No. 26. The law-officers of the Crown to Earl Russell. cers. LINCOLN'S INN, April 21, 1865. (Received April 22.) MY LORD: We are honored with your lordship's commands signified in Mr. Murray's letter of the 18th instant, stating that he Opinion of law-offwas directed by your lordship to transmit to us a letter from the colonial office, inclosing copies of dispatches from Governor Sir C. Darling, together with their several inclosures, relative to the visit to the port of Melbourne of the Confederate States steamer Shenandoah and the alleged enlistment of British subjects there to serve on board that vessel, and to request that we would take these papers into our consideration and favor your lordship with any observations we might have to offer thereupon, and more particularly as to whether they seem to require any action on the part of Her Majesty's government. In obedience to your lordship's commands, we have taken these papers into our consideration, and have the honor to report— That it appears to us that, in the circumstances stated, his excellency the governor acted with propriety and discretion, and there does not appear to us, at present, to be a necessity for any action on the part of Her Majesty's government. As to enforce a w.rrant on board a confederate ship of War. With respect to his excellency's request that he may receive instructions as to the propriety of executing any warrant under the foreign-enlistment act on board a confederate (public) ship of war, we are of opinion that, in a case of strong suspicion, he ought to request the permission of the commander of the ship to execute the warrant; and that, if this request be refused, he ought not attempt to enforce the execution; but that, in this case, the commander should be desired to leave the port as speedily as possible, and should be informed that he will not be re-admitted into it. We have, &c., ROUNDELL PALMER. ROBERT PHILLIMORE. No. 27. Mr. Murray to Mr. Elliot. FOREIGN OFFICE, April 22, 1865. SIR: I have laid before Earl Russell your letter of the 17th instant, with its inclosures, relative to the proceedings of Governor Sir Charles Darling on the occasion of the visit of the Shenandoah to Melbourne; and I am now directed by his lordship to transmit to you, to be laid before Mr. Secretary Cardwell, a copy of the opinion which, in accordance with Lord Russell's desire, the law-officers of the Crown have given respecting the governor's proceedings. I am, &c., JAMES MURRAY. 1 No. 25. [559] Reply to Mr. tions. * No. 28. Earl Russell to Mr. Adams. FOREIGN OFFICE, May 4, 1865. SIR: I have had the honor to receive your note of the 7th of April, for warding a copy of a letter addressed by the consul of the Adanis's representa United States at Rio de Janeiro to his Government upon the proceedings of a vessel called the Sea King, or Shenan doab, which vessel you state has since been heard of at Melbourne, whence details have been received of outrages committed by her on the commerce of the United States. You then proceed to say: "Were there any reasons to believe that the operations carried on in the ports of Her Majesty's kingdom and its dependencies to maintain and extend this systematic depredation upon the commerce of a friendly people had been materially relaxed or prevented,” you would not have had to announce to me "the fact that your Government cannot avoid entailing upon the government of Great Britain the responsibility for this damage." A British steamer, the City of Richmond, is next alluded to as having been allowed to take supplies from the port of London and to place them on board a French-built steam-ram, known as the Stonewall, and you found upon the circumstances to which you have thus alluded a charge against Great Britain of not only not checking improper depre dations on United States commerce, but of aiming at the destruction of the whole mercantile navigation belonging to the people of the United States; and while giving credit to Her Majesty's government for endeav oring to check illicit proceedings of British subjects, you allege that the measures adopted in this respect by Her Majesty's government have never proved effective, and that the evil of which you complain has its origin in the fact that Her Majesty's government recognized the persons in arms against the United States as belligerents, and thereby im properly gave them a status which has led to a long continuance of hostilities; but as the ports held by them have fallen into the power of the United States, the President looked with confidence to a removal by Her Majesty's government of this ground of complaint. You conclude by expressing a hope that the ships of war of the United States will be welcomed in British waters in the same friendly manner as has been heretofore customary. Allow me to observe, in the first place, that I can never admit that the duties of Great Britain toward the United States are to be measured by the losses which the trade and commerce of the United States may have sustained. The question is not what losses the United States have sustained by the war, but whether in difficult and extraordinary circumstances the government of Her Majesty have performed faithfully and honestly the duties which international law and their own municipal law imposed upon them. Let me remind you that when the civil war in America broke out so suddenly, so violently, and so extensively, that event, in the preparation of which Great Britain had no share, caused nothing but detriment and injury to Her Majesty's subjects. Great Britain had previously carried on a large commerce with the Southern States of the Union, and had procured there the staple which furnished materials for the industry of inillions of her people. Had there been no war the existing treaties with the United States would have secured the continuance of a commerce mutually advantageous and desirable. But what was the first act of the President of the United States? He proclaimed, on the 19th of April, 1861, the blockade of the ports of seven States of the Union. But he could lawfully interrupt the trade of neutrals with the Southern States upon one ground only, namely, that the Southern States were carrying on war against the Government of the United States; in other words, that they were belligerents. Her Majesty's government, on hearing of these events, had only two courses to pursue, namely, that of acknowledging the blockade and proclaiming the neutrality of Her Majesty, or that of refusing to acknowledging the blockade and insisting upon the rights of Her Majesty's subjects to trade with the ports of the South. Her Majesty's government pursued the former course as at once the most just and the most friendly to the United States. It is obvious, indeed, that the course of treating the vessels of the Southern States as piratical vessels and their crews as pirates would have been to renounce the character of neutrals and to take part in the war. Nay, it would have been doing more than the United States themselves, who have never treated the prisoners they have made, either by land or sea, as rebels and pirates, but as prisoners of war, to be detained until regularly exchanged. So much as to the step which you say your Government can never regard" as otherwise than precipitate," of acknowledging the Southern States as belligerents. [560] *It was, on the contrary, your own Government which, in assuming the belligerent right of blockade, recognized the Southern States as belligerents. Had they not been belligerents, the armed ships of the United States would have had no right to stop a single British ship upon the high seas. The next complaint (often repeated, I must admit) is that vessels built in British ports, and afterwards equipped with an armament sent from the British coast, have injured and, according to your account, almost destroyed the mercantile marine of the United States. Now, the only question that can be put on this subject is whether Great Britain has performed faithfully the duties incumbent upon her. I must here ask you to recollect that our foreign-enlistment' act, as well as your foreign-enlistment act, requires proof that the vessel has been or is about to be equipped or armed within our dominions for the purpose of assisting a state or a body of men making war on a state in amity with Her Majesty. In the case of the Alabama, which is always referred to as affording the strongest ground of complaint against Her Majesty's government, the papers affording evidence of a design to equip the ship for the confederate service were furnished to me by you on the 22d, and more completely on the 24th of July, 1862. They were reported upon by the law-officers on the 29th of that month. But on that very morning the Alabama was taken to sea on the false pretense of a trialship. I contend that in that case, as in all others, Her Majesty's government faithfully performed their obligations as neutrals. It must be recollected that the foreign-enlistment act, though passed in the year of 1819, has never been actually put in force, and that it is still doubtful whether the evidence furnished by you on the 22d and 24th of July, though it was deemed a sufficient ground for detaining the Alabama, would have been found sufficient to procure a conviction from a jury, or even a charge in favor of condemnation of the vessel from a judge. Again, I repeat, the whole question resolves itself into this: Whether the British government faithfully and conscientiously performed their duties as neutrals, or whether they, from any motives whatever, were guilty of a grave neglect of those duties. Upon this point it might be sufficient for me to appeal to the unprejudiced judgment formed and expressed at the time by Mr. Seward, after every material fact had been communicated to him by your dispatches of the 25th and 31st of July, and the 1st of August, 1862. Writing to yourself on the 13th of August, 1862, he expressed the President's approval of the action which you had taken with respect to the Oreto and the Alabama, (then called No. 290;) and added, "You will on proper occasion make known to Earl Russell the satisfaction which the Presi dent has derived from the just and friendly proceedings and language of the British government in regard to these subjects." In maintaining these views of our duties, I have the satisfaction of thinking that Her Majesty's government are supported by some of the highest authorities of the United States. In 1815 a correspondence began between the ministers representing Spain and Portugal and the United States Government respecting the practice of fitting out priva teers in the port of the United States, and putting them under a foreign flag, and cruising against Spanish commerce. In January, 1817, Señor Onis, Spanish minister at Washington, says: of It is notorious that although the speculative system of fitting out privateers and putting them under a foreign flag, once disavowed by all nations, for the purpose destroying the Spanish commerce, has been more or less pursued in all the ports of the Union, it is more especially to those of New Orleans and Baltimore, where the greatest violations of the respect due to a friendly nation, and, if I may say so, of that due to themselves, have been committed; whole squadrons of pirates having been sent out from thence in violation of the solemn treaty existing between the two nations, and bringing back to them the fruits of their piracy, without being yet checked in these courses, either by the reclamations I have made, those of Her Majesty's consuls, or the decisive and judicious orders issued by the President for that purpose. It does not appear that any compensation was ever made for any of these seizures. But the remonstrances of Portugal are still more applicable. On the 8th of March, 1818, Senhor T. Correa de Serra brought to the knowledge of the United States Government the case of three Portuguese ships which had been captured by privateers fitted out in the United States, manned by American crews, and commanded by American cap tains, though under insurgent colors, and he demanded satisfaction and indemnification for the injury which had been done to Portuguese sub jects, as well as to the insult which had been offered to the [561] Portuguese flag. To this letter the *American Secretary of State, after reciting the complaint of the Portuguese minister, replies as follows: "The Government of the United States having used all the means in its power to prevent the fitting out and arming of vessels in their ports to cruise against any nation with whom they are at peace, and having faithfully carried into execution the laws enacted to preserve inviolate the neutral and pacific obligations of this Union, cannot consider itself bound to indemnify individual foreigners for losses by capture over which the United States have neither control or jurisdiction. For such events no nation can in principle, nor does in prac tice, hold itself responsible." The Secretary of State who signed this dispatch bore a name most honorably known in the annals of the United States-the name of Adams. The remaining events to be noticed in the history of the answer given by the United States to the complaints of Portugal during the wars of 1 Papers presented to Congress December, 1862, Nos. 126, 199, 201, and 323. South America, and by Great Britain to the United States in the present war, may be recorded without any fear of comparison on the part of the government of Her Majesty. On the 20th April, 1818, the amended act known as the "American foreign-enlistment act" was passed. On the 24th of November of that year, the Portuguese minister, being asked by Mr. Adams to "furnish a list of the names of the persons chargeable with a violation of the laws of the United States, in fitting out and arming a vessel within the United States for the purpose of cruising against the subjects of his sovereign, and of the witnesses by whose testimony the charge could be substantiated,” replied to the following effect: He had found, with sorrow, multiplied proofs that many of the armed ships which had committed depredations on the property of Portuguese subjects were owned by citizens of the United States, had been fitted in ports of the Union, and had entered, in several ports of the Union, captured ships and cargoes by unlawful means. Many of these citizens of the United States had the misfortune of believing that they did a meritorious action in supporting foreign insurrections, and offered great difficulties in the way of every prosecution instituted by a foreign minister. Prosecutions were ordered by the Government of the United States, but did not appear to have had much effect in checking the depredations complained of. In March, 1819, the Portuguese minister alleges that, in contrast to the Spanish insurgents who had ports and a long line of coast at their disposal, Artigas, the chief whose flag was borne by United States privateers, was wandering with his followers in the mountains of Corrientes. The "Artigan flag," he continues, "which has not a foot-length of sea-shore in South America where it can show itself, is frequently waving in the port of Baltimore. Artigan cockades were frequently met with in that city, in the hats of American citizens unworthy of that name." In another note, dated the 23d of November, 1819, the Portuguese minister says: "I do justice to and am grateful for the proceedings of the Executive in order to put a stop to these depredations, but the evil is rather increasing. I can present to you, if required, a list of fifty Portuguese ships, almost all richly laden, some of them East Indiamen, which have been taken by these people during the period of full peace. This is not the whole loss we have sustained, this list comprehending only those captures of which I have received official complaints. The victims have been many more, besides violations of territory by landing and plundering ashore with shocking circumstances. "One city alone on this coast," he says, "has armed twenty-six ships, which prey on our vitals, and a week ago three armed ships of this nature were in that port, waiting for a favorable occasion of sailing for a cruise." In July, 1820, the Portuguese minister proposed that the United States should appoint commissioners to confer and agree with commissioners. of the Queen of Portugal in what reason and justice might demand. But Mr. Adams again says that, for wrongs committed in the United States territory, Portuguese subjects have a remedy in the courts of justice, but "for any acts of the citizens of the United States, committed out of their jurisdiction and beyond their control, the Government of the United States is not responsible." To this most just principle, which was again referred to by Mr. Secretary Clayton, and maintained against the government of Portugal to |