UNFRIENDLINESS OF GREAT BRITAIN. QU1 
And when an armed Confederate vessel entered an English 
port, she was permitted to take in coal sufficient to enable her 
to reach a southern port. This was according to the rules of 
international law. But the English authorities gave it, (in the 
interest of the Confederates), a practical construction which con- 
formed to its letter but violated its spirit. They held that a 
Confederate steamer having coaled once in an English port and 
departed, might return as often as its officers pleased, for fresh 
supplies of coal, without any troublesome questions being asked. 
So that, under this rule, a Confederate privateer, without mak- 
ing a home port, was able to continue its cruise along the great 
ocean highways frequented by our commercial marine, run into 
Nassau when it pleased for coal, capture our merchant ships, 
and levy forced contributions upon or destroy them. They held 
that no violence was thereby done to the principles of national 
neutrality, because the British government did not know and 
was not obligated to inform itself whether or not the privateer 
had since its previous coaling, returned toa home port, nor what 
had become of its previous supplies. 
The unfriendliness of the British government to the American 
Union at that time, furnished a solid foundation upon which 
the rebellion rested its hopes. It greatly protracted the war, and 
largely increased the harvests of suffering and death, and, as a 
necessary consequence, impoverished the South, wasted the sub- 
stance of the North, and stirred up bitter feelings of hostility 
between the two nations after the memories of old and bloody 
family quarrels had nearly faded away. And what did England 
and her colonies thereby gain? ‘The cotton she received from 
blockade runners during the war, formed but a very small frac- 
tional part of the entire crop. The value of her vessels and car- 
goes captured by our cruisers while endeavoring to run the 
blockade, aggregated many millions of dollars. Nassau was 
