EITRA.-LEGA.L ASPECTi /OP ' 'hB DIFFICULTY. ,6261 Si,— ' Whilst we consider this
mintier simply as one of strict inter- national law—were it not one on-which the lives of thousands depend, —when one hasiset,,aa,Ihave endearoured toido, the English autho- rities in favour of the capture of the Commissioners beside the Ame- rican ones against it, one would feel tempted to ask whether, any more than the augurs of old, England and America can look cacti other in the face withoneleughing ? "What !" might England say to America, "you to pings and stretch the rights of belligerents !" "What !" might America reply, ." you to champion thepnvileges of neutrals !" "I quote none but your own arguments," Says England. "I follow your own practice," retorts America. Seriously, one goes on to ask, can such a debate be prolonged, far more driven to a bloody issue,, without holding up the two great branches of the Anglo- Saxon-n(6e to the ridicule of the civilized worbdt`.„ Why is it that the whole difficulty is not disposed of by simp0lk. pitting such a question ? ,, i..!,,-
, ,, '
,-:i have not concealed my opinion, thatItheiseales, of,itsternational jprisprudenco in this matter incline stimowl4AVidattithqulancrican side. A lime purposely avoided other con.Aderatopas bitherto. But the termuis must take notice that—not to speak of the private ' caSti tierii;. certainly -not unmerited, salAitii tarn been inflicted by Miss Slidefl, on a treacherous cavalierwArhat Northern journalists seem to i have considered a. "'cute" - Or "right Smart" trick of Captain,i Wilkes' . in slyly waylaying the Commissioners when all, but* If deemed them morally .secure, appears to us Euro-, POW.43. Y,„if! ,c#T. 15one. And beyond the law thilioufftner oil g'it, lie deeper questions. .;tile:. a9P ,.4s9pet not regulated, xts of Vattel, Or opinions of t k1)1. . *ft 9ral Yig GoVeilintetife yilincleea, goto war upon the 'feeling of stqi
e
or °pinking ;, bit if they ' are to be supported by popular iijipt661,-tlitif must reach broader gronnds,-:,,Now such broader grounds of action' : eSiat here, Auld, it is folly for ,the: iimerieans not at once, by fella*: :f01slingi to have acknowledgedthepotainev of them. . :,! f 1 j 4 maff, be difficult in international law to stretch the so-ealledi. ngliirof asylum beyond the person Of .-a recognised ambassador and his dePendents. But those instine S of common manliness which teach his as individuals not to give ti ' One who claims our protection except upon clear proof of the right Of 'another to deprive-hint of it, have At all times taught all manly nations, and none more successfully 'than: England.* America, never to give up those who once claimed the shelter- OC:theirtlag, unlessias :criminals, under the, strict terms of a treaty.. ,,c Confederate Commissioners might be . more dan- gerous enwesitha'n a whole army of soldiers ; but from the moment that they sought the protect ion of a foreign flag, they slmuld have been forjAnierien mere fugitives, whom international .coUrteity shoultl have'slkiklioin noticing, whom national pride should have Scorned to pursue. . Again, it may or may not be lawful for a belligerent to stop on enemy's ambassador on his passage..outyandwhile yet unrecognised by the .statç. to which he is accredited.. I But oonimon justiee teaches- Us that mime who values the righteonsness of his own case should, seek to hinderan adversary from telling his. From the moment that the North stopped. the would-be Confederate ambassadors from Setting forth after their 'Own fashion the 'eiirm Of the South, they east a slur upon their own,-as, I believeNniiitYfglitetifis cause, and cast one, at the same inne,upon the:fntess or perspicuity of Euro- pean-arbiters,,,,, -I ,iliiiv : ...;Jii .ii ...f. ., Now the,seitun gre :points OA , ei that have reallffi outraged
lie;
public feeling, j,will not pay,"„ led only, but throughout Europe. Aineiica has not done..as-i would he done by. The rescuer of Martin 'Kossta knokra Itidiltliatilt Would have never allowed Kossiiith, for instance,: seeking American shores, to urge intervention against Austria, to be taken by an Austrian cruiser from under the stars and stripes: Why, ask Englishmen, 'should the shadow of the B4tishrieriSigin,i4g1ss1eas inviolable- sanctuary for those whoi like% Pf1311917441 ol)S1Pat*its, while 1 thel.arv , treated as rebeits-Uilf they isTeaneMll xing„Alla.,ip for Ala 440; out. If their.patileilisin IN holiypoimitsty, a p)4,01-Aussion be a lying one, why is thati mission tiide;gr OftettinVrand falsehood grapple," is eur En,glisli prim- ittis,rtherefirtelfelearlidisilingiiith!l-ii;iiiii jiniiiiillists foriflintnost art dosiot4bbtivcien the :breach of international' law in the inkttnk of part do Which I hold to be slight, and the reparation for which might -; of4Y.1?e,:?left- to . ashitration,. and the violence done to a national.- pOlieyorhieli cannot be sere by the rekety,e pf the prisoaerti, In Maki tint' demand, Ibeli phati 4feelingg,well-nigh,,thewl3elc Etighish p . -le has gone willi the 'hApvernment ;—I believe that feelin would go' equally with'verninent, if need be in enforcing it. or tiMt iMtirmal polic &' ain English, WC should be, and PbelietWare,,readyl'es go to wat; "The best friends to freedom and trit!thel NortlFri.tlie men who most' detest the cause of the • Southern ComMissionens, who would most scorn their missiom—,ime, : bound, for freedom's sake, to cling to that policy :to the 'death.. StlPROO,LOPis:Napoleon were to attempt to coerce Italy by force of ages! aRci ..,#,A,9!ViOTS, sent in hot.haste to England, were taken by a Preiich War,steamer out of one of our ,Peninsular packets be- tween Gibraltar tad Southampton, would:the, most peace-loving English Liberal, who had yet a man's heartiii his bosom, counsel sub- missiotw arbitration, anything Short of itrithediate release; or war if refused'''. ' Let :us beware lest we create a precedent for such an outrage Al-law:mistaken complaisance now for the blind passions of free-soil Northern mobs. And thus, I feel bound to say that, if America wishes to set her- self right with the world, and especially with her old mother-country, ilie must not stickle about trifles in acknowledging that she has :clone,. Wrong; and undoing that wrong. At onee to 'hare disavowed 'CA)? tam n Wills, and to have released the ,Commissioners, would have been but graceful on her. part, ,She bad, a :precedent for such promptness ready to her hand from our .own past conduct. .. -When, in 1807, the English brig Leopard baa;c9inmitted the certainly far less excusable outrage of requesting te'Seareh, and on refusal firing into and board- ing the imperfectlyttirmed American frigate Chesapeake, and taking from her its deserters four men, three of whom were afterwards claimed as American citizens (they were all men of colour, but no Chief Justice Taney had yet dreamed of disfranchising such persons), England-made immediate amends. The news reached London on the 20th July, and before ever thin American -Minister had made any formal demand for redress, on the 2nd August the English Gov.orn- Ment'disclaimed the right to sane') for deserters any ships in the national service of a foreign State, and promised reparation; the Vice-Admiral from whom the order of search emanated was recalled,
and two of the Americana seized iveid iminfnally restored, the third having died or disappeared. That disavowal and release would be for the American Government the quickest and most creditable issue out of the difficulty, few im- partial men can doubt. If a false pride, however, hinders the taking of such a step, let the Commissioners be released, and let the ques- tion of international law, as I have suggested, be submitted to arbi- tration. With the exception of France, whom the Americans would, perhaps, challenge for seeming now to prejudge the case against them, and Spain jealous for Cuba and Porto Rico, there is scarcely a State or Stateling in European Christendom, from Russia down to the Free Towns of Hamburg, Lubeck, or Bremen, or the Canton of Geneva, which might not be safely accepted as arbiter. All are in- terested in the respecting of the rights of neutrality ; none can feel any fear of the development of America. But even assuming that the present squall may blow over, we
must look for others, and must make up our minds coolly beforehand how they are best to be weathered. The real fact is, that Eng- land is just now experiencing an altogether new set of -Sensatlians. Hitherto, wherever there were hard knocks going on in any quarter of the- globe, especially at sea, she has almost invariably come in for a share of them. And as, with the exception of a brief period of Dutch ascendancy in the seventeefith century, she has to a great extent literally ruled the seas, it .follows that she has played her part as a "naval belligerent" pretty much after her own fashion, and has in the main created such a "law of the sea" as best fitted that part. For the first time almost now, she is attempting to be neutral, while a great war is being carried on by sea and land, and s'he has not yet succeeded in thoroughly realizing the new part which the has to play. The British Lion; in a sort of anticipative Man. chester millennium, is trying to "eat straw like the ox," and to chew the sweet cud of profit in fetching and carrying, in sale and in pur- chase, like any other neutral beast of burden ; and the royal beast cannot yet understand the pricking of the goad, and the sting of the lash, which such creatures have to endure from belligerents, in the shape of visits and searches, captures and condemnations. The dis- ciplin e, no doubt, is an unpleasant one; but if it only results in giving us some fellow-feeling for neutrals in general, it will probably be a great gain to the world.
There has been a great and a noble element in the sudden thrill
of indignation which ran at once throm,7hout the whole nation when it learnt that a Royal Mail steamer had been stopped, and men taken from under the shelter of the British flag. There has been a yet greater and nobler element in that passion of self-restraint, if I may use such seemingly contradictory words, which hushed that indigna- tion into silence till it had been pronounced by our law officers that the law was really on our side. Nations that can thus feel, nations that can thus hold feeling, in check, are alive and not dead. But now it behoves us to think what must have been the feelings of the neutral nations of the world, above all of our transatlantic kinsmen, some half-century ago, when on every sea, in sight of every coast on either shore of the Atlantic, this process of searching ships and seizing Men from off them at the hands of British cruisers was going on day after day, month after month, year after year; when few English officers were verypartienlar about pressing a likely sailor wherever they might find him, whatever might be his country; when against Americans in particular, impressment had been so freely used, that at the close of the continental war it is said that upwards of a thou- sand American sailors were serving in our fleets, and that during the war with America there was scarcely one seaman in the American navy who had not served in a ship of ours. The recollection of our own past wrong-doings, though it cannot justify those Of any other country, should at least teach us to be moderate in our bearing towards that one which was our chiefest victim, until, indeed,it became our most formidable ocean foe.
Butbeyondbearing the inconveniences and un_pleasantnesses of neu-
trality with moderation, there is the wisdom which seeks to mininiize them. The present seems to me an unexampled opportunity- for placing the international law of the sea on a satisfactory footing. Let us trust that European statesnien will not suffer that opportunity to escape. To none, alas ! could one have looked more hopefully for seizing it, than to him whom now a Queen and a nation mourn.
. A BARRISTER OP LINCOLN'S INN.
.. 3, Old-square, 16th December, 1861.
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