318 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



proved utterly inefficacious to prevent the fitting out of 

 privateers at Baltimore, as shown by the fact that the com- 

 plaints of the Portugese Ministers of captures and plunder- 

 ing by American privateers wore more frequent and extend- 

 ed to a larger amount of property after 1618 than they had 

 done from 1S16 to 1813. 



It is difficult for me to describe the high degree of 

 astonishment with which I have read these lines. 



In opposition to this grave affirmation of facts, 

 which I must beg leave to observe no attempt is 

 made to sustain by any distinct evidence, I am 

 driven to take the liberty to affirm on my own side, 

 first, that there is not a tittle of specification to show 

 that the fitting out of privateers continued in any 

 appreciable sense for ten years after the year 1818; 

 and, secondly, that no pretence of that kind is to be 

 found in any of the official remonstrances of the rep- 

 resentatives of Portugal to which I have had access, 

 with one single exception, which I propose presently 

 to notice. 



In relation to the point of the efficiency of the law, 

 I shall venture, in opposition to his Lordship's rea- 

 soning as to what it might be, to confront that 

 which, in the mind of M. Correa de Serra, the person 

 through whom all the transactions passed during 

 much the largest part of the period in question, and 

 who had every opportunity to be familiar with them, 

 it really was. 



On the 4th of February, 1819, about two years after 

 it had gone into operation, he deliberately used the 

 following language : 



This law, so honorable to the spirit of justice of the Gov- 

 ernment that enacted it, has also been found in practice the 

 most useful of the laws existing on this subject Unhappily 

 the continuance and recent aggravations of the evil it was in- 

 tended to remedy seem to render it necessary that this law 

 may still continue in force for some time. I apply, therefore, 

 to this Government in order to obtain the continuance of this 

 law, so necessary to the peaceful trade of the subjects of my 

 Sovereign, and so honorable to the character of the United 

 States, perfectly confident that my request is according to 

 the just and friendly intentions of the Chief Magistrate and 

 legislators of the Union, and conducive to the consolidation 

 of good harmony between my Sovereign and the United 

 States. 



On the 4th of June, 1820, he again writes to the 

 Secretary of State as follows, thanking him for still 

 more effective legislation : 



Permit me, sir, to profit of this occasion to offer my thanks 

 to this Government for the law that prohibits the entrance 

 of privateers in the most important ports of the Union, and 

 for the other that declares piracy the landing and committing 

 outrages ashore in foreign lands. I acknowledge the salutary 

 influence of the Executive in obtaining these ameliorations. 



Notwithstanding the very great deference with 

 which it is my desire, as well as my habit, to bow to 

 the judgment of his Lordship, if I find myself so un- 

 fortunate as to be constrained to express an humble 

 opinion in this case of conflicting authority, I cannot 

 in candor disguise mv conviction that the correct 

 view is most h"kely to be that of M. Correa de Serra. 



But, however efficient this law may have been 

 found to be by M. Correa de Serra at so late a date 

 as the 4th of June, 1820, it is now gravely affirmed 

 that it so wholly lost its efficacy for the next ten years 

 following that more property was captured after 1818 

 than before, and the complaints or the Portuguese 

 Minister for these captures and plundering were more 

 frequent than ever. 



The natural corollary, should this statement be 

 Bustained, would be that, assuming the exertions of 

 the Government to have continued the same, instead 

 of improving the efficacy of the old law, the addition 

 of the new provisions must have only made it more 

 worthless than it was before, upon which logic might 

 doubtless be based a very good justification of her 

 Majesty's Government for declining to try further 

 legislation altogether. But, unfortunately, the whole 

 argument falls to the ground when its base disap- 

 pears. It is not denied that some outfits escaped 

 from Baltimore after the year 1818. But it is denied 

 that the complaints made for captures after that time 



bore any fair proportion to those made before. It 

 never has been pretended that any law could be 

 made so perfect, or any vigilance could be so com- 

 plete, as to put an end to the efforts of profligate and 

 desperate men. The grave error into which his 

 Lordship has fallen appears to have originated in an 

 exparte letter written by a Minister from Portugal to 

 Washington thirty years after the date of the events, 

 in which letter and the caption of a list embracing 

 the names of vessels captured, he includes them 

 vaguely within two distant dates of 1816 and 1828. 

 H is, however, remarkable that in the letter itself, 

 containing his own recapitulation of the facts, no date 

 of a capture is given later than 1820. By turning to 

 the original representations made by his predeces- 

 sors the same fact distinctly appears. I have care- 

 fully examined those representations, to trace the 

 dates of the claims embraced in that list, and find 

 much the greater proportion included within the 

 period of residence of M. Correa de Serra ending in 

 that year. So also of the gross amount of value as- 

 signed in 1850 as an indemnity for all the damage 

 done during the entire period, which is less than 

 300,000?., I find a great proportion embraced in an 

 early and more trustworthy representation made by 

 the same person. 



Such being the facts, I submit whether, with such 

 small support as can be given by this wholly exparte 

 and vague averment, his Lordship has no't a little 

 crossed the verge of international courtesy, by ven- 

 turing, without any personal experience whatever of 

 American legislation, and in the face of the state- 

 ment of M. Correa de Serra, which he must have 

 read, to hazard an assertion, and, still more, give 

 rise to an impression like that necessarily produced 

 by the language already quoted. Standing as I do, 

 the defender of the law of my country, it is with re- 

 gret I am compelled to protest against it as wholly 

 unsubstantiated by any facts adduced, and in every 

 essential particular incorrect. 



Neither were those the only cases in which the effi- 

 cacy of these provisions of law have been fully tested. 

 It is not a very long time since I had the honor of 

 calling the attention of her Majesty's Government to 

 an instance of the remarkable promptness with which 

 action was had under them upon a request made by 

 the representative of her Majesty's Government at 

 Washington. When Mr. Crampton, on the llth of 

 October, 1855, directed the attention of my Govern- 

 ment to the character of a vessel in New York, then 

 believed by him to be fitting out as a privateer, it 

 was by virtue of the authority vested in it by one of 

 the sections of this law that she was seized on the 

 19th of the same month and taken possession of by 

 the officers of the law in such a manner as to prevent 

 all possibility of escape. It required but four days 

 to prosecute the investigation before her Majest^a 

 representative was led to declare his satisfaction with 

 the result to which it had reached, and desired the 

 process to be stopped. When I compare the celerity 

 of this effective proceeding with the feeble nature of 

 the process that ended in the escape of the Alabama, 

 in defiance of the British authority, while I give due 

 credit to her Majesty's Government for good inten- 

 tions, it seems difficult to assent to the view which 

 his Lordship has been pleased to take of the slight 

 difference in the inefficiency of the legislation of the 

 respective nations. In any event, I cannot but think 

 that future harmony would have been much more 

 certainly secured by a consent to try the experiment 

 in season than by an endeavor, after great injury 

 has been done, to prove that it might not, under any 

 circumstances, have been averted. 



But it would appear superfluous to pursue this in- 

 vestigation further in the view of the fact that whether 

 these provisions of the American law were or were 

 not effective, it was never any part of my instructions 

 to urge the adoption upon her Majesty's Government. 

 I was instructed only to suggest the expediency of 

 having recourse to such additional measures as it 



