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 meantime, 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 seems 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 honour to refer.

I have, etc., your obedient servant,

t

VIII.

EDWARD A. POLLARD.

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.

E. A. Pollard, Esq.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

LYONS.

NOTES.

The law of blockade was early defined in this country under the pressure of the British orders in council and blockade of 1806, in retaliation for the Berlin decree, at which time we find the elaborate protests of Madison against "the mockeries and mischiefs practised under the name of blockade." The doctrine of fictitious blockade was then exploded, and Great Britain was compelled to conform her practice to the definition made in her convention with, Russia in 1801, to the effect that a blockaded port was only such as there was an "evident danger in entering."

In this war the United States have gone far beyond these abuses of fictitious blockades, which she formerly made subjects of such violent complaint, and has practically converted the blockade which she asserts of the Confederate coasts into a system of roving commissions, by which vessels not chased from the blockade lines are waylaid and taken up by cruisers on the ocean highway. Captures, such as that of the Greyhound, are acts of piracy.

But, in the above correspondence, a second point is discovered. It is contended that not only was the Greyhound not a good prize, but that the taking a passenger from the shelter of her flag was an aggravation of the capture, and the plain offence of kidnapping.

On the second point we have American authority so decisive and abundant, that not an inch of ground is left for the Government at Washington, which still uses the style, and, of course, is bound by the precedents of the United States, whereon to defend such a violation of a neutral flag.

It was Daniel Webster who put a well-recognized principle of international law in this neat phrase: "That a ship on the high seas was part of the nation's territory." It was on this ground that the United States defended the rights of her flag against every claim which Great Britain ever made of arrest under

it.

In a letter of instructions, written in 1804, by Mr. Madison, then Secretary of State, to Mr. Monroe, resident minister in London, there is a plain and complete enunciation of the doctrine contended for in the above correspondence. Referring to the immunities of a neutral flag, as recognized by Great Britain, the Secretary writes:

"She will not deny the general freedom of the high seas, and of neutral vessels navigating them, with such exceptions only as are annexed to it by the law • of nations. But nowhere will she find an exception to this freedom of the seas, and of neutral flags, which justifies the taking away of any person, not

an enemy in military service, found on board a neutral vessel. If treaties, British as well as others, are to be consulted on this subject, it will equally ap- . pear that no countenance to the practice can be found in them. Whilst they « admit a contraband of war, by enumerating its articles, and the effect of a real blockade by defining it, in no instance do they affirm or imply a right in any sovereign to enforce his claims to the allegiance of his subjects on board neutrál vessels on the high seas; on the contrary, whenever a belligerent claim against persons on board a neutral vessel is referred to in treaties, enemies in military service alone are excepted from the general immunity of persons in that situation; and this exception confirms the immunity of those who are not included in it. If the law of allegiance which is a municipal law, be in force at all on the high seas on board foreign vessels, it must be so at all times there, as it is within its acknowledged sphere. If the reason alleged for it be good in time of war, namely, that the sovereign has then a right to the services of all his subjects, it must be good at all times, because he has the same right to their service. Taking reason and justice for the tests of this practice, it is peculiarly indefensible, because it deprives the dearest rights of persons of a regular trial, to which the most inconsiderable article of property captured on the high seas is entitled, and leaves their destiny to the will of an officer." (Am. State Papers. Vol: III. Foreign Relations, p. 84.)

CHAPTER III.

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

As the Greyhound worked her way through the green and picturesque archipelago of Boston harbour, 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 coloured female had obtained from the amount of swearing and swilling on the Geeyhound, 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-tailed coat, scrupulously blue, and garnished with immense metal buttons marked U. S. He was accompanied by three citi zens, 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 something about "his sympathies being with Virginia, but it wouldn't do to let the d-d rascals know it." I was glad enough to repel the embraces of this creature without enquiring why it "wouln't do" to testify his sympathies for Virginia, and how it was that his sympathies detained him in Boston, and kept him in the company of

"d—d rascals." I afterwards discovered that he was a prizè-lawyer, and preyed for a living upon Yankee crews.

1

The marshal having taken himself off with the prize-master, I was, about sundown, invited ashore by a severe-looking man, placed in a carriage and driven along the green skirt of Boston Common to a building, which I was told contained the marshal's office. That official had not arrived there. I was waved back into the carriage by the severe man. "Where are we going now ?" I asked pleasantly." To the jail!" replied the severe man, very sharply and sententiously. I protested that I was a passenger on board the Greyhound, already in communication with Lord, Lyons, to protect my rights, as such, under the neutral flag on the high seas; and if the marshal or his deputy presumed to treat me as a criminal, and put me in a common jail, it would be at the peril of grave legal consequences.

The latter part of my protest seemed to affect the deputy, for he relaxed his brows, and had me driven to the Tremont House, where the marshal was to be found. I was readily released on my parole not to attempt to escape. At a subsequent hour of the night, having found my way to a very modest, but excellent hotel, where I registered as "E. A. Parkinson," from "New York," I, at last, relieved from the presence of authority, and the annoyance of impertinent curiosity, enjoyed the first undisturbed sleep I had had for many nights.

I was taking breakfast the next morning, when the negro waiter who attended me, surprised me by suddenly asking me, with a grin, "if I was not from the Southern country." It was useless to dispute a negro's intuition in this matter; and the poor fellow was so eager in his questions that I told him, without hesitation, where I was from, suppressing my name and my condition as a prisoner. He introduced himself as "Lew. Walker." He was the slave of some gentleman in Petersburg, and had deserted his masteror, as he described it in the polite Yankee vernacular, had "skedaddled" some months ago. He liked the North "tolerably well;" he had married in Boston, (I did not ask him the colour of his wife); but he said only a few of his people" who had come North had been as fortunate as himself. "You see, sir, de change is too sudden for 'em," was his explanation. Lew. expressed a desire to return South, and said he would go right away, if he could get back without trouble. His desire in this respect was unpleasantly postponed;