Lord Granville has made his influence felt in Spain. The
crew of the Deerhound have been released, though not, apparently, the vessel itself; and the Murillo (which ran down the Northfleet) has been sent back into British waters, and apprehended at Dover, on behalf of those who suffered by her flagrant and heartless carelessness. Some enthusiastic but not very learned advocate of the proceedings of the Spanish Government in the case of the Deerhound wrote to Tuesday's Times to say that the Spanish Government has always claimed ten miles from the coast, and in the case of bays, from the line joining headland with headland, as Spanish waters. If it has, that claim is certainly never conceded. The general international rule is a league, or three marine miles, or as it is sometimes put, the distance from the coast which a battery stationed on it could command in the olden times, which was about the same limit. And no bay " in the sense contended would cover great arms of the sea like the Bay of Biscay. But unfortunately all these questions do not touch the matter. Even if the Deerhound were in Spanish waters, —which it certainly was not,—its crew could only have been punished for smuggling dutiable articles into Spain, unless there were an act of war, which no one now contends. Evidently Spain herself has given up the act of her commander as quite indefensible, and not too soon. It is implied by the telegrams that Lord Granville had become peremptory before Spain gave way. The Deerhound people deserved to get into a scrape ; but a scrape and a charge of piracy are not the same things.
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