812 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



intentioned Government may, in performing its duty, 

 experience from that cause. Its will may certainly 

 be sometimes baffled by the arts of desperate and 

 profligate adventurers. 



Did the merits of this case depend upon the mere 

 fact of the escape of the vessel from a British port by 

 eluding the vigilance of the authorities, it might, 

 perhaps, be considered as not entailing upon her 

 Majesty's Government so heavy a responsibility. 

 There are other circumstances connected with that 

 event which aggravate its nature. One of the most 

 grave appears to be the fact that, after the escape had 

 occurred, and the nefarious project had been consum- 

 mated, her Majesty's Government, nevertheless, in- 

 stead of taking prompt measures to denounce the 

 transaction thus completed in defiance of its authori- 

 ty, and refusing to give it the smallest countenance 

 in any British port, deliberately proceeded to accept 

 the result as legitimate, and to direct that this vessel 

 go constituted should be from that moment entitled 

 to all the privileges which an honest belligerent might 

 claim or any vessel of the United States would enjoy. 



The consequences of what I cannot but regard as 

 this most unfortunate construction of international 

 law, by which success in committing the fraud was 

 made the only test to purge it of its offensive nature, 

 have been manifested in the manner in which the 

 Shenandoah was received wherever it went in the 

 British dependencies. The supplies there obtained, 

 under one pretence and another, particularly in the 

 remote ports of Australia, have .enabled this vessel 

 to keep the seas, and to continue her depredations 

 long after she had been stripped of the last shadow 

 of the character with which ner Majesty's Govern- 

 ment voluntarily chose to invest her at the outset. 

 It is impossible to read the papers which have been 

 forwarded to my Government from the Consul at 

 Melbourne, copies of which are submitted with this 

 note, without feeling that in no instance on record 

 have similar concessions been made to a vessel of 

 such a fraudulent origin, or of such offensive partiality 

 being manifested toward it by a portion of a nation 

 professing^ to style itself neutral. In consenting to 

 receive this vessel, after the facts of its illegal origin 

 and outfit bad been satisfactorily established, I cannot 

 resist the conviction that her Majesty's Government 

 assumed a responsibility for all the damage which it 

 has done, and which, down to the latest accounts, it 

 was still doing, to the peaceful commerce of the 

 United States on the ocean. 



I pray permission to call your Lordship's attention 

 to still another of the circumstances which appear to 

 me among the most grave belonging to this case. 

 This enterprise seems to have been the last of the 

 series conceived, planned, and executed exclusively 

 wit Ii in the limits of this kingdom. It emanated from 

 persons established here since the beginning of the 

 war as agents of the rebel authorities, who have been 

 more effectively employed in the direction and super- 

 intendence of hostile operations than if they had been 

 * situated in Richmond itself. In other words, so far 

 as the naval branch of warfare is concerned, the real 

 bureau was fixed at Liverpool, and not in the United 

 States. The vessels were constructed or purchased, 

 the seamen enlisted, the armament obtained, the sup- 

 plies of every kind procured, the cruises projected, 

 and the officers ana men regularly paid here. In 

 other words, all the war made on the ocean has been 

 made from England as the starting point. I have 

 had the honor to furnish from time to time to your 

 Lordship evidence of the most conclusive character 

 touching most of these points, and I haveven desig- 

 nated the chief individuals to whom the supreme di- 

 rection of the operations had been intrusted. I fail 

 to be able to recall in history a case of more flagrant 

 and systematic abuse of the neutrality of a country 

 by a belligerent, kept up for an equal length of time 

 But what I cannot but think still more remarkable is 

 that, notwithstanding the fact of the frequent repre- 

 sentations and remonstrances made by myself under 



the instructions of my Government, so far as I have 

 been permitted to learn, not a single effort was ever 

 made by her Majesty's Government either to prevent 

 or to punish the persons known to be engaged in this 

 most extraordinary violation of the law of the land. 

 Prosecutions have been instituted, indeed, against a 

 few persons who were alleged to have been acting in 

 contravention of the provisions of the Enlistment 

 Act. Mr. Rumble, after escaping from justice by the 

 leniency of a jury, received a decided censure from 

 the Government; Captain Corbett, the officer com- 

 manding the Sea King, though prosecuted, appears 

 never to have been brought to trial. But these and 

 a few minor cases were exclusively those of British 

 subjects, who appear to have been acting merely as 

 instruments of a power above their heads. Not a 

 single individual directly connected with the rebel- 

 lion, and sent here to conduct the operations, has 

 ever been molested in any manner. It cannot, there- 

 fore, be at all a matter of surprise when the main- 

 spring of the various naval enterprises, the director 

 of the Alabamas, Floridas, Georgias, and Shenan- 

 doahs, was left wholly undisturbed, that it has been 

 impossible to put a stop to the damage which has 

 ensued to the people of the United States from the 

 ravage and depredation committed upon them by 

 the operations carried on from this kingdom. At 

 the very time when the fortunate encounter of the 

 Alabama by_ the United States steamer Kearsarge 

 terminated in the destruction of one of these cor- 

 sairs, the offspring of the violated law of this land, 

 and when the people of the United States were con- 

 gratulating themselves that one great cause of irrita- 

 tion between the two countries was at last laid to 

 rest, it now appears that the directing power to which 

 I have alluded at once turned its attention to a 

 husbanding of the seamen saved by a trick from the 

 hands of the victor, with a view to the immediate 

 production of a successor to the same work. The 

 evidence which I now have the honor to submit 

 shows that many of the crew saved from the Alabama 

 have been from the beginning, and still continue to 

 be, a part of the crew of the Shenandoah. Neither 

 does it appear from any thing within my knowledge 

 that the smallest attention was ever paid by her 

 Majesty's Government to the representations which 

 I had the honor to submit at the time touching the 

 probability of precisely such an operation. 



That the principal person engaged in the direction 

 of this bureau was an officer by the name of J. D. 

 Bullock, expressly despatched from Richmond for the 

 purpose of organizing it, is a fact to which I had the 

 honor to call your Lordship's attention in many 

 different forms during the progress of the struggle. 

 Yet, in spite of all this evidence, Mr. Bullock appears 

 to have been permitted to conduct his operations, 

 and especially to shape the outfit and the entire cruise 

 of the Shenandoah, vvithout the smallest interference 

 from any official quarter. 



It may, however, be objected that, whatever may 

 have been the nature of my remonstrances, no suffi- 

 cient evidence was presented of the official character 

 and proceedings of Mr. Bullock to sustain the initiation 

 of any prosecution against him in the Courts. To which 

 I am pained to be constrained to reply that my Govern- 

 ment has reason, to believe that her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment has in one instance considered that evidence 

 sufficient to sustain it in recognizing the authority 

 of Mr. Bullock over the commander of the Shenan- 

 doah so far as to stop its career, and in consenting 

 to furnish the medium by which to transmit his on I. is 

 to that vessel. The power to prevent certuinly im- 

 plies the previous existence of a power to control. 

 I beg permission to express the hope that inasmuch 

 as the papers in which this fact appears have not come 

 into the hands of my Government by direct commu- 

 nication from your Lordship I may presume them 

 not to be genuine. 



Should the fact be otherwise, however, while read, 

 ily conceding that the motive for such a proceeding 



