What on earth is Mr. Ward Hunt about? A correspondent
,--Arf Thursday's Daily News calls attention to Admiralty instruc- tions, dated the 31st July last, and published in extenso in the United Service Gazelle for the 21st August, on the subject of the reception by Her Majesty's ships of fugitive slaves. Command- ing officers are told that they must never receive fugitive slaves when their ships are in the waters of the territory where these fugitives are recognised by law as slaves ; that when their ships are on the high seas, where the British vessel is really part of the dominions of the Queen, they may receive them; but even so, should their ship return again into the territorial waters, they must then surrender the slave to his owners. "As a general principle, cams should be taken that slaves are not misled into the belief that they will find their liberty by getting under the British flag, or induced by the pre- sence of a British ship to leave their own ships, if at sea, or their employment, if on shore." That is the worst thing by far which the Tory Government has yet done. We thought it was defini- tively decided, in the case of the negro Somerset, as long ago as in 1772, that when a slave seta his foot on English soil—or what is equivalent to English soil, a British ship - of- war on the high seas —he becomes free. No doubt it was admitted that if he returned to the country by whose laws he was a slave, he might be then legally reclaimed, but who- ever heard before of an English naval commander, even in foreign waters, being instructed to restore to the grasp of a wicked law the man whS by English law is already free ? A British ship-of-war, even in territorial waters, is by international custom and etiquette conceded all the privileges of a part of the Queen's dominions. Does a Tory Government really desire .to initiate the surrender of all the proudest traditions of English liberty? Is it to these base uses that Mr. Ward Hunt wishes to turn that Navy of the weakness of which he so ostentatiously complains? If this is to be its use, the weaker it is, the better.
