in itself and by itself, since, in spite of all the speculations of the critics, truth and interest and beauty must remain relative. They are too personal ever to be absolute. The fact is, then, that there can be no sound testing of a writer's product which does not take into account the other factors in communication besides the writer; namely, the material, the reader, and the form. I. THE WRITER AND THE MATERIAL The first test has to do with the writer and his material. It is assumed, of course, that before he attempted to write he had |