DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



353 



tenance of the neutrality which her Majesty has pro- 

 claimed, and provided also that in the meantime the 

 Alexandra and other vessels which may be found vio- 

 lating or preparing to violate the law, be prevented, so 

 far as the law may allow, from leaving British ports 

 to prosecute their work of devastation. 



The President is not prepared to believe that the 

 judiciary of Great Britain will, with well-considered 

 judgment, render nugatory and void a statute of the 

 realm which, with its counterpart in our own legis- 

 lation, has hitherto been regarded by both nations as a 

 guarantee of that mutual forbearance which is so essen- 

 tial to the preservation of peace and friendship. Nor 

 shall I incur the hazard of producing irritation on 

 either side of the ocean by criticising the reasoning by 

 which the learned judge who tried the case of the 

 Alexandra justified his conclusions thereon, or by which 

 that portion of the British press which approves the 

 verdict labors to defend it. 



If the rulings of the Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 

 the case of the Alexandra shall be affirmed so as to 

 regulate the action of her Majesty's Government, the 

 President will, as he thinks, be left to understand that 

 there is no law in Great Britain which will be effective 

 to preserve mutual relations of forbearance between the 

 subjects of her Majesty and the Government and the'peo- 

 ple of the United States in the only point where they 

 are exposed to infraction. The fitting out of the Ala- 

 bama and the Florida, as well as of the Alexandra, will 

 thus receive the sanction of the Government, and the 

 United States will be without any guarantee whatever 

 against the indiscriminate and unlimited employment 

 of capital, industry, and skill, by British subjects, in 

 building, arming, equipping, and sending forth ships- 

 of-war from British ports to make war against the 

 United States. 



On the bill of exceptions being tendered to 

 the Lord Chief Baron he declined to sign it, be- 

 cause it imputes to him certain legal declara- 

 tions which he never made, and objects to him 

 that he did not give instructions which he 

 avers were the very ones he did give. As a 

 consequence, a technical barrier was at once 

 raised against further operations, which proved 

 so difficult to remove, that resort was finally 

 had to the extraordinary step of creating a 

 new rule for the purpose of admitting a motion 

 on the part of the Government. Upon a mo- 

 tion made under this new rule, in the Court 

 of Exchequer, on November 5th, before Lord 

 Chief Baron Pollock and Barons Bramwell, 

 Chanwell and Pigott, for a rule to show cause 

 why there should not be a new trial on the 

 ground of misdirection by the learned judge, 

 and also on the ground that the verdict was 

 against the evidence, a rule nisi was granted. 

 After argument of the rule, to show cause why 

 a new trial should not be granted, the Court 

 of Exchequer discharged the rule, thus deny- 

 ing a new trial, and an appeal was brought to 

 the Court of Exchequer Chamber. The case 

 took an unexpected turn at the hearing in this 

 court, in the early part of February, 1864. 



When the appeal from the Court of Ex- 

 chequer was taken there was some discussion 

 as to practice, but it was finally understood 

 that the case was put in such shape that, al- 

 though the Chief Baron would not sign a bill 

 of exceptions, the legal questions involved in 

 his rulings could go before the higher courts. 



The critical questions need not be stated 

 here, as they do not relate to the more impor- 

 VOL. in. 23 A 



tant matters connected with the case, and in- 

 volve the construction of provisions in the 

 " Common Law Procedure Act " and the 

 "Queen's Remembrancer's Act," upon purely 

 technical points. The judgment of the matter 

 of jurisdiction was given on the 8th of Feb- 

 ruary, in the Court of Exchequer Chamber, 

 and disclosed a singular division of opinion. 

 The Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench 

 and three puisne judges of that court who 

 were present, were of the opinion that there 

 was no jurisdiction; the Lord Chief Justice 

 and two judges of the Common Pleas were of 

 opinion that there was jurisdiction, and the 

 former having the majority by one the appeal 

 was dismissed. 



The expedient by which, notwithstanding 

 this denial of jurisdiction in the Court of Ex- 

 chequer Chamber, the case is finally sent to 

 the House of Lords, is thus explained in the 

 London Times of the 29th of February : 



Happily, a loophole was discovered by the court, by 

 means of which this grievous sacrifice of justice to an 

 informality may yet pe avoided. Instead of simply 

 admitting the preliminary objection and declining to 

 hear the appeal, the form of judgment is that the ap- 

 peal be dismissed. There will, therefore, be an entry 

 of a decision on the record, and against this decision, 

 although not founded on the merits of the suit, the 

 counsel for the Crown may appeal to the House of 

 Lords. Thus this ignoble break down in our legal 

 machinery is not past remedy if the House of Lords 

 shall agree with the three Judges of the' Common 

 Pleas rather than with the four Judges of the Queen's 

 Bench. It may perhaps strike some of our readers 

 that the expedient devised to extricate our courts from 

 the dilemma is not much less technical than the origin 

 of the dilemma itself. The solution is inpari materia 

 with the difficulty, and probably neither would have 

 occurred to an unprofessional mind. Where, however, 

 a great mistake has been made in a very serious mat- 

 ter, vre must be content to get out of its consequences 

 as best we may consistently with justice and prece- 

 dent. If the Alexandra case had been stopped in its 

 present stage, not only would a golden opportunity 

 of reducing an important branch of law to certainty 

 have been irretrievably lost, but a new pretext would 

 have been provided, very unseasonably, for impugn- 

 ing the faith of our Goverment. (See GREAT BRITAIN.) 



FRANCE. The diplomatic relations between 

 the United States and France appear to have 

 been of a^very friendly kind during 1863. No 

 further movements were made by the French 

 Government relative to an acknowledgment 

 of the insurrectionary States, and no vessels, 

 during that period, were allowed to leave her 

 ports for the purpose of destroying the com- 

 merce of the United States. The intentions of 

 France in Mexico, and the views of the United 

 States Government on that subject, were ex- 

 plained in the correspondence, as will appear 

 by the following extracts : 



On the 26th of September Mr. Seward 

 writes to Mr. Dayton as follows : 



It is well understood that through a long period, 

 closing in 1860, the manifest strength of this nation 

 was a sufficient protection for itself and for Mexico, 

 against all foreign States. That power was broken 

 down and shattered in 1861 by faction. The first fruit 

 of our civil war was a new, and in effect, though not 

 intentionally so, an unfriendly attitude assumed by 





