to put the question to your Lordship, if the government at Washington can so change its tactics of blockade as to omit an efficient guard of the coast, and take up vessels which have come out of Confederate ports by fast-sailing cruisers on the ocean highway; for such I was informed, by an officer of the U. S. steamer Connecticut, was the recently adopted and easy plan of taking prizes, the fruits of which your Lordship may have observed in the capture of four vessels as prizes in a single week, each taken far out on the high seas.*

2. The Greyhound was thoroughly a British vessel; the British flag she carried was not a decoy, and that flag covered me, after I had passed out of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and, even in case it did not protect vessel or cargo (granting, for argument, these to be of an illicit character) protected me as an innocent passenger; else, having no other egress from the Confederate States, the passenger would be the viction of his necessity; and, else again, if a citizen of the Confederate States, not contraband, could be outlawed on the high seas, under that flag, flying on a bona fide British vessel, why not a subject or citizen of any other Government? If the flag was a reality at all it certainly should give protection on the ocean highway to a passenger who was pursuing objects of private convenience, and certainly was not amenable to any military penalties of the government at Washington.

Begging that your Lordship will acquit me of the charge of importunity in a matter the importance of which is by no means altogether personal to myself, I have the honor, &c., Your obedient servant, EDW. A. POLLARD.

P. S. I telegraphed your Lordship on the 24th instant to obtain liberty for me to see you in Washington, in the interest of the Greyhound, but have received no reply; hence these lines.

* Another circumstance: It is true that if the blockade-runner be seen in flagrante delicto passing the territorial lines, she may be pursued and taken on the high seas. But the Greyhound was not pursued, she was waylaid on the highway of the seas. Such a practice would convert the blockade into a system of roving commissions, and might as well be predicated of the coast of Bermuda as of that of the Confederate States.

EDWARD A. POLLARD, Esq.

VI.

BRITISH LEGATION, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 28, 1864. SIR: I have received your letter of the day before yesterday.

On receiving your telegram of the 24th instant, stating that you were charged to represent to me the facts of the case of the Greyhound and the interests of the owners, I sent by telegraph instructions to Her Majesty's consul at Boston to ask you to communicate on these matters with him for my information. I have to-day received from him an account of an interview which he had with you the day before yesterday.

I will request the consul to see that any British subjects interested in the Greyhound have proper facilities for defending their interests before the Prize Court. This is all I can do at present. I have referred the case to Her Majesty's Government, and I deem it right to wait for instructions from them before taking further steps.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

VII.

LYONS.

FORT WARREN, Boston Harbor, July 2 [should be June 2], 1864. LORD LYONS, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for Her Britannic Majesty, near Washington:

MY LORD: I have been honored by your attention in two letters, which, I beg leave to state very respectfully, have left me in some confusion of mind as to your Lordship's views and intentions with reference to my case. On the 20th ultimo, you write that you had "expressed your hope" to the Secretary of State of the United States that I should be "set free immediately," &c.; and on the 28th ultimo, you do not say what has been the issue of that hope, and while referring to the prize proceedings against the Greyhound, you make no reference whatever to my personal claims of protection by the British

flag, as a passenger on the high seas. In the mean time, I have been imprisoned in Fort Warren, by orders from Washington, without notice, without trial, and without being advised of any charge whatever against me.

It is true, that Her Majesty's consul at Boston mentioned to me that he understood that you had written the first letter, assuring me of my claim of liberty, under the impression that I was a British subject: an impression which your Lordship will do me the justice to observe was not derived from any statement of mine, or any implication of my correspondence. But I cannot see the force of the distinction. If I had been an Englishman, it seemed I would have been entitled to my release: why-by grace of the Washington authorities, or by force of right? The former supposition I think I may safely say would be resented by yourself, as well as by your Government, my Lord; and if the release, then, is to be put on any grounds of right, then the case of the Englishman would be no better than my own. The flag would protect me as well as him. It, either, must be a piece of bunting, and protects nothing, or, if it protects anything, it would protect all passengers alike. As far as the question is that of citizens or persons, it belongs to my own Government, and I am willing to rest it there; but as a question involving the British flag on the high seas, which, either sinks there all other insignia and distinctions of nationality, and protects all passengers alike, or is an unmeaning display, I have brought it to the consideration of your Lordship, and respectfully asked your decision. I cannot find that the latter is stated or intimated in the letters of your Lordship, to which I have had the honor to refer. I have, &c., your obedient servant,

EDWARD A. POLLARD.

VIII.

BRITISH LEGATION, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 9, 1864.

SIR: I received, on the 6th instant, a letter from you, dated (evidently by mistake) 2d of July. In answer to it, I can only say that I have referred your case to Her Majesty's Government, and sent them copies of your letters to me, and that,

while waiting for instructions from them, I do not feel at liberty to discuss the subject. Whatever orders they may think proper to give will be immediately executed by me. I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

E. A. POLLARD, Esq., Fort Warren.

LYONS.

CHAPTER III.

A WEEK IN BOSTON.-Introduction to the U. S. Marshal.-In the Streets of Boston: Two Spectacles.-A Circle of Secessionists.-The "Hub of the Universe."

As the Greyhound worked her way through the green and picturesque archipelago of Boston harbor, the pilot did me the kindness of pointing out Fort Warren as my probable abode for some future months, and confidentially spitting in my ear the advice to "holler for the Union." He had also found occasion to essay some advice to "Jane," a negro-woman, one of those tidy, respectable family servants redolent of "Old Virginia," who had been captured on her way to join her mistress, the wife of a Confederate agent in Bermuda. Jane's response was not complimentary; for the experience of the Yankee, which that respectable colored female had obtained from the amount of swearing and swilling on the Greyhound, had induced her to assert, with melancholy gravity, that "she had not seen a Christian since she left Petersburg."

The United States Marshal, who was introduced by the prize-master, with the whispered injunction that " we had better be polite," was a little Yankee with gimlet eyes, and who, with the fondness of his nation for official insignia, had adorned himself with a long tail coat, scrupulously blue, and garnished with immense metal buttons marked U. S. He was accompanied by three citizens, two of whom appeared to be civil and intelligent gentlemen, whose curiosity, if that was the motive of their visit, was subdued by their politeness. The third had an emasculated lisp, which I afterwards found to be characteristic of a certain class in Boston, and which was increased in this instance by the effect of the liquor he had drank. "He was a Virginian; he thought it right to indulge a little State pride." "Oh, to be sure," responded the prisoners, who thought the confidential injunction to be polite to the marshal included his toady. The fellow came up to me whispering