Perhaps the best proof which we can give in support
of our contention as to British action is to point out the fact that if our Government were favourable to the Confederate States, the latter at any rate were unaware of the fact. Instead of blessing us as their friends, they cursed us as their enemies. For example, President Davis in his Annual Message to the Confederate Congress in 1863 used the following words :— " The partiality of Her Majesty's Government in favour of our enemies has been further evinced in the marked difference of its conduct on the subject of the purchase of supplies by the two belligerents. The differ- ence has been conspicuous since the very commencement of the war.. As early as the 1st of May, 1861, the British Minister in Washington was informed by the Secretary of State of the United States that he had sent agents to England, and that others would go to France, to pur- chase arms, and this fact was communicated to the British Foreign Office, which interposed no objection. Yet in October of the same year Earl Russell entertained the complaint of tho United States Minister in London, that the Confederate States were importing contraband of war from the island of Nassau, directed inquiry into the matter, and obtained a report from the authorities of the island denying the allega- tions, which report was enclosed to Mr. Adams, and received by him as satisfactory evidence to dissipate ` the suspicion naturally thrown upon the authorities of Nassau by that unwarrantable act.' So, too, when the Confederate Government purchased in Great Britain, as a neutral country (and with strict observance both of the law of nations and the municipal law of Great Britain), vessels which were subsequently armed and commissioned as vessels of war, after they had been far re- moved from English waters, the British Government, in violation of its own laws and in deference to the importunate demands of the United States. made an ineffectual attempt to seize one vessel, and did actually seize and detain another which touched at the island of Nassau, on her way to a Confederate port, and subjected her to an unfounded prosecution at the very time when cargoes of munitions of war were being openly shipped from British ports to New York to be used in warfare against us."
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