DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



315 



gal acts as far as possible out of sight. The agency 

 of Captain Bullock for the Confederate Government 

 was, indeed, to some extent disclosed by parts of the 

 evidence relating to ships which were the subject of 

 actual or contemplated proceedings by her Majesty's 

 Government, but not in such a manner nor to such 

 an extent as to make it probable, in the judgment of 

 her Majesty's advisers, that if proceedings Lad been 

 instituted against him personally they would have 

 been attended with a successful result. 



You refer, indeed, to the recent transmission, under 

 the orders of her Majesty's Government, of Captain 

 Bullock's letter to the commander of the Shenandoah, 

 directing him to cease from the further prosecution 

 of hostilities, as proof that her Majesty's Government 

 have, at least in one instance, considered themselves 

 to be in possession of sufficient evidence of Captain 

 Bullock's authority to control or prevent such hos- 

 tilities. But it is not clear that proof, even of the 

 extent and kind of authority assumed in that letter, 

 over the Shenandoah when at sea, would have sup- 

 plied the want of further evidence of any infringe- 

 ment alleged to have been committed by Captain 

 Bullock ot the laws of this country. Your surprise, 

 however, on hearing of that circumstance, as well as 

 the inference which you draw from it, of the previous 



Eossession of evidence against Captain Bullock by 

 er Majesty's Government, will, I hope, cease when 

 S)u learn that this letter was transmitted by her 

 ajesty's Government in compliance with the request 

 of Mr. Mason (the known and accredited agent in 

 Europe of the Confederate States) made to Earl Rus- 

 sell in a letter dated the 20th of June last, after the 

 conclusion of the war. 



Whatever might have been the extent of the pre- 

 vious knowledge or ignorance of her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment with respect to the acts of Captain Bullock, 

 they were entitled to believe, on Mr. Mason's author- 

 ity, that the letter sent by him for transmission would 

 be effectual for its intended purpose ; in which, being 

 a purpose of humanity^, especially beneficial to the 

 United States, her Majesty s Government felt they 

 might safely endeavor so far to cooperate without 

 any risk of being misunderstood by the United States 

 Government. I am, &c., CLARENDON. 



November 18, 1865, Mr. Adams addressed a 

 reply to a letter of Earl Russell, which was 

 afterwards referred to as a substantial answer 

 to the above communication of Earl Clarendon, 

 of November 18. He says : 



LEGATION or THE UNITED STATES, ) 

 LONDON, November 18, 1865. J 



MT LORD: I have the honor to acknowledge the 

 reception of a note from your predecessor, the Right 

 Hon. Earl Russell, dated the 2d instant, in reply to 

 one which I addressed to him on the 18th of Septem- 

 ber last, on certain important questions now under 

 consideration between her Majesty's Government and 

 that which I have the honor to represent. 



It is with the most profound regret that I am thus 

 compelled to open my relations with your Lordship 

 in a spirit of controversy. I can only urge in exten- 

 uation of this proceeding the great importance of the 

 subjects under consideration not simply as between 

 two countries, but from their wider bearing on the 

 future relations of all the civilized nations on the globe. 

 Futherrnore, I flatter myself that, from the contrac- 

 tion necessarily going on of the topics under treat- 

 ment, We may, before long, arrive at some sort of 

 termination of a discussion already on my part, I 

 fear, rather tediously protracted. 



His Lordship's note appears to be substantially 

 confined to the consideration of two classes of facts, 

 both of them bearing upon the establishment of one 

 general principle of the law of nations to wit, the 

 obligation of a neutral country to belligerents to do 

 every thing within its power to maintain its neutrality 

 inviolate. This obligation his Lordship appears to 



lintain to "be fully acquitted by the adoptkn of such 

 sasures as the neutral itself may judge i 



maintain 



measures as the neutral itself may judge sufficient 

 without regard to any remonstrances of the belliger- 

 ent. And without entering into argument on the 

 abstract question, he contents himself with vouching 

 in the conduct of the United States in past cases in 

 full justification of the course taken by Great Britain, 

 and complained of by the United States in the prog- 

 ress of the late war. The chief of the cases relied 

 upon by his Lordship is that in regard to certain 

 claims for indemnity for injuries done to the com- 

 merce of Portugal by vessels illegally fitted out in the 

 United States. 



In order to define the nature of the question thus 

 raised, it would seem to be proper first to note how 

 far his Lordship and I are agreed. After which it 

 may be made more clearly to appear wherein we are 

 so unfortunate as to differ. 



But consenting to cite the language and the action 

 of the United States Government in the Portuguese 

 case so freely as his Lordship does as a precedent to 

 justify the latter course of her Majesty's Government 

 now drawn into question, it is obvious that he must 

 have given to them the high sanction of his approba- 

 tion. 



On my side, I have already, in a preceding note, ex- 

 pressed it as my opinion that the grounds taken in 

 that case by my Government were impregnable. 



It necessarily follows that on this point we are fully 

 agreed. Where there is no difference, it is obviously 

 superfluous to continue an argument. 



Here I would beg permission to observe that in all 

 the previous examination of this topic I have care- 

 fully abstained from the task of affirming that a neu- 

 tral Power is absolutely responsible for the injurious 

 consequences of any and every violation of neutrality 

 that may originate within its territorial limits, with- 

 out regard to the circumstances attending each case. 

 The proposition which I have affirmed, and still do 

 continue to insist upon, is, that a neutral is responsi- 

 ble for all injuries which may so ensue to a friendly 

 nation when it fails to exercise all the means in its 

 power for prevention, and constitutes itself the sole 

 judge of the extent to which it will refuse to resort 

 to stronger ones within its reach, when the old ones 

 are proved by the injured party to have been wholly 

 inadequate to the emergency. 



With the light shed by this explanation, I now pro- 

 pose very briefly to set forth those points in the re- 

 spective action of the United States toward Portugal 

 and of Great Britain toward the United States, 

 wherein they appear to me to differ so essentially 

 and radically as to make it impossible to bring them 

 within a reasonable parallel : 



1. The United States did not recognize the insur- 

 gents in South America as a belligerent until the 

 fact of the presence of their armed vessels was made 

 patent to them on the ocean. But Great Britain did 

 erect the insurgents in the United States into a bel- 

 ligerent before they showed a vessel on the sea, be- 

 fore they organized an army on land, and before they 

 had done a thing but declare an intention to do what 

 they never subsequently executed. 



2. Upon the first notice given to the Government 

 of the United States that the neutrality of their ports 

 was violated by South American insurgents making 

 outfits in connection with their own citizens, they 

 immediately put in force the provisions of the exist- 

 ing law; prosecutions were instituted against the 

 foreign agents, as well as citizens ; ' and decrees of 

 restitution were obtained from the the judicial tribu- 

 nals in the cases of captured property. In other 

 words, nothing was left undone that energy could 

 do to bring to bear existing preventive legislation 

 against these offenders. 



One particular instance of the desire to perform 

 these obligations is worthy to be presented to your 

 notice, more particularly inasmuch as it incidentally 

 explains as well the public sense of the extent of the 

 obligation of a neutral Power in similar cases, as of 



