The diplomatic correspondence of the American minister with his government at this period is full of language like the above on the part of Mr. Adams. How, in view of it, (and of course he has at some time read it,) Historicus can assert that Mr. Adams neither felt aggrieved nor had a right to feel aggrieved at the haste with which the British government acted-how can he still more dogmatically assert, as he does at the earlier point of his article already noticed, "that nothing has ever so much astonished him as to find that on either side of the Atlantic any man of ordinary intelligence and education should be capable of advancing or entertaining for an instant such a complaint as that of the premature concession of belligerent rights to the South by Great Britain"-is to me not less a matter of mystery than of regret.

Mr. Adams is certainly a person of "ordinary intelligence and education," even by Historicus's own showing. Does not he complain of it? And has he not continued to complain of it-earnestly and persistently-down to the present moment of his official connection with the British government? Has not Historicus himself devoted a long forensic of three columns of the Times, as recently ago as last December, to proving that President Lincoln and his advisers, Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, were in the wrong in adhering to this error-"querulous complaint" he called it-for three years and upwards, because the Artigas precedent of the American government made against it? Have these eminent persons-(alas! that the great and good President, who so amply filled out the perfect character of a Christian ruler in loving mercy, dealing justly, and walking humbly before his God," is no longer with us to be quoted as a living authority, and that our sagacious, patriotic, and peace-seeking Secretary of State will perhaps have been maimed for future usefulness by the assassin's knife!*) -have the survivors of these eminent persons neither education nor intelligence to entitle them to a moment's mention?

I need not refer to other Americans, official or unofficial, who have shared and still continue to share in this "querulous complaint;" for if Historicus has never taken note of the acknowledged mouth-pieces of the American government, its President, its Secretary of State, and its minister to England, neither will he listen though I should produce the whole American people in testimony against him.

My only mystery is, how any one, even a correspondent of the London Times of three years' standing, should have the hardihood to throw out such bold and unwarranted misstatements as the above, supposing the object even to be the annihilation of an opponent as odious as Mr. Bright. My regret is, that one whose influence with Englishmen has hitherto been so deservedly potent in many particulars should run the risk of having it so largely impaired for the future by having any one examine and verify the reckless assertions and the unfounded reasoning which make up the staple of this late communication.

The last observation which I shall have to make upon Historicus's paper relates rather to its general tone, and the strain with which he rounds its swelling peroration, than to any distinct assertion of fact or enunciation of a proposition of law. It seems worth while to notice this tone or strain, because several eminent Englishmen, who have taken a prominent part of late in parliamentary discussions upon American affairs, and particularly the attorney general, Sir Roundell Palmer, whom Historicus on the present occasion seems to be imitating, have fallen into a habit of wondering at American "irritation" when things are said or done which are (erroneously) alleged by the speaker to be said or done after American fashion, and then attempting to soothe the so-called irritation by applying to it what may be called an American blister. Thus the attorney general wonders at our irritation at the English government's following American precedents of neutrality, he all the while misquoting or misapplying those precedents, and assuming a better aquaintance with them than he is willing to allow to the Americans themselves.

On the present occasion, Historicus is attempting to soothe our "irritation" at the hasty recognition of rebel belligerency a matter which, considering how hardly it has pressed upon us in vital particulars for the last four years, I think the world must give ns credit for having borne with at least tolerable equanimity-with the following international blister.

Says Historicus:

** #

"I am too well aware of the unhappy irritation which exists on the subject [of recognition of the rebels] in the public mind of America not to desire to offer the smallest contribution toward its removal." **"Unhappily, there are too many persons on both sides of the Atlantic who indulge themselves in the wicked and dangerous amusement of inflaming passions which they ought to soothe." "My ambition is of quite another sort. I desire, by a recourse to those fixed and ascertained principles of law and maxims of justice which are enshrined in the records of nations and the conscience of mankind as the perpetual arbiters of truth and of peace, to remonstrate against an unreasonable anger and an unjust animosity. Surely, sir, these evil tongues,

Since the publication of this last allusion, though not until within two days past, it will have rejoiced my American readers to see Mr. Secretary Seward's name again attached to American state

papers.

which are like a sharp sword, may rest sated with the blood which they have helped to [make?] flow. Sat prata biberunt."

All of which I venture to call the quintessence of cant; only equalled by Lord Russell's declaring to his envoy at the American seat of government, Lord Lyons, on the 6th day of May, 1861, how deeply he deplored the disruption of the American republic, and that no expression of regret you may employ at the present deplorable state of affairs will too strongly declare the feelings with which her Majesty's government contemplate all the evils which cannot fail to result from it;" and yet leading off to the world (the tidings of the attack on Sumter being then less than ten days old) with the announcement that "the late Union" has separated into distinct confederacies," and, "the government of the southern portion (having) duly constituted itself," her Majesty's government "feel that they cannot question the right of the southern States to claim to be recognized as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent" and "her Majesty's government do not wish you to make any mystery of that [this] view!" That is, "the civil war," as he calls it, having so far lasted ten days, he instructs his envoy "to make no mystery" of telling the government to which he is accredited that its supremacy has gone to pieces, and that he shall henceforth consider himself minister plenipotentiary to "the late Union!"

Great affection, that, for the ally "with whom her Majesty's government have at all times sought to cultivate the most friendly relations!" And quite of a piece with that friendly declaration made by the same organ of her Majesty's government in the House of Lords, as lately as April 29th, 1864, when he said, "for my part, I have never been able to feel much sympathy with either of the contending republics, the United States or the Confederate States!"-very much in the sense in which the affectionate wife looked on to see her husband grappling with the bear, coolly remarking that she did not care a straw which beat.

But Historicus feels bound to denounce those who make an amusement" of saying irritating things, and desires to enter his protest against "an unreasonable anger." If he had felt bound to denounce those who make a business of saying irritating things, one would think that he must have hit hard at his great political exemplar and leader, the foreign secretary. At any rate, one would think that it would be hard to find a better illustration of irritating, either on principle or else for amusement, than is furnished by this letter of Earl Russell to the British envoy at Washington of May 6th. Of course, as Historicus would have us believe, the foreign secretary could not have meant to say anything irritating by that little piece of diplomatic effrontery and unfriendliness! Of course, it would have been a very "unreasonable anger" on the part of the American President and Secretary of State to have felt anything like resentment at a communication so full of ungenerous discouragement-not to say ill-timed impertinence -as that!

But leaving Earl Russell's insincere diplomacy in this connection to speak for itself, (and I do not doubt that by this time, regarding the present stage of our struggle, he is ready to admit that this dispatch of the 6th of May was a hasty and ill-advised communication on his part,) I pass on to notice the affected formalism, or—as I must call it --cant of his newspaper champion and expositor.

Historicus plants himself, then, upon those immutable principles of justice and maxims of law "which are enshrined in the records of nations and the conscience of mankind," and he abhors the evil example of slanderous tongues which help on bloodshed. Now, if I understand the sum and substance of the learned publicist's late communication to the Times, wherein occurs this piece of bold and swelling rhetoric, its upshot may be reduced to these two propositions:

(1.) That no person on either side of the Atlantic, of ordinary intelligence or education, has ever for an instant advanced or entertained a complaint on this score of the hasty recognition of rebel belligerency by England; and,

(2.) That if ever any ignorant or half-educated American has been so foolish as to make such a complaint heretofore, or is so benighted as to propose to make it hereafter, then that he is advised to consider himself estopped and annihilated by this new discovery of the blockade theory.

As to the first of these propositions, if it is altogether untrue in fact, (notoriously and flagrantly untrue, even within Historicus's own knowledge,) as I have endeavored to suggest, rather than to take the trouble of attempting to prove at length, is it worth while to talk about soothing irritation, and affect the Christian virtue of peace-loving, when the soothing process consists in an attempt to force a lie down the American throat, and then to palm off upon the British public the notion that the American throat has swallowed it?

As to the second of these propositions, I hope that I have shown that Earl Russell himself, the highest and best authority, never thought it worth while, even down to September, 1863, to put forth the blockade theory of recognition as that upon which he acted.

But leaving Earl Russell aside, for the present matter in hand, I believe it has been made to appear that this new invention of a blockade as the causa causans of belligerent

recognition will not work, first, because as a matter of fact it had not been officially communicated to the British government that any American blockade had been notifiedcertainly not actually enforced-at the date of that government's decision to proclaim neutrality; and, secondly, because, as a matter of law, a manifesto of a proposed blockade is not such an interference with neutral commerce as can be taken hold of even by afriendly powers, as a groundwork for their proclamation of a state of belligerency. Is it with reference to this latter point, the legal effect of a blockade manifesto against insurrectionary subjects, that Historicus feels called upon to evoke against certain unnamed controversialists, (“irritabile genus,”) the immutable principles of law and the eternal maxims of justice? If it is so, I should be glad to have him produce the first glimmering of a maxim, or the first element of a principle, whether juridical or diplomatic, or in whatever "record" "enshrined," controverting and subverting the view above contended for, that a blockade must be enforced, in order to become a belligerent act, justifying outside neutral powers in interfering between the parent government and its insurgent citizens. Even going the length of an enforced blockade, but enforced against a rebellious province or district, I have yet to find the case in public law, parallel to our own civil struggle, where neutral governments took it upon themselves, without waiting for an official notification of the terms of the blockade, to treat such a blockade as tantamount to a declaration of war, and thereupon proclaimed belligerency and belligerent equality. Can Historicus produce any such?

Is it not pure cant, then, for a juridical writer to treat a case of such new impressioneven in the aspect of it sought to be enforced by the Times's champion of British neutrality-as one "enshrined in the records of nations," and calling for the denunciations due to stirrers-up of strife and thirsters for blood against those who venture to question the necessity or the fairness of the British state proceeding?

Rather than be in such haste to close up the flood-gates of strife-in bucolic allusionand from the philanthropic motive of aiming only at international peace and good will, as Historicus so demonstratively professes, I would respectfully suggest to that eminent publicist, whether it would not have better comported with those professions, and have better served to soothe that American irritation which he so unnecessarily deprecates, if he had stated some one of the ten following propositions, which make up the groundwork of his discourse, more according to the fact than he has done. When he has made the just corrections upon these heads due to fair discussion, I can assure him that he will be better listened to on this side of the water upon the theme of cherish ing a forgiving and a forgetting disposition. These are the propositions which I submit to his notice:

1. That no man of ordinary intelligence or education on either side of the Atlantic has been, or is now, capable of entertaining for an instant a complaint against England for the premature recognition of rebel belligerency.

2. That it was not a matter of choice, but of necessity, that the Queen should issue her proclamation of neutrality, and without an instant's delay.

3. That a dispatch received the 10th day of May, 1861, was the groundwork of action that took place on the 6th.

4. That if the proclamation of neutrality had never been issued, British ship-builders might have equipped vessels of war equally for Charleston or New York; and Mr. Laird might have fitted out five hundred Alabamas for the South without interference.

5. That President Lincoln's proclamation, like that of the Queen, recited that "hostilities had unhappily commenced."

6. That the Queen's proclamation was a domestic document, affecting the position of the Queen's subjects alone, and not in any way interfering with the affairs of other nations.

7. That the crew of the Savannah were prosecuted for piracy under the law of nations, but that Judge Nelson charged the jury that the accusation would not hold; and that the American judges [have held] in this very conflict that by the law of nations a Southern privateer could not be treated as a pirate when exercising force against us. 8. That the North created belligerent rights in both parties by making war upon the South.

9. That Mr. Adams neither felt aggrieved, nor ought to have felt aggrieved, at the issuing of the Queen's proclamation on the morning of his arrival.

10. That it is a principle enshrined in the records of nations, that when a government proclaims a prospective blockade against rebellious subjects, other nations are not only entitled but required to declare those rebellious subjects belligerents, entitled to all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining, though those subjects are only known to have taken up arms on land less than ten days ago, and though they have not as yet the first ship or sailor afloat on the sea, and have no reasonable hope of making any demonstration amonnting to organized marine warfare for months to come, unless by the aid of other (so-called) neutral powers.

IV. THE RECOGNITION OF CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY NOT A BY-GONE, BUT A CON

TINUING REALITY.

I have thus, as I hope, fairly met and disposed of the new case set up by Earl Russell, and promoted by his champion of the Times with such an extraordinary course of advocacy as the above. But it may be asked of the writer, why take such pains, yourself, to answer a point so far in the background of the past? Is it not a by-gone which may as well be let alone?

To this I have two answers:

(1.) That if the matter is of consequence enough to be resuscitated by as veteran a statesman and as practiced a diplomatist as Earl Russell-to say nothing about his calling upon the London Times and its juridical contributor to furnish him with a platform whence to put forth his parliamentary dogma to the world-it is of consequence enough for some American to follow on in the discussion, and see that the truth is kept in sight..

(2.) That this point of premature recognition is not a by-gone, but a question of to-day, in the sense of its being the initiative of a policy which England has adhered to for the past four years, and which at this moment, so far as we know, she still persists in, namely, of treating our rebellious, government-defying, slave-clutching and world-contemning seditionists, as forming as respectable a government as the inheritors of the American Constitution and the rightful representatives of the labors and principles of Washington.

Does any one say of this latter point that it is nothing to have put us on a level with slaveholding anarchists four years ago, because the policy has been persisted in down to the present hour? I ask if that disposes of the question whether the motive of those who thus at the outset of the rebellion inaugurated a policy which they fully knew would lift the insurgents into the rank of a belligerent power, "with all the rights and prerogatives thereto pertaining," was friendly or otherwise; or whether, as is now contended, there was an overruling necessity which deprived them of all volition in the matter, and left them "no course but one to pursue." On the contrary, if that policy was unfriendly and unnecessary then, is it not likely to have been persisted in since from the same unfriendly and unjustifiable motives?

But I have a more important reason to urge to my objector. Who are those among our statesmen best calculated to estimate the grave significance and practical moment of this measure of rebel recognition, but those who have had the responsibility of suppressing the rebellion thrown upon them from the outset-those who stood in the breach when recognition was first promulgated, and who to this hour have been watching day by day its effect and bearing upon the shifting scenes of the contest? And what opinion have these official guardians of the public interest upon the bearing of that policy which was proclaimed in the British House of Commons on the 6th day of May, 1861? What opinion did the late President, do our present Secretary of State, our foreign ministers-especially Mr. Adams, who has stood in the hardest spot of the diplomatic battle-the members of the congressional Committee on Foreign Relations, and particularly its accomplished chairman on the part of the Senate-what opinion, I ask, do all these representatives of the republic hold upon this question of premature recognition? If they all agree, as I believe I am warranted in saying they do, that the question was (and therefore still is) one of the very most important with which they have had to deal, then I believe no labor is misplaced which tries to uphold and promote the just merits of a different policy which they insist ought to have been adopted at the outset of our struggle, and which must be reinstated in our favor at the first moment when we shall be in a condition to enforce our just rights of national respect.

What England calls neutrality, is, I submit, as if a ruffian should knock my hat off in the street, and when I undertake to repossess myself of it, a blustering bystander should step up and say, "Fair play, gentlemen; this is a fair fight; you are both equals; it makes no difference to whom the hat belongs; I mean to see one treated as well as the other; I know no ruffian nor hat-owner in such a case as this; perfect neutrality consists in treating you both perfectly alike; and I mean to act in that magnanimous spirit till I see who gets the hat upon his head. Then, finis coronat opus; and I shall take off my own hat to the victor."

Shame, I say, upon such so-called neutrality! Shame upon the policy which set up Jefferson Davis for as rightful a belligerent as Abraham Lincoln, and which to the end of the chapter has insisted upon extending to the former as much of the rightful consideration due from the civilized world in that character as has been paid in that behalf to the latter. If there is no difference between them-if there was no appreciable difference between them-which should have prevented that "investing the former with all the rights and privileges belonging to a belligerent," spoken of by Earl Russell at the outset of the rebellion, then my essay is quite superfluous; I concede that the recognition of rebel belligerency is quite a by-gone matter, and that the foreign secretary has taken unnecessary pains to vindicate his government.

APPENDIX.-COMMUNICATION OF HISTORICUS TO THE LONDON TIMES OF MARCH 22, 1865.

To the Editor of the Times:

THE NEUTRALITY OF ENGLAND.

SIR: When Mr. Bright undertakes to draw up a bill of indictment against England we may rest assured that nothing will be omitted which may put his own country in the wrong in the eyes of mankind. Accordingly his speech on Monday last is a complete repertory of the grievances against Great Britain which are the stock in trade of some American journalists and of some American politicians.

It would have been surprising in this encyclopædia of the wrongs of America, if Mr. Bright had omitted to advance the complaint of the "premature concession of belligerent rights" to the South by Great Britain. I confess that nothing has ever so much astonished me as to find that on either side of the Atlantic any man of ordinary intelligence and education should be capable of advancing or entertaining for an instant such a complaint. Mr. Bright is pleased to say, with lofty scorn at the conclusion of his tirade on this topic, "I will not argue this question further, as to do so would be simply to depreciate the intellect of the honorable gentlemen listening to me." I quite concur with Mr. Bright that the question is one which hardly admits of argument, but exactly in the opposite sense to that in which he comprehends it. While you have permitted me to endeavor to elucidate some of the more obscure and difficult questions of international dispute to which this unhappy contest has given rise, I have never yet thought it worth while to expound at any length the futility of a complaint which ought to be self-evident to any man who understands the very first elements either of law or of politics. However, when such stuff as this can be gravely advanced by a person of Mr. Bright's importance in the presence of the English Parliament, a demonstration of the full absurdity of this grievance may be useful, if not necessary.

I must, therefore, ask the pardon of your readers while I proceed to explain why, on the breaking out of the civil war between the northern and the southern States of America, it was a matter not of choice but of necessity that the Queen of England should issue a proclamation of neutrality to her subjects, and that that proclamation should be issued without one single instant's delay.

Let us look at the situation of affairs at the moment when the proclamation of neutrality was issued by the Queen, on the 13th of May, 1861. The material documents necessary to the understanding of this matter will be found in a paper presented to Parliament in 1862, (entitled "North America, No. 1.") At page 23 (No. 31)* will be found a letter of Lord Lyons to Lord J. Russell, dated Washington, April 22, 1861, and received May 10, 1861. That letter is to the following effect:

"I have the honor to inclose copies of a proclamation of the president of the southern confederacy, inviting application for letters of marque, and also a proclamation of the President of the United States, declaring that southern privateers will be treated, as pirates, and announcing a blockade of the southern ports

I lost no time in taking measures to communicate the contents of these proclamations as fast as possible, both by telegraph and post, to Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Milne. The subsequent interruption of communication with the North has prevented my learning how far my measures were successful. I understand that some alarm is felt in the North respecting the southern privateers. But it must be supposed that the navy of the United States will suffice to arrest their operations. If these privateers, however, make any head in the Gulf of Mexico, it may, perhaps, be advisable that a British squadron. should be sent there to insure the safety of British merchant vessels."

Now, let any man of common sense consider what was the immediate duty of a government charged with the interests of British subjects all over the world on the receipt of such a dispatch. On the one hand, the northern government had declared a blockade of the southern ports; that is to say, it had assumed to itself a right as against neutral commerce which could only be justified by the existence of a state of legiti mate warfare. The date of the proclamation of blockade was April 19, 1861. In virtue of this proclamation, the northern government, by the law of nations, became entitled to search English merchant vessels in every part of the high seas, to divert them from their original destination, and to confiscate the vessels and their cargoes. If a state of legitimate war did not exist, such action on the part of the northern government would have been unlawful, and would have been a just cause of war on the part of England, against whom such a course would in such case have been pursued without justification. The proclamation of blockade of the 19th of April was therefore either a declaration of war against the South, or it was a cause of war on the part of all neutral nations against whom it should be put in force. From that dilemma there is no escape. So far, as regards the position of the northern government, as brought to the notice of the English cabinet on May 10, 1861.

Now let us see what was our situation with respect to the southern States. The proclamation of Mr. Jefferson Davis, authorizing the issue of letters of marque, was dated * See Vol. I, p. 18, of this compilation.

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