THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 215 



equally justify the search at any time, by either 

 a Confederate or a Federal cruiser, of the Dover- 

 Calais packet, and its conveyance to America 

 if agents or despatches of the enemy should be 

 found aboard. How utterly at sea the experts 

 were in regard to the law applicable to this case, 

 and how little the technical law had to do with 

 the practical policy adopted, appears in the fact 

 that the law officers of the crown, at almost the 

 exact moment when Wilkes threw his shell 

 across the bows of the Trent, gave their opinion 

 that the course which he, all unknown to them, 

 was actually pursuing was strictly conformed 

 to the precedents of British practice. 1 Later, 

 these same legal authorities modified their opin 

 ion and solemnly declared that the law required 

 that the offending neutral ship on which con 

 traband persons or despatches were found must 

 be taken to the captor s port and passed upon 

 by a prize court the precise ground that 

 Seward took in his despatch and that Russell 

 controverted in his reply. 



The surrender of Mason and Slidell was so 

 clearly a case of hard necessity that Northern 

 opposition to it was scanty. The hatred of 



1 C. F. Adams, The Trent Affair, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts 

 Historical Society, XLV. 



