DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



379 



foreign governments during 1862 was more 

 voluminous than during the preceding year, and 

 embraces some interesting and important sub- 

 jects arising out of the unusual state of affairs. 



Great Britain. As early as November, 1861, 

 the action of the British Consul at Charleston, 

 Mr. Bunch, became a subject of complaint by 

 the Federal Government. This action consist- 

 ed in communicating, under instructions from 

 home, to the Confederate authorities the desire 

 of her Majesty's Government that the second, 

 third, and fourth articles of the declaration of 

 Paris should be observed by the Confederate 

 States in the prosecution of the hostilities in 

 which they were engaged. The grounds 

 alleged for complaint against this action of the 

 Consul by the Federal Government were, that 

 a statute of the United States forbids, under a 

 heavy penalty, any person not specially ap- 

 pointed, or duly authorized or recognized by the 

 President, whether citizen or denizen, privileged 

 or unprivileged, from counselling or advising, 

 aiding or assisting in any political correspondence 

 with the Government of any foreign state what- 

 ever, with an intent to influence the measures 

 of any foreign Government, or of any officer or 

 agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or 

 controversies with the United States, or to de- 

 feat the measures of their Government. The 

 conduct of Mr. Bunch was thus taken to be a 

 wanton violation of the law of the United 

 States, and its Government announced, as the 

 result of the most calm and impartial delibera- 

 tion, a necessity put upon it to revoke the ex- 

 equatur of the Consul. 



The reply of Earl Russell was, that the United 

 States Government, by quoting this statute as 

 the foundation on which to rest their com- 

 plaint, seemed distinctly to admit that the Gov- 

 ernment of the Confederate States at Rich- 

 mond was, as regards the United States, "the 

 government of a foreign state " an admission 

 which goes further than any acknowledgment 

 with regard to those states which her Majesty's 

 Government had hitherto made. And if the 

 Confederate States are, as regards the United 

 States, a foreign state, which is implied by the 

 grounds taken by the latter, then the President 

 of the United States has no competence one 

 way or the other, with respect to the functions 

 of the Consuls of other Governments in that 

 foreign state, and the exequaturs of such Con- 

 suls can be granted or withdrawn only by the 

 government of such foreign state. The Con- 

 federate States cannot be at one and the same 

 time ' a foreign state," and part of the territory 

 of the United Ststea. 



It had been further asserted by the United 

 States Government that any communication to 

 be addressed to the Government of the Con- 

 federate States respecting goods of a belligerent 

 on board of neutral ships, &c., should have been 

 made by diplomatic and not by consular agents, 

 and the only authority in the United States to 

 receive such a communication was the Govern- 

 ment of the United States itself. 



To this assertion Earl Russell replies, that it 

 is gravely telling her Majesty's Government that 

 an application to the Confederate Government 

 for redress ought to be made through the Pres- 

 ident of the United States. Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment may well ask whether such a position 

 is seriously laid down, and whether the Presi- 

 dent of the United States can affirm that, in the 

 present condition of things, he has the power to 

 give effect to any such application which might 

 be made to him. Could the President of the 

 United States restore a British subject im- 

 pressed into the Confederate service, or could 

 he recover private debts due a British subject 

 and confiscated under a Confederate or State 

 law ? It is then declared by Earl Russell to 

 be a principle of international law, that when 

 the persons or property of the citizens or sub- 

 jects of a state are injured by a de facto gov- 

 ernment, the state so aggrieved has a right to 

 claim from the de facto government redress and 

 reparation. It may be necessary in future, for 

 the protection of the interests of her Majesty's 

 subjects, to have further communications both 

 with the central authority at Richmond, and 

 with the governors of the separate states, and 

 in such cases communications will continue to 

 be made, but such communications will not 

 imply any acknowledgment of the Confederates 

 as an independent state. 



Mr. Adams, in reply, expressed astonishment 

 that he should have given any justification of 

 the view of the statute taken by Earl Russell 

 through ambiguity in his previous communica- 

 tions, and proceeded to explain that the statute 

 was designed to punish all persons, whether 

 native or foreign, citizen or privileged, who 

 knowingly made themselves instruments of 

 foreign states to foment factious disturbances 

 within the United States. In applying the law 

 in a mitigated form to Mr. Bunch, he could not 

 have made so great a mistake as to have assum- 

 ed that he was dealing with "the government 

 of a foreign state." 



Respecting the other position taken by him, 

 namely, that the Government was the only au- 

 thority to which any diplomatic communica- 

 tion could be made, he urged that other- 

 wise every proceeding was an attempt to un- 

 dermine the authority to which an agent had 

 been accredited, by his recognizing for any pur- 

 pose the validity of a domestic antagonism 

 within the limits of that authority. Other ar- 

 guments were advanced by Mr. Adams, but the 

 subject appears to have then been dropped. 

 More than a year afterward, when an /ittack 

 on Charleston was about to be made, the British 

 war steamer Cadmus entered that port and 

 took away Mr. Bunch. 



The next subject of discussion with her Ma- 

 jesty's Government arose from reports received 

 by the Navy Department, that although the 

 United States had a deposit of coal at Nassau, 

 the Federal steamers were denied the right of 

 taking it for use by the colonial authorities at 

 that place. On the. 24th of Feb., Mr. Adams 



