DIPLOMAflO CORRESPONDENCE. 



385 



Mr. Adams's answer was dated on the 12th, 

 as follows : 



LEGATION or THE UNITED STATES, LONDON, ) 

 Jfcy 12, 1S62. f 



MY LORD : I have the honor to acknowledge the re - 

 ception of your note of the 10th instant. From the 

 purport of it I am led to fear that I may have been 

 unfortunate heretofore in my attempts to express my 

 own meaning. If I have appeared to your lordship to 

 confound two things so very dissimilar as the penalties 

 of the enlistment act and the liabilities which follow 

 from the attempt to break a blockade, I can only say 

 that the fault must be laid to my want of ability to use 

 words properly to express my thoughts. 



The position which I did mean to take was this : 

 that the intent of the enlistment act, as explained by 

 the words of this preamble, was to prevent the unau- 

 thorized action of subjects of Great Britain, disposed 

 to embark in the contests of foreign nations, from 

 involving the country in the risk of a war with 

 these countries. ThisView of the law does not seem 

 to be materially varied by your lordship; when 

 speaking of the same thing you say that the law ap- 

 plies to cases where "private persons so acting would 

 carry on, and thus might engage the name of their 

 sovereign and of their nation in belligerent operations." 

 It is further shown by that preamble that that act was 

 an additional act of prevention, made necessary by ex- 

 perience of the inefficiency of former acts passed to 

 effect the same object, 



But it is now made plain that whatever may have 

 been the skill with which this latest act was drawn, it 

 does not completely fulfil its intent, because it is very 

 certain that many British subjects are now engaged in 

 undertakings of a hostile character to a foreign state 

 which, though not technically within the strict letter 

 of the enlistment act, are as much contrary to its 

 spirit as if they levied war directly. The measures em- 

 brace all of the operations preliminary to openly car- 

 rying on war the supply of men, and ships, and arms, 

 and money to one party in order that they may be the 

 better enabled to overcome the other, which other is 

 in this case a nation with which Great Britain is now 

 under treaty obligations of the most solemn nature to 

 maintain a lasting peace and friendship. The Govern- 

 ment of the United States having, in the course of its 

 hostile operations, had occasion to experience the in- 

 jurious effects of this virtual levying of war against it- 

 self from the ports of a friendly power, and seeing the 

 obstacle in the way of the removal of them to be al- 

 leged to be the inefficiency of a statute intended to ef- 

 fect that object, does not regard it as asking anything 

 unreasonable, or more than it would in like case be 

 willing itself to grant if it solicits some action to render 

 effective the spirit as well of the law as of her Majesty's 

 enunciation of the national will. 



I perceive that your lordship appears to be of opinion 

 that, in this proceeding, the Government of the United 

 States is asldng more than is reasonable. It is, in 

 your view, sufficient to declare that owners and mas- 

 ters of merchant ships, fitted out with intent to break a 

 blockade or carry contraband of war to one of two 

 parties engaged in war, are subject to capture, trial, 

 and condemnation, if caught by the offended party. 

 And hence, in this case, that the Government of the 

 United States, in calling upon her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment to prohibit such adventures, is in effect calling 

 upon it to do that which it ought to do for itself. The 

 only valid plea, your lordship remarks, for asking in- 

 terposition, is, that the blockade is in reality ineffec- 

 tive ; and this, you very justly presume, I shall not be 

 disposed to urge. 



But I pray your lordship's pardon if I submit that 

 you appear to have entirely overlooked another plea, 

 which I am confident enough to imagine of no incon- 

 siderable weight. That plea is that the kingdom of 

 Great Britain endeavor in spirit as well as in letter to 

 preserve the principle of neutrality, if not of friend- 

 ship, toward a foreign power in amity with it to which 

 it has pledged itselfT The precise mode in which that 

 VOL. II. 25 



shall be done, it does not presume to prescribe. That 

 the toleration of such conduct in subjects of Great 

 Britain, as I have had the pain heretofore to expose, ia 

 surely in violation of that neutrality, is justly to be in- 

 ferred from the verv language of her Majesty's procla- 

 mation. For it is therein declared that precisely such 

 acts of theirs as I have been compelled to complain of 

 are done " in derogation of their duty to her as a neu- 

 tral sovereign, and incur her high displeasure." If 

 such, then, be the true character of the proceedings to 

 which I have heretofore called your lordship's atten- 

 tion, they surely merit something more of notice from 

 her Majesty's ministers than an intimation that they 

 will be suffered to pass unreproved unless the punish- 

 ment shall be inflicted by the nation whom they are 

 designed to injure. The object of the Government of 

 the United States has not been to relieve itself of the 

 dutv of vigilance to capture offenders against the law. 

 It has rather been to avoid the necessity of applying 

 additional stringent measures for their own security 

 against British subjects found to be engaged in such 

 illicit enterprises, made imperative by the conviction 

 that no preventive cooperation whatever can be ex- 

 pected from her Majesty s Government. It has rather 

 been to avoid the risk of confounding the innocent 

 with the guilty, because all happen to be involved in a 

 general suspicion. And, lastly, it has rather be_en to 

 remove, at as early a day as may be, consistently with its 

 own safety, the restrictions on the trade with foreign 

 countries, which these evil-doers are laboring with so 

 much industry to force it to protract. Your lordship's 

 language leaves me little hope of any cooperation of 

 her Majesty's Government to these ends. Nevertheless, 

 I trust I may be permitted to indulge the belief that 

 the time is not now far distant when the difficulties 

 thus interposed in the way of its progress will have 

 been so far removed by its own unassisted action as to 

 relieve both countries from the painful necessity of 

 further continuing the discussion. 



The correspondence on this subject was 

 closed by the following note from Earl Russell 

 to Mr. Adams : 



FOBEIGS OFTICE, Stay 17, 1S62. 



SIR : I do not wish to prolong this correspondence, 

 and shall only make one remark in answer to your last 

 letter. 



If the British Government, by virtue of the preroga- 

 tive of the crown or by authority of parliament, had 

 prohibited and could have prevented the conveyance 

 in British ships of arms and ammunition to the Con- 

 federate States, and had allowed the transport of such 

 contraband of war to New York and to other Federal 

 ports, her Majesty's Government would have departed 

 from the neutral position they have assumed and 

 maintained. 



If, on the other hand, her Majesty's Government had 

 prohibited and could have prevented the transport of 

 arms and ammunition to both the contending parties, 

 they would have deprived the United States of a great 

 part of the means by which they have carried on the 

 war. The arms and ammunition received from Great 

 Britain, as well as from other neutral countries, have 

 enabled the United States to tit out the formidable 

 armies now engaged in carrying on the war against the 

 Southern States, while by means of the blockade es- 

 tablished by the Federal Government, the Southern 

 States have" been deprived of similar advantages. 



The impartial observance of neutral obligations by 

 her Majesty's Government has thus been exceedingly 

 advantageous to the cause of the more powerful of the 

 two contending parties. 



I have the nonor to be, sir, your most obedient, 

 humble servant, RUSSELL. 



CHARLES FRAXCIS ADAMS. 



The action of her Majesty's Government in 

 according to the Confederate States belligerent 

 rights, was a subject of constant correspondence. 

 It was pressed by Mr. Seward as the most im- 



